It Started With a Hummingbird

It all started with a visit from a hummingbird. I was out in the backyard of a friend’s house when a hummer flew right up in front of my face. It did a little "hello" dance back and forth, then zoomed away. We feed hummingbirds on our balcony, and this made me wonder if they have some sort of long distance communication system that we humans don’t know about, the way whales and elephants do.

In my diary Deliverance, I told about a friend’s ALMOST near death experience (she managed to dial 911 just in time), but I didn’t know all the details then. While she was suffering from an acute asthma attack and reaching for the phone, she saw her dead grandparents in the living room. They were wearing heavy overcoats as if they were going on a long trip (they had obviously come to take her back with them!)

She also heard the voice of a friend of hers (who lives in another state)–Dannion Brinkley–telling her urgently to "Breathe, breathe."

As the ambulance was whisking her away to the hospital, she thought she saw a man in a blue uniform with polished brass buttons on her porch, as well as a car parked on the street with her father’s "vanity" license plate on it. Upon reflecting on this later, she realized that this was also a visit from her dead dad, who had been a policeman. She recently told me more about her experience.

She says, "After I called 911 that evening, and after I saw my dead grandparents in the dining room, I managed to walk down the stairs to the porch to wait for the ambulance. It was on the porch that I ‘saw’ and ‘spoke to’ the man in the navy blue uniform (who did have some resemblance to my dad in his younger rookie days on the police force. My sister had a photo of my dad in his early rookie years which she showed me after I had recovered and I mentioned the ‘man on the porch’). I may not have recognized my dad right away since he appeared very ‘young’ when I saw him on the porch. "The confirmation for me came afterward. When I was recovering. my friend took me for a private healing session that took place in Brooklyn. After the session, we walked back to my friend’s car. A different car was then parked in front of his car from the one parked there when we’d first arrived, and that’s when I saw the license plate that read DIMA. That was the ‘nickname’ of my late dad. Everyone called him by that name: my mom, grandparents, family members. "When I saw that plate, I made a very profound connection. My dad worked at the 79th Precinct in Brooklyn during his police career. I realized at that moment that here I was, not far from his police station in that neighborhood. After re- living that moment on the porch (and having asked for confirmation as to whether that man I spoke to may, indeed, have been my dad on the porch) I believe that was the verification I was looking for."

A couple of days after I saw the hummingbird, Whitley asked me to interpret a strange vision he’d had (something I often do for him) during meditation. He told me that he’d seen a dog he used to know when he was a kid come to him, wagging its tail. The dog’s name was Quagmire, which means a perilous situation or predicament. I laughed and said, "D-O-G is "God" spelled backwards, you had a visit from God!"

Later we were taking our daily walk when we had a license plate experience similar to my friend’s: Just as Whitley said, "the dog I saw in my meditation looked so familiar and so real, I wonder if it might have been one I knew when I was a kid. He was the sweetest, most downtrodden dog I ever knew. He had a rough life, but he never stopped giving joy. I wonder if it really was him." At that moment, we passed a car with a vanity plate on it that said "QUAGMRE." Whitley stood there, staring in amazement. "That was his name," he said. "Everybody called him Quagmire because he was always a mess."

NOTE: This Diary entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.