Our family spent last week at The Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Surrounded by trees in the Village of Four Seasons and nestled on the point of a cove, we enjoyed a seven bedroom home bustling with entertainment inside and out for the Meckel/Hoyt family reunion. We fished, swam, and boated. The kids were in heaven. There is nothing quite like having the whole entire family together and just enjoying each other’s company. Of course, Colton sang karaoke whenever he wasn’t whipping everyone at ping pong. In addition to our regular game of Pitch, we played some others like Family Feud and Song Burst. Everyone was equally awful at Song Burst, so that one didn’t last long. Well, everyone except Colton. Because no one just happens to know on the spot every word to songs like “Any Day Now” by Ronnie Milsap aside from my oldest son. He lives for that stuff. Therefore, instead of watching him answer all the questions on lyrics to old country songs, we decided to call it quits on Song Burst.

To celebrate my niece’s birthday, all the kids made slime. I have to admit that was a first for me. My step-mom had every ingredient known to man that children put into slime these days. It was a mess and completely awesome. Dawsyn, Kaemyn, and Kalyssa have never had so much fun getting filthy. Oh, and I think Keely too. They were elbow deep in Elmer’s glue, contact solution, washable paint, glitter, and these little foam ball things. The adults watched in semi-horror as the kids had a total blast with their creations. After it was over, we cleaned and we cleaned and we cleaned. Surfaces were wiped and the floor was swept. Twice. As Keely bent down under the table to ensure her area was clean (because let me tell you she had way too much fun) she noticed a penny close to one of the legs. With a knowing smile she picked it up and thanked Dalton for giving her a sign he was around.

Pennies. I could devote an entire blog to the pennies we have found since DD has been gone. I am curious… has anyone else ever experienced anything similar to this after losing a loved one? I know it sounds nuts, but many of our family members have found pennies appearing out of nowhere in random places. And often, like under the table after making slime, they show themselves after we know for certain nothing was there before. To make it even more interesting, beginning around age 11, Dalton became obsessed with pennies. We would give him a large bag of pennies and muffin pan(s) and he would sort them according to the year. He memorized the year every family member was born by studying and organizing pennies. Hence, when we find a penny, it means something.

Dalton’s 17^th birthday was on June 21^st. Rather than return home after our lake vacation, the girls and I decided to tag along with Troy to Cleveland and Detroit on business. We arrived at our hotel in Cleveland where we were staying on the 23^rd floor that night. Coincidence? That was Dalton’s number in nearly every sport he played. I handed Troy the key to our room and told him what floor it was on. His eyes said he was thinking what I was thinking. Roughly thirty minutes before, we had been in an Uber heading to the hotel where we saw a building with a Lebron James’s banner on it somewhere around 10-15 stories high. Towering over the city street, Lebron’s muscular outstretched arms appear like he is enveloping all of Cleveland as his number is proudly displayed upon his back. 23. Duh. How could I forget? Dalton had loved Lebron. We chose to bury him in his new Lebron shoes he had received less than two weeks before his accident. You can see them in the very last Instagram picture he would ever post @hotstuffpalmer.

Things only got more interesting once we reached Detroit. We met a gentleman named Steve who worked at the small airport we flew into. Tall and confident, he complimented a t-shirt I was wearing that read Blessed Beyond Measure. Quickly we engaged in a conversation about our common faith and he told us how he had been very ill once and was clinically dead for some time. I asked him what he remembered. Eyes lighting up, Steve anticipated telling his story. It was almost like he had been waiting for me to visit with him that day so he could tell someone all about it. Making a semi-long story short, Steve recalls vividly how everything appeared intensely bright white upon death. Like a brightness that couldn’t be explained in normal terms. It was as if what he saw was too white and too shiny to adequately describe. That was all he remembered seeing. However, it wasn’t what he saw that made the biggest impression. It was what he felt. I found myself captivated by Steve’s facial and hand expressions as he did he took his best stab at explaining what an immense feeling of love that had washed over him during his “trip to the other side.” I asked him why he thought he didn’t stay dead. He said he knew it wasn’t his time because he still had four kids to raise. Immediately, I wondered why that November in 2014 would have ever have been the right time for a 13 year old boy to die. Respectfully, we thanked Steve for sharing such a beautiful story with us and told him why it meant so much to us to hear his story on that particular day. It was further confirmation that Dalton was helping us get through one of the toughest days of the year.

We took Dawsyn to the Rainforest Café on DD’s birthday night because that was a restaurant he had liked so much when he was younger. All was going well until the “rain storm” came and the animals appeared to come alive. Dawsie flung herself into my lap with a death grip around my neck. She would wave her pointer finger at the gorillas and tell them, “No, no. Get back!” Maybe next time. We requested an Uber to pick us up after the restaurant. Feeling conversational, we asked our driver some questions about how he started working for Uber, what type of work he did before that, and if he liked Michigan. After only a few short minutes of small talk, the driver began talking about his family. The first thing he shared was that he had lost a son in the Iraq war. He had been a POW for 5 months. His name was Byron and he had only been 19 years old. My heart hurt for him. And I wondered if he told all of his passengers about Byron. He took us to the Hilton Auburn Hills Suites (located at 2300 Featherstone Rd) where we each took turns giving him a hug before he left to pick up his next passenger. Bereaved family members have a way of connecting to one another very quickly.

Troy had meetings in Detroit the following day so the girls and I decided to go shopping. We called another Uber and a sweet lady named Maria showed up twenty minutes later to pick us up. I have never been in the presence of a chattier stranger in my life. We learned so much about Maria in a small sliver of time. She had met her husband of 23 years where she was raised in South Africa. They had four children together and they struggled their entire married life to make ends meet. She had little exposure to God growing up. That changed the day her son (then 3 years old) had a seizure and stopped breathing. They were at least 20 miles from a hospital in an unfamiliar area where no one spoke English. Maria’s husband was holding her son’s limp body as she ran around frantically trying to flag down someone to help them. During her moment of panic she began praying to God to help her child survive. Unbeknownst to her, a motorcyclist had already stopped and picked up her husband. Cradling their son, her husband was transported by the motorcyclist to the closest hospital. At the same time Maria discovered her husband and son were not where she left them, a second motorcyclist stopped. Unable to communicate, she somehow felt compelled to hitch a ride with this stranger. He ended up taking her to the hospital where her husband and son had arrived moments before. Imagine her joy as she saw her young son breathing on his own. According to Maria, the doctors suspected it was the wind from the motorcycle ride that somehow helped the little boy snap out of it. Not long after, Maria’s son would tell her that he knew he had died. He remembered seeing all white and three people. One he recognized as his father, one was his grandfather, and one was a person he did not know. That was the day Maria accepted Christ into her life and became a believer.

Keely and I sat in the backseat of this strong woman’s car and wiped the tears from our eyes. I told her about Dalton and how her story meant so much to me. She shared that she had suffered a painful loss of her own recently. Her husband passed away only a couple of years ago to a bizarre illness. He was her soul mate and her best friend. She spoke of how difficult it was providing for their daughters (now 7 and 9) on a single income. I thought she was going to get emotional when she took me by surprise by tossing her head back and laughing. She said he knows he is gone, but he lets her know he’s still around. Figuring there was a story there, I asked how.

“By leaving me pennies,” Maria said with a wink.

All Keely and I could do was look at each other and smile.