| Di had experiences in her first marriage as well, adding to her belief that she is either blessed or cursed with an connection to those that have passed. Unlike her other stories, she is on the outside of this one, watching that events happen, the only one who truly understands what happened. Before she married her first husband, Frank, he was diagnosed with cancer. He kept his hopes up, but ut was not the first time he had faced the disease and the outcome did not look good. The tumurs continued to grow and his fate seemed to weaken. Even more disturbed by the news was Frank's mother, Eileen. Frank was her only son, and she was close to giving up on herself and him. She was a severe alcholic who drank most of the day and was slightly sick herself with asthma. She began to beg God to save her son. "She would sit there and drink and cry all the time," says Di. "'Just take me. Let him live.'" Then Eileen developed cancer herself. The doctors told her it was not as dangerious as Frank's and she needed to have a hysterectomy. It was the fall before she could go in, and Di remembers the day perfectly. As she opened the door to her house, the leaves began to swirl around her although there was no wind. The sounds of the outside world seemed to fade away and she got an "eerie" feeling. The phone was ringing inside. "And I just knew it." Eileen had died in the recovery room of an asthma attack. Some might put that up to coincidence and timing, but Eileen, who had never been known as a happy woman, made sure everyone knew what she had sacrificed for her only son. Starting that day, there began to be a halo formed around her face on a picture of her and her husband they had taken for their 25th anniversary. It was dull at first, but easliy seen by funeral. They tried to wash the frame and then clean the picture, but it continued to get darker and darker unitl it became bright orange-yellow. Frank went into remission without chemo or any further treatment. Since 1982 he has lived cancer-free and with no serious health problems. |