This light appeared in Marfa, Texas, on the evening of August 12, 2013, as we left Melaney Parker's memorial service. It came from the sunset in the west and stretched past the eastern horizon into space. Some people raised up their hands proclaiming "Praise be to God." It went through my mind that it was biblical. No one had ever seen anything like it.
Monday evening, August 12, 2013, a friend took a picture of a strange sky after sunset. She was about fifty miles due south of Marfa, Texas near Terlingua. The light was not visible.
During the entire ordeal we went through after my daughter's death, my son and I kept feeling as if we were speaking words that had already been written or spoken, and we were saying words that were part of a script. I had never experienced anything like it in my life and neither had he. Even with this puzzling feeling happening to us, we both felt that, without our knowledge or choice, we had somehow become engaged in the eternal battle between good and evil.
I also want to say that if I had not been on antidepressants during all of this horror, I believe I would have died because of the stress. I am thankful that I may live to see my son's children some day.
My daughter, Melaney Parker, asked me shortly before she died if I thought we were closer than most mothers and daughters. I honestly didn't know, but I told her relationships are different for everyone. I knew we were close, but I now know and realize that our connection was more than most, and stronger than this physical world.
Melaney Parker was born a caulbearer. Perhaps this means nothing, but there are many stories that mention caulbearers and most legends or myths agree that these people tend to have special gifts or abilities and have a great desire to help people. I have tended many infants, but I had never seen one so alert, or so physically perfect. Her intelligence only became more obvious as she grew. Drawing scribbles and speaking by the time she was eighteen months old, adding numbers at the age of two, teaching herself how to read when she had just turned four, and so on. She was always in motion: a fence and tree climber, an avid reader, and then an avid writer, but always the artist.
We were prone to communicating without words. I would answer her questions before she asked them. As she drew breath to ask a question, I would say yes or no and be right about what she was going to say. Sometimes, she didn't even have to speak, I would give her the answer to the question she was formulating. She would do the same thing with me.
When Melaney and her cousin, Joaquin (born six weeks apart) were about twelve years old, I asked to conduct an experiment with them and my sister. I had seen the game called "Indian Poker" played and it piqued my curiosity. Were we psychically powerful enough to transmit and receive information? We got out a deck of cards, took turns shuffling them each round, and allowed the subject to take a card. We would not look at the card, but would place it face outward on our foreheads. Then we would try to accept thoughts into our minds and "guess" which card we had. We all four successfully "guessed" what the card was that we were holding on our foreheads, twice around the circle. We were all four of us transmitting and receiving. After the second round, Joaquin said he didn't want to do it anymore, it was getting a little too spooky.
Her aunt Vicki was visiting me in Austin one Saturday and we sat outside on the deck. I suddenly got out of the chair and said, "I don't know why, but I think Melaney's going to call. I think she's done." Melaney wasn't supposed to be done with her school project for hours yet. I walked to the door anyway and as I opened it the phone rang. It was Melaney saying they had finished much earlier than expected and could I come pick her up.
I use these examples because I have witnesses to them. There were many others. I can always tell when my son is not okay or when things are great, even a thousand miles away. I have always felt a strand between them and me, flowing with love and emotion. I was not so convinced of these things before Melaney died. I have seen and heard too many things since her death and I can no longer deny that these things are happening to us.
Dreams and Visions
Saturday, August 3, 2013
The weekend before Melaney died, her cousin, Joaquin, and his fiancée, Anna, were having dinner at a neighbor’s apartment, whose name is Lloyd. They had become good friends as apartment neighbors and often shared dinners. Lloyd is an older man, and is described as “very spiritual.” While preparing dinner, Lloyd broke down weeping, saying that he had had a vision that someone close to Joaquin was going to die a horrible death and it would be very painful for everyone. He said that had never happened to him before, and he didn’t know how he knew, but that it had been put in his mind and knew it was real.
12:10 a.m. CDT, Thursday, August 8, 2013
Thursday morning, August 8, 2013, I was almost finished reading Daughter of Fortune in my bedroom. I only had a few pages left. Something about the sounds in the night made me unsettled, perhaps it was the heavy metal band that had been playing before, but no it was after 12:00 and the bar behind my place was closed by then. The fan was on for white noise and I couldn’t shake an ominous feeling. I thought I had heard someone call out at about 12:10, but heard nothing more. Some kind of cry, was it “mom?” I went to the living room and went outside. Nothing.
At about 12:25 a.m., I heard my daughter call from the living room the way she always did when she dropped by, “Hellooo.” I got up and went into the living room and she wasn’t there, and hadn’t stopped at the bathroom. I went outside to see if I hadn’t been quick enough to catch her. Maybe she left because she thought I was not up. She wasn’t out in the night either, but I called to her anyway, “Mel?” No answer. I realized there was a great horrible sound like the night was screeching in pain and felt a chill. I had a bad foreboding but shook it off. It was my imagination I told myself. I will find out tomorrow what happened and went back inside. I finished the last two pages of a book with a good ending but I felt more unsettled.
I got up and went to my computer in the living room, not ready to sleep. I heard what sounded like loud pops, like a gun being fired. At the sound of the second one, shortly after, I looked at the clock on the computer and it said 12:42 a.m. I got up from the computer thinking that it sounded like gunshots, but was it really? There was something that didn’t really reverberate like a gunshot. I was already spooked and afraid to go outside to look, not wanting to get hurt by crossfire or stray bullets. There were several, perhaps as many as 10, but more like seven, and the last one sounded at 12:49 a.m. I happened to look at the computer clock again and it happened to be the last one that sounded.
I went back to the computer, unsettled. At 1:03 a.m. I received a frantic telephone call from John Rayburn, my son-in-law. He was at the train engine because Melaney was missing, she wasn’t home when he got there and he was afraid, he kept saying over and over, “I’m scared, I’m scared, Liz.”
He told me that when he got home and realized she wasn’t there, something told him to get to the engine immediately. The train was stopped, it never stops in Marfa. Melaney was missing. He felt cold and afraid and the feeling haunts him still, all of it returning full blast when that night comes to mind.
10:30 p.m., PDT, Wednesday, August 7, 2013, San Francisco, California
My brother, Javier, was in San Francisco on vacation with his wife, who was five months pregnant at that time. They were getting late night massages and his began at 10:30 p.m. His wife’s massage began forty-five minutes to one hour after his. As she was being massaged, her masseuse told her, “I keep hearing a name. And I think it has something to do with your daughter, maybe you should give her this name. It sounds like Melody.”
Early Thursday morning, CDT, August 8, 2013
Barbara was a friend of John and Melaney’s. Her husband had died the previous August, almost a year past, but Melaney and John had not known him. She dreamed that she woke up and her husband was sitting on the end of the bed. She was confused and said, “What are you doing here? You’re dead. Go away!”
He told her, “I have to tell you something. There’s a young woman here now, she has dark hair and her name is different here, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t hurt herself. Two men put her there. Two men hurt her and put her there. She wants me to tell you to tell John that they are both old souls. They have been together before and they will be together again.”
Barbara remembered the dream because it was so vivid, but had no idea what it was about or who John was until a few days later when she learned of Melaney’s death. She was stunned, but was not able to see John until about two weeks later. John was immersing his grief in alcohol at that time and could not remember what she told him, but remembered that someone had called him an old soul. It was not for another month before we learned of the full dream she had the morning of Melaney’s death.
Early Friday morning, August 9, 2013, CDT
I went to sleep with the aid of medication on that horrible Thursday night. I was weeping as I fell asleep asking, “What happened to you, my baby?”
I dreamed I was paralyzed and I was being laid in a space by two young Hispanic men. It was dark night but there were street lights far in the background. I could only see their silhouetted figures as they lay me down by my arms and let them drop on my body, I felt them land and cross and then they started moving me more. I was not in control of my body. I didn’t understand what was going on. I asked, why are they doing this to me? A voice told me, “It’s not you, it’s Melaney.” Somewhere in the periphery there were two young Hispanic men walking in what seemed like the light of headlights across the tracks, south to north near the fence of the park. What did they have to do with anything? One of them was wearing a red basketball jersey and the other seemed to have on a white shirt.
At the time of my dream, I did not understand it. I thought Melaney had been struck by the train and thrown to the north side of the tracks, and that was not correct. It was not until Monday, August 12th that I found out she was lying on the tracks when the train struck her and then it began making sense.
The kitten Soon
The kitten, Soon.
On Friday night, August 9th, after everyone left my place and I was alone, I heard a small cat meowing over and over. I thought that the black house cat, Goblin, who I called Kitty, would chase any other cat away and the kitty outside would be gone soon. Goblin was a former dumpster cat that had been adopted by the group of young men that used the casita beside my place for music practice. The casita was also rented out sometimes and some of the young men had lived where I did. Goblin was an outside cat until I lived there and then she eventually started sleeping on my bed day and night. We liked each other very much. She is an alpha cat and any other cat or dog ventured into her territory warily. I went to bed without another thought of the kitty.
The following three days were horrendous and I had no thought for the kitty until each night after everyone left, she would start meowing again. I wondered how Goblin had not chased her away. There had been strange phenomena occurring around my daughter’s death and I kept feeling that evil walked the streets of Marfa. I was afraid in that corner of superstition in my mind, and the kitty meowing only after everyone else left did not sit well with me. But I wondered if Melaney had sent the kitty to me. How could I not take care of the kitty if it was sent by Melaney? I didn’t need a pet, I would be leaving Marfa soon, as I had planned months before. It would be difficult to care for her.
On Tuesday morning, after the wondrous event of the previous night, I believed that the kitty had been sent by Melaney. I looked for the kitty and called to her. I had not seen her during any of the previous nights. I didn’t even know what she looked like, but she came immediately from under the trailer and sniffed the food and water I set out for her. She lapped the water and then came to me meowing softly wanting to be petted more than she wanted food. She was a tiny Siamese with blue eyes and looked to be just a few weeks old. The food was too hard for her to eat so I moistened it with water. She would take a couple of small bites and then come back to me wanting to be held and petted more than she wanted the food, even though she was apparently starving, skin and bones. There was ringworm on her tail. I posted her picture on FaceBook in case someone was missing her. No one knew her.
It struck me that she had been loved very much by some little child who probably missed her and who she also missed. Poor little kitty. Someone who always petted her. I stayed with her until people started coming to see me. I called her Little Kitty, since Goblin was Kitty. She was starved for attention and was a pest for wanting to be petted so much. If there was a hand dangling down she would try to put her head in it. Once she started coming near other people, she would try to climb on anyone’s lap to be petted, but she had long, sharp claws and had to be taught “no.” She learned quickly. Within a week, she would sit when I said no, but being a kitten forgot quickly that I had said no.
The second week I was still calling her Little Kitty when my sister and her ten year old son came to stay with me for a few days. He was very concerned that I had not named her. His suggestions were those of a ten year old boy and not suitable for a beautiful cat like her. Suddenly he said, “You have to name her soon!” I thought, that would be a perfect name for a Siamese cat, so I said, “Okay, that’s her name. Her name is Soon.” We all laughed and agreed that it was a perfect name for her.
Melaney loved cats, and was indifferent, at best, to dogs. She would act like a cat sometimes when she was a child, not really pretending, but more being a cat. Cleaning herself, eating, sitting still or lying in the sun, posing, lying under tables or in corners. I told the veterinarian about this and she said her grandmother told her that her father did the same thing when he was a child, but he was a dog.
Friday and Saturday nights, August 9, and 10, 2013
Darryl and her husband were good friends to Melaney and John. Darryl was in a writing group with Melaney that would often meet at Darryl's house. Darryl is also known for her psychic sensitivity. She told John on Monday, August 12, 2013, that she had had the same dream on two separate nights. She was sitting at her dining room table where the writing group would meet and Melaney was sitting opposite her, each in their usual spots for the writing group. She said Melaney was not completely visible, but her face was projected in the middle of a light that shone out from her. The rest of the room was in darkness. She said Melaney’s eyes were wide with surprise, and she kept saying to Darryl, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
Monday evening, August 12, 2013
Three photographs of the light as it was fading from the sky, joined together to show a panoramic view of the light from horizon to horizon and beyond.
On the evening of Monday, August 12, 2013, Melaney and John's friends in Marfa held a memorial service for her in our behalf. They asked if they could do this for us and we were touched by the detail that went into the gathering. We had been concerned because it had rained only a few hours before the gathering started. There was a rainbow over Marfa that afternoon. People were remarking how many rainbows there had been. The weather was supposed to be hot and dry, but we had showers scattered around the mountains that left rainbows everywhere.
Hundreds of people came and there were tables laden with food and drink, donated by local restaurants and food trucks, all from friends of Melaney and John. From there we walked one block to the park next to where Melaney had been struck by the train. It was very informal, just friends expressing their love with poems and writings. Her father wrote a poem that was read. It was lovely. We were touched and many people expressed their love for her.
As people came up to speak, the cloudy day was suddenly clear and the sun set into a silver haze. Vicki said she knew something was going to happen. There was too much energy in the atmosphere. The sun was gone and the tributes ended.
As the attendees began to leave through the gates, I saw someone pointing up. I saw a flash in the west and a brilliant tower of light seemed to shoot from the sunset. It was wide with a pearl-like brilliance, and could not have been a cloud. It seemed as if it was floating in space above the earth. It seemed so huge, what could it be? None of us knew and no one had never seen anything like it. It seemed to be shaped like a comet, but any comet that close would surely create havoc with the atmosphere, wouldn't it? As I looked to the west, where it was most brilliant, I thought, this is biblical. Indeed, some people lifted their hands and said, "Praise be to God." I thought, if we were a primitive people we would be frightened. I wondered if this was the biblical pillar of light. I looked at the sky and followed the light to its end. It was mind boggling because your mind wanted it to curve around the earth as it extended past the horizon. Instead, it shot out into space beyond the earth, somehow capturing the sun's brilliance. It faded in about ten minutes as the sun's light fled. John's mother and I held each other and cried and said, "It's Melaney."
As we discussed it later, I said, of course Melaney rode off into the sunset on the tail of a comet, she was always an overachiever! Vicki's husband, Bill, was more shaken than he wanted to be, as were many others who asked me if I knew what it was they had seen.
Bill seemed earnest in hope that someone knew what it was. What it really was. I told him I thought maybe it was the Comet Swift-Tuttle, since the Perseid meteor shower was under way, but later found out it had last passed in 1992 and was nowhere near the earth. There was nothing it could be. Pictures do not show the magnitude or the brilliance of the light.
John’s dreams
John had several vivid dreams about Melaney. He knew he wanted to dream of her all the time and only trusted some of them to be visits from her. It was something he had never experienced before.
The first one, he knew was Melaney speaking to him. It was a few days after her death. He said they were at a place where there was dancing and they were dancing in each other’s arms. But he could not see her as a distinct shape. He knew the dress she had on was one he had never seen, but it was beautiful with flashing lights like sequins, and seemed to flow away from her. It was as if it was made of light. Her form was that of a woman, like hers, but also indistinct. But when he looked into her face, it was her face, and most importantly to him, her eyes. Like Darryl’s dream, he said the light seemed to be flowing from her, as if she was pushing through it. He said when he looked into her eyes they were suddenly lying down looking into each other’s eyes, holding each other. She told him, “Please be strong for me, John.”
Melaney and John were in someone’s house in the living room sitting with John's brother and father. He wondered how she was there as they were all talking and laughing. She was not wearing her glasses. He asked her, “Are you really here? Is it really you?” She laughed and said yes.
They were alone in someone’s house again in the living room. They were talking about many things and laughing together. They continued talking and went into the kitchen together. He looked at her and asked, “What happened to you?” She said, “I saw an officer waving and I got sucked in.”
John dreamed that he was lying somewhere and paralyzed. He saw a bright light coming at him and he could do nothing. He was terrified because he was afraid that it was what Melaney may have seen, except he could not move, nor could he close his eyes. I told him she did not see it, she was unconscious, near death or already dead when the train hit her. The strange part was that he does not know the details of Melaney’s death. It is still too hard for him to know. He described himself in the position that she was in when the train struck her.
John has had butterflies following him since Melaney died. Even through the many hard freezes of the high desert winter, there were butterflies wherever he went. They would appear whenever he was outside, circling him and fluttering away. One once landed on his nose after he opened his arms and cried, “Melaney!” into the sky. People thought it was strange to see tiny butterflies, gold and white, sometimes even monarchs, in the middle of winter. But they were only seen where John was. He has them following him to this day.
Jesse’s time on Arabella
There is a mountain behind Jesse's Aunt Vicki's house. He likes to hike up there when he visits her. On October 23, 2013, he was at her house. He would appear in federal court the following day, an initial appearance in Pecos, Texas.
While he was on the mountain, I felt a strong uneasiness when I was outside as if Jesse was distressed. I was worried, but waited. After a while, I suddenly felt eased, as if everything was okay. He told us later that when he reached the top of the mountain he began praying and crying and screaming to God and Melaney and the universe. Letting out his pain and sorrow. He did this for about an hour and a half, and then at the end, he said he asked for a sign. At that moment, a large antlered buck stepped out from a bush Jesse had been standing near. The buck had to have been there all the time that Jesse was there and had to have witnessed what he had been doing. Jesse said the deer came towards him and stopped about seven feet from him and they both stared at each other for about fifteen or twenty minutes. They both turned away at the same time.
I asked him, "What were you feeling?" He said, "I felt Melaney."
Darth Vader
It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving. I was sitting in the covered patio at Michael’s house wondering at the marvelous events that had surrounded Melaney’s death, especially those showing the spiritual strength of both of my children. I was amazed at the magnitude of their power and wondered how I could be their mother. I wondered if I was strong like them. They were so magical in their strength, I could find no other word for it. Was I as strong as them?
I heard the voice of Darth Vader answer me immediately, “The force is strong with you…the force is strong with you…the force is strong with you…” over and over for what seemed like a minute and then it stopped. I laughed and thought it must be kids in the yard behind here, strange that it said that as if in answer to my question. I decided to look over the fence and got a stool and took it over to the six and a half foot concrete fence, climbed it and looked over the side. There was nothing there but an empty alley, almost devoid of weeds.
I climbed down from the stool and saw a deer skull hanging on the wall and thought, “please don’t let it be coming from that.” Okay, I thought, it has to be a toy. Michael and his girlfriend each had a six year old son and both played in that yard all summer, but not in the weeks I had been staying there. It had been chilly and raining while I had been there. The ground had been soaked with a few days of rain. I looked around and there, under the leaves and next to a plastic cup thrown under the eaves, was a Darth Vader mask, a small one that would fit a six year old just fine. I picked it up and looked it in the face and it said, “the force is strong with you.” I laughed and put it down on the table. It said once more, the force is strong with you, and was silent until I left to go out that evening.
I came back later that night and went back out to the patio. I saw Michael and his girlfriend were back and in the living room and then noticed the mask still sitting on the table. I decided to tell them about what had happened. As I began to go inside Michael’s girlfriend saw me holding the mask and told Michael, “Tell her what happened!” He stood up and, as they both laughed, he said they were watching television and heard someone talking outside. They got spooked and went out to the patio and heard the mask going through its whole litany of Darth Vader lines, “The force is strong with you…Luke, I am your father…Come to the dark side…” and so on. Then it soon stopped and didn’t say anything again. Michael said the mask had been in the swimming pool and sitting outside since last summer and they had never heard anything from it in all that time.
As we laughed, two of Michael’s friends showed up and I told them what had happened to me. One of his friends, the unsmiling one, picked up the mask and inspected it. He found the on and off switch and started switching it on and off, waiting to hear if it said anything. Nothing. He handed it to me and I switched it on and it said, “The force is strong with you.” He finally smiled, but he couldn’t get it to say anything again.
Christmas visit
Melaney loved Christmas Eve at her Aunt Vicki's house. We love each other's children as our own, and we all made wonderful memories together, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. These first holidays without her have been especially hard for all of us. We have all been subdued and sad for all the memories we will no longer make together.
Vicki was going through her digital camera and deleting pictures she had copied or no longer needed. She came across the photograph above. There was no light there when the picture was taken, and there is no sky light, nor any other possible source of the light shown in the picture.
My sister
My sister has always been very sensitive to things that are not seen by others. Most of us are in my family. My sister has seen Melaney manifest before her, one time when she was crying for her, the other as she was distracted but thinking of her. After coming in her door, Melaney appeared on the stairs. My sister said there was light flowing out and away from Melaney, and she was smiling both times.
I have felt my daughter’s presence near me many, many times. At first, I felt her weeping on my shoulders because she missed John so much. She did not want to leave him. She missed him as much as he missed her. She is a powerful soul and has let us know her love even though she is not here in the physical world. I believe now that the dead are with us. I once read that souls are a part of God, and it is like taking a cup of water from the ocean. It is separate, but it is still part of the ocean, and in this way, we are all connected. I think that's a good way of putting it.
The day my son was arrested, I was finally starting to pack Melaney’s belongings that remained with me. I was ready to leave Marfa. I would leave the next day and return in two weeks to put everything in storage. I had been praying to God and Melaney to give me the strength to do what I could, afraid I would not have the strength to do whatever I could to find out what happened to my daughter. I had never experienced the flow of strength after my prayers like I did at that time. Was it personal strength? I don't think so. It felt as if it came from outside me. I was only praying for peace and for God to give these people compassion and love. Once I realized who had filed a complaint against my son, it was very difficult to keep that in my heart. I used a lot of choice words, but that much anger makes me physically ill. I had to stop seeing it with anger. I felt pity for their souls, and asked for God to forgive them and enlighten them.
I have felt a connection to many religions, beliefs and philosophies that I have studied during my life. But in so many established religions, there are rules that don’t make sense. The caste system of Hinduism makes no sense to me. Buddhism does not believe in souls, but I know they exist. Catholicism believes a mortal man can absolve you of your sins, and on and on. I do believe, however, that repeated ritual and ceremonies worshiping God reverberate throughout the universe, and every feeling of love for God and one another that we send out makes a difference, no matter how small. Just as many drops of water can make an ocean. It just seems to be the dogma that separates us.
I believe the dead know us, and they wait for us. A part of near death experiences that seems true to me is when people say they saw everything happening around them as they left their bodies, or that everyone was waiting for them at the end of the tunnel.
Melaney wanted to come back, but someone put her on those tracks and killed her. It may all sound fanciful, too bizarre, I don't know how others will interpret what I have written. It is what happened.
I will slowly work on a book now and wait to see what the Attorney General does, if anything. In the meantime, I will begin playing music with my son and by myself. I have a lot of music to write. We have each other and that has always been enough for me. We have each other to love and lives to live, and we will have to wait to see Melaney again in the next world. I have a better understanding now of the words, I will love you forever.
I just wanted to put this out there in the world and the universe to see if anyone heard me. I will love you forever, Mel.
She deserved better.
Melaney Parker, Self-Portrait December 2010, acrylic, approximately 6 feet square. After she left the Peace Corps, she spent time in Alaska and found a canvas and paint.
Melaney at three, so vibrant the camera can barely contain it. Life was the Great Adventure.