Our story for this issue comes from Jimmy Li, who gets a message from beyond to help him bear an unbearable pain.

It was late one night, very late. In fact, it was 2:00 am in the morning when my phone rang and I suddenly awoke, groggy and alarmed. “Hello…”,

it was my father, “come over right away, ” he said, “and hurry, it’s your brother, he was killed in an accident, the police are here.”

I rushed over, the drive that time of night was short. I felt numb, it didn’t seem real. How could it be? My brother Richard had worked hard, very hard actually, and he just graduated with excellent grades from a top New York City school, Stuyvesant HS, and yeah, for his first time away from home, he had just gone up to Nova Scotia with a close friend to do some well-deserved summer vacation camping. How could he be dead? This is wrong, can’t be… I was stunned, shocked and confused.

I arrived at Mom and Dad’s house and they were being told by two NYC Police Officers that there had been a terrible accident. My brother Richard had been hiking to a campground and while he was walking along on a small country road in Canada, he was drawn under the rear wheels of a passing 18-wheel tractor trailer and killed instantly. His friend had escaped injury somehow but was very frightened and distraught. No charges were made against the driver, who passed drug and alcohol tests. It was just bad luck. When these big trucks pass, there’s a powerful draft or suction behind these big rigs, and my brother somehow was just too darn close. Arrangements were made for his burial to be here in Queens; my parents were a wreck. There were ten years between my brother and I, and I was 27 at the time. He was just a kid at 16, soon to be 17 in only 6 weeks. So very, very sad.

My mother was inconsolable. Her hands were gripped in tight fists that she kept pounding on her own legs as she sat and wept loudly and endlessly for several days. My dad and I tried to comfort her but she continued to let out large gasping sobs. There are no words to describe the grief and loss she felt of losing her baby boy. “Parents are supposed to die before their children ,” she said, “not like this…”

We didn’t know what to do. The day of the funeral, there were hundreds of students and teachers from Stuyvesant HS and his friends from church were there too. My friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives came too. My brother was popular and well liked. Later after eating a restaurant lunch, we all came back to my parents’ house and then soon it was just our own family. My mother started to cry again, softly then loudly. Something told me that I had to do something….”but what ?”

I kept thinking, “I gotta help, this is a mess, I gotta do something to help….God, please give me a sign to tell me and my mom and dad that my brother Richard is okay….please…!!”

Just then, suddenly, I felt a strong pulling force that made me stand up. Then I found myself being guided into my brother’s room. My hand reached out and I shut the door behind me. My eyes started to gaze upon a big poster sized image of a brick wall that was taped to the back of my brother’s bedroom door. Examining it closer, I started to see that on this red brick wall design was some repetitive writing. Goose bumps began appearing all over my body and I got very chilled. I was reading what Richard had written in pencil, printing on this poster these eerie words, over and over again, the phrase ” I am going to die, I am going to die…”

What was this? What did this mean? My mind was numb. But I started to count these phrases. How many ? Twenty eight of them.

There were four phrases to each line, and seven lines of total text. All superimposed on a red brick wall. It looked like this:

I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die
I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die, I am going to die

Suddenly a light bulb went off…FLASH….it was a matrix…there was a message here….from God….and/or my brother….and the message they wanted me to know involved the number seven and the twenty eight, they were significant.

Suddenly, BOOM….here it was…

“I am going to die, 7/28….July 28th, 1976”

My brother was gone–RIP–but this was a message, perhaps a premonition of his own death. Did he know somehow?

I came out of the bedroom changed, somehow comforted by this signal or sign that everything was okay. I brought family members inside to show them what I found and the symbolic meanings I found there. My mother became more calm when she saw this. It brought some peace to a troubled family. AND THAT WAS GOOD.

Submitted by Jimmy Li, in memory of Richard Li.
RIP Brother Rich.