Christmas Miracles (7 page)

At last he fell asleep. Then, after only a few minutes of deep slumber, he came wide awake with the driving compulsion that he had to go somewhere in a hurry.

Checketts got out of his cot, looked over at his buddy in the next bunk, then was startled to see his own physical body still lying on the cot beneath the draped mosquito netting.

Only momentarily shocked by the sight of his physical self lying asleep on his bunk, Checketts was more impressed by the deep awareness that he had to get moving, that he had somewhere important to go. As if he were receiving instructions from some invisible higher intelligence, he stepped outside the tent, raised his arms above his head, and looked up at the moon.

What occurred next, Checketts claimed, was breathtaking.

First, he said, he had a sensation of tremendous speed, as if he were toppling end over end in midair. Kaleidoscopic scenes of snow-covered mountaintops, river valleys, lakes, and vast areas of emptiness passed by so fast that they became blurred by the high speed at which his consciousness was moving.

When everything came to a stop, Checketts was still stretching his arms toward the moon, but now the moon shone over towering cliffs and snow-covered hills instead of tropical jungle.

Although he had never seen his parents' new home in Ogden, he somehow knew that the white house at the top of the hill before him was that very domicile.

He made his way through undisturbed snow to the porch of the house. His knock at the door produced sounds of movement within. When the door opened, his mother stood before him in her nightclothes.

Mother and son were overcome by the unexpected reunion, and tears flowed unchecked. She expressed concern that he was standing outside in the cold in his short-sleeved uniform, but Checketts told her he would be able to stay for only a few minutes, just long enough to let her know that he was all right.

With a farewell hug and kiss, he turned away from his mother, left the porch, and walked back down the hill. He looked back only once and saw his mother still standing in the open doorway, waving at him.

Soon the strange sensation of incredible speed once again captured him, and when Checketts was again aware of his surroundings, he was standing in front of his tent at the Marine base in Nicaragua. He went inside, got back into his bed, and awoke the next morning to find his pillow wet from tears.

More than ever, he was convinced that the remarkable journey to his mother's arms in Ogden, Utah, had been a real experience. Every detail was clearly defined in his mind, and he had been left with an exhilarating sense of personal freedom.

On December 28, mail call brought Checketts a letter from his mother that was dated December 3, the morning after the extraordinary adventure in his spiritual body. Both Checketts and his tentmate, to whom he had confided the experience, were able to read that his mother had confirmed the Christmas miracle in every detail.

I
n the early 1970s, Clarisa Bernhardt accompanied her late husband, Russ, to Los Gatos, California, where he was performing his popular one-man show, Scrooge, In Person, as part of the gala Christmas season at the Olde Towne Theatre and Shopping Center. Clarisa, who lives today in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is currently regarded as one of North America's best-known psychic-sensitives, remembers Los Gatos as appearing like a giant Christmas card of holiday decorations and good cheer, the very picture of holiday merriment.

One morning, she dropped by the theater where Russ was rehearsing to let him know that she would be doing a special taped interview for her radio show that day, so she might be a bit later than usual. She recalls that it was fairly early, around 8:30 a.m., and a gentle, brief morning rain shower had freshened the pines with a wonderful “Christmas” fragrance.

Puzzled to discover the front door to the theater locked, Clarisa remembered a stairway that would take her to the bell tower, where she could crawl through a window and enter the theater.

“When I reached the bell tower, I paused for a moment to enjoy the gorgeous rainbow that arched over the mountains,” Clarisa said, “then I found my way in. I went through the balcony and down the stairs to the main theater area.”

As she entered on the right side and crossed behind the last row of seats, she was aware that she was alone in the theater. It was quite obvious that Russ was not rehearsing at this time.

As she reached the aisle on the left, she started down toward the stage—and then she stopped, as if frozen.

“There, standing in the area just below the stage, was a beautiful lady in an off-white, eggshell-colored robe with a cowl that covered her hair and accented her lovely face,” Clarisa said. “She was looking directly at me. I could see a beautiful and brilliant light around her. Her countenance was glowing, yet it did not diminish my ability to see her.”

Clarisa closed her eyes, quickly blinking them, then opened them again, as if to clear her vision.

“But she was still there,” she said, “still looking directly at me—but now she was also smiling at me.”

Clarisa could feel the power from her eyes as she looked at her. “I knew exactly who she was,” she said, “and I looked at her intently, trying calmly to observe as many details as possible. I wanted to etch her image in my memory. I was in the presence of the Holy Mother!”

And then she was gone. Clarisa estimated that the experience had occurred within one minute, though she felt suspended in time.

“To this day,” she said, “I can close my eyes and instantly recall that magnificent experience and see her as if it's happening all over again.”

Understandably, Clarisa said that she wishes she could have asked Mother Mary many things. “But I had not attempted to speak. I was completely overwhelmed. I had just seen Mary and been in the presence of the Holy Mother.”

She also knew that the visitation was something important and significant in her life. In the weeks that followed before Christmas, Clarisa recalled that she was privileged to receive numerous mystical experiences and visions.

“One very special blessing manifested to heal a terrible ache in my heart,” Clarisa said. “I was reunited with my dear son, who had been separated from me following tumultuous family events some years before. No matter how desperately I had worked to mend the situation, nothing had worked. The family rift keeping us apart had seemed impossible to change—and then almost instantly and miraculously, we were together again. It was truly a Christmas miracle. I will forever be thankful to Mother Mary for accomplishing such an ‘impossible' task.”

T
ammie Bissonnette knew that she would have a difficult delivery because the child was breeched within her womb. But she felt that the fact that her daughter would be a Christmas baby would be ample compensation for her discomfort.

“That was before the contractions began,” she recalled. “Halfway through the delivery, I would have been happy to have settled for a Valentine's Day child.” Putting the birth off until February seemed, in the moment, like a good idea.

Her family doctor, Dr. Rubenstein, had debated whether or not they should take the baby through cesarean section, but after discussing the dilemma with some of his colleagues, he decided that it would be better to wrestle with the breech problem in the delivery room. Tammie would not be anesthetized, because she, the mother, would have to help. She would be given only a mild painkiller.

“I knew all these things, and I believed that I was prepared mentally and physically for the ordeal,” Tammie said. “According to my calculations, my daughter, Liza, was due around the twentieth to the twenty-fifth— but then the worst happened. My water broke on the fifteenth. My husband, Phil, was out of town on business until the seventeenth, and Dr. Rubenstein had taken an early holiday and wouldn't be back until the nineteenth.”

As her mother, Carla Ackerson, drove her to the hospital, Tammie kept hearing Dr. Rubenstein's caveat: “Little Liza is due to enter the world right around Christmas Eve, just when you were praying for her arrival. Of course, only Liza knows for certain when she will arrive. Doctors can only guess.”

She knew that Dr. Rubenstein had intended to be back in time for the delivery, but as he had reflected, only the baby knew for certain when her birthday would be. And, of course, Phil would be crazy with worry that he wasn't there, Liza being their first child and all.

Dr. Marisse Walker, the pediatrician with whom Dr. Rubenstein had discussed the complications of the delivery in the event that something should prevent his being there, was in the midst of a difficult surgery when they arrived. Mrs. Ackerson and Tammie were informed that she absolutely could not be disturbed.

“I am afraid that the doctor summoned to pinch-hit was not the best example of the devoted practitioner,” Tammie recalled. “He seemed hardly interested in hearing the nurse's summary of the difficulty of the delivery, and he was certainly indifferent toward alleviating any of my pain.”

As the dilation was nearing completion, the agony was nearly driving Tammie out of her mind, and she squeezed her mother's hand so hard she feared she would snap a couple of finger joints.

“Maybe it was the terrible pain,” Tammie said. “Maybe that was what made me feel like I was whirling around the room like a propeller on an airplane. I seemed to go faster and faster . . . and then—pop! I, that is, the real me, was suddenly floating above the bed in the labor room looking down on my body, my mother, and the nurse who was trying to ease my pain.”

Tammie was shocked to see how contorted her facial features were. “I thought I must have died, but then my body on the bed below threshed wildly and let out an awful cry of pain,” she said. “I was baffled. That was me, Tammie Bissonnette, down on the bed, but it was also me—or some aware aspect of myself—up near the ceiling watching the scene below and feeling absolutely no pain at all.”

That was when she became aware that lovely Christmas music was swirling all around her.

“I heard what I thought at first was an orchestra playing ‘Hark the Herald, Angels Sing,' but then I realized it was a melody only similar to that old hymn. When I heard a magnificent choir singing words of praise to God, I thought for certain that this time I really had died and gone to Heaven.”

Then Tammie's attention was focused once again on her body below on the bed.

“I saw the nurse measure my dilation, and she said. ‘You're ready, honey! Now where is that idiot doctor?' ”

The nurse left the room, and Tammie's out-of-body consciousness followed her as she walked down the hall and located the doctor. “I saw him scowl at the interruption, for he was talking with an attractive nurse and I could see that he hated to be bothered to deliver my baby.”

Almost at once after viewing the doctor's distasteful scowl, Tammie was back in the bed in the labor room, moaning again with terrible pain. She wished that she could leave her body again and go back up near the ceiling where there was no hurt.

“I did flip out of my body again during the delivery,” she said. “I saw my face pale and glistening with sweat . . . and then the most extraordinary thing occurred. I saw this beautiful angel approaching me, and she was leading this lovely young woman by the hand. Before my spiritual eyes, I saw that vivacious young woman appear to be transformed—to shrink, if you will—to the size of an infant. I remember that I took the baby from the angel's arms, and then I was conscious of the two of us being dragged into some kind of tunnel with a light at the end. And the next thing I knew, I was back in my body, lying back on the hospital bed, holding my baby, Liza, and everything was all right.”

Tammie's mother, Mrs. Ackerson, bent over the bed and kissed the cheeks of her daughter and her new granddaughter. “Mom said that she had managed to get a hold of Phil in his hotel room, and he was wild with happiness. He would be home sometime the next afternoon.”

Tammie told her mother that she had hoped that the baby would be born closer to Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day. “But I had a vision or dream or something, Mom, and I saw a beautiful angel hand over the care and nurturing of this lovely young woman to me,” Tammie said. “That young woman became baby Liza. So just as we should keep the spirit of Christmas each day in our hearts, I will surely love this little Christmas season miracle of mine every day of my life.”