Sid Hopkins' reunions are among the most heartwarming of all the reunions described by those who passed away and met their loved ones. Click on the sound bar to hear his description. A transcript of this recording follows the sound bar so you can follow it as Sid Hopkins speaks. The voice on some of the recording is muffled so the transcript has breaks marked with ellipses (. . .) where the words could not be transcribed.
George Woods: How did you find it when you passed over?
Sid: I fell out of a tree. That's a funny way, isn't it, of coming over here. Was in the yard, that's what happened to me. You never know, it could happen to any of you. Any of you's liable to come here at any minute. Anyway, I was up a tree and I was sawing some branches. Lopping the tree, you know. Well, really that tree wasn't that tall I suppose. Anyway, I lost me balance and fell off. Banged me head on some pavement. Next thing I knew, I was in hospital and I wasn't there more than about 3 days. That's what killed me.
Leslie Flint coughs.
Betty Greene: What was your reaction, how did you react when you passed over? How did you find yourself?
Sid: Oh, I don't know. Funny to say how I found myself; I never even lost myself. All I know is I woke up and I was sitting in the parlor of a nice little place, and there was my wife and she was pouring out a cup of tea. May sound funny now, but that's what happened.
She says, "I suppose you could do with that." She says, "Well, you're here." "Oh," I says, "Here, well" . . . She's gonna need that cup of tea I talked to you. Well, I says "All right." She says, "You know you're dead, don't you" just like that you know. She had a nice way of talking about me. I guess I don't call that love. I said "What did you say?" She said, "Dead." "Dead!? Dead!?" I said, "Don't be so silly. I'm not dead." She said, "Well you must be dead. You're here with me. You know I died 15 years ago."
It suddenly struck me odd, I didn't know what to think. Of course she had died, but she was wrong about the time. Actually it was only about 12 years ago. I thought, well, I'll never get this, you know, for crying out loud. I'm dead. She's sitting there. She was so real, you know. And she looked like she used to look when she was, oh, in her early twenties, after we first been married, and I looked around the room and I realized the room was, well, it was a room that was ever so familiar to me when we were first married. Just the same, the same furniture, same crockery on the sideboard, curtains, everything was all familiar. I suppose the old familiarity you might say the whole set up, you know. It was so natural, it was so real that I didn't think for a minute that I was dead, I didn't even feel nothing, I didn't even realize that I was dead. But of course when she said, "You know, I died," well I thought "Good Lord. What's happening here."
"Well," I thought "This is all some dream and I should wake up presently." She said, "You know, you're dead." I said, "I can't be dead." I said, "How could I be dead? Look at you, and the room and everything." I said, "It's just not right, you know, this is all a dream."
She says, "This is no dream." She says, "You're dead, you see." So I said, "No, no." She said "Well, anyway, don't worry about it. Just relax," she says, "Be quiet, and we'll just rest for a few moments. Drink your cup of tea. Don't worry." It's all so funny she's talking to me about drinking tea, I've never heard of them drinking tea up in heaven.
So I thought, no, this is just a dream and I'll wake up, you know. Anyway, we sat down and the next thing I knew was, there was a young fellow came in, oh I think he was, about, looked about 19 or 20, tall, fair, you know, nice looking boy.
I thought, "All right, you know, I don't know you mate." He came in, and he came up to me and put his arm around me says, "Hello Dad." Well, of course that was the last straw. I says, "Dad, What do you mean Dad? I ain't got no son, never had no son." And my wife says to me, she says, "You know we did." She says, "You know, he died in infancy. This is Paul." I says, "What?" "Paul," she says, "Don't you remember that little boy that we had that died very soon after, a few days after." I said, "Ah, how could that be?" I said, "In any case, look at him, he's tall and grown up." She says, "Yes, he's grown up over here."
I said, "I don't understand all this." He says, "Dad, never mind," he says, "You will know, you just sit down and we'll look after you, don't worry," you know that sort of talk he was giving me. I thought well, when he said I'm dead I had to sit down, you know. I'll just wake up, it's all a dream. He says to me, he says, "Come," he says, "Let's go outside." So, I thought, we'll take a little walk. It was a nice little garden, a Swedish garden . . . I always wanted a nice garden. When we were early married, we did have a nice little place. We were lucky, you might say, we had a little bit of money, not a lot, but it provided us with . . . This was a nice garden . . . In my early years I used to work around in the garden. Anyway it was all beautifully laid out, beautiful flowers, oh marvelous, and perfume . . .
There was an old tree, and I remembered that tree because we had that same selfsame tree in our garden. It smelled so sweet in our garden . . . We sat down there and the birds was coming and we seen, then I saw a dog, a little dog. Well, that really was the last straw, really. I thought, well I don't know, "That's old Jimmy, our Jimmy," so I says to him "Jimmy," like that, "Jimmy." The dog came up to me and he sat and put his paw up on my lap.
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