Thanks for your kind words

I am grateful for the out pour of kind words and thoughts from all of you. The family is holding up good. Thank you so much.

Picture of a clock

The mood at the Plano, Texas train station that winter morning was bleak. The dim sun hid behind murky clouds and the bare madrone branches were still in the chilling bleeze. I was on a green cast iron bench minding my own business when the old frail man in a cow-boy hat next to me dropped his cell phone on the floor and collapsed in tears.

"You okay?" I rushed over to hold him.

"My son, he was here earlier this morning, I should have been here..." he did not make much sense in his choking voice.

"I'm sure he'll come by again, you want me to call him for you or something?" I offered, while slowly I helped him up and sat him down on the bench.

"Thank you," he shoke his head, still sobbing, "no, he died last week..." As weird as that sounded, I kept quiet, but he noticed the confusion on my face and tried to explain, "This is my son's phone...." but then went on to mumble a few more things that I couldn't make out.

"This picture, in the phone, I kept the phone next to my bed last night. His spirit took the picture..." he muttered as he cowered and broke down in tears uncontrollably again.

Meanwhile the station manager walked up to us. I tried to explain the situation but she already knew - turned out this old man was the station chief, she told me that he was there waiting for his son's girl friend coming home on the next train. The girlfriend didn't know, he was going to break the bad news.

She sat down, picked the phone up and told me to hang on to it while she consoled the chief. I looked at the phone and saw a picture of the station clock, it showed today's date at 1am. If the phone was by his bed side last night, this picture must have been taken last year I thought.

But this is a brand new station completed the past summer, there was no last year.

Could he be telling the truth or was that just some kind of mental break down? It became more disturbing the more I thought about it. The picture was taken before the clock was operational? Photoshop? I produced a number of scnenarios in my head, but none made sense. The man's son died, I couldn't imagine him playing a prank on that.

"Mr. Cohen? Is everything okay?" A young girl showed up with a trolley tote meanwhile. She took a glance at the cell phone in my hands, obviosuly recognized to whom it belonged, looked up to me for a second and turned away without a word.

"Where's Pete? I'm sorry, I took an earlier train and arrived last night. I didn't want to wake him so I sent him an SMS. Anyway, you okay?" She knelt in front of the chief inquiring.

"SMS." I thought to myself. "She must have taken that clock picture last night wandering around the station and sent it to his boyfriend's phone, there's no paranormal." How silly. But I still feel bad for the old man.