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Shannon Sullivan, Carlotta, California, 1999 and 2004
My daughter Serrina's father died in a motorcycle accident when our she was
only one month old. Even though she never really knew her father, I always
made sure she knew who he was through stories and pictures. Serrina grew up
referring to her father as Daddy Donald, as Donald was his name.
When Serrina was 6 years-old, we went camping at a place called Swimmers
Delight in Carlotta, California. Donald and I had camped there a few times
together before Serrina was born. That night as I slept in the tent with
Serrina, at 3:30 AM Donald came to me in my dream and he started yelling at
me to wake up.
He was screaming at me that our daughter was down at the river, and he told
me that she was going to drown. Then he got like 1-inch from my face and
screamed super loud "WAKE UP!"
I sat straight up and I could still hear him. Just as I awoke and was
sitting up, I heard and saw our tent opening from the outside, and my
daughter Serrina came through the tent door crying. Serrina told me that she
woke up standing down at the river bar, and that her Daddy Donald brought
her back to the tent. Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep that night,
and we left the following day.
Several years later when Serrina was 11, my mother took my daughter back to
Swimmers Delight to go swimming for the day. As my mother sat on the
riverbed watching my daughter swim, a man in the water kept yelling up at
the river bar, "Serrina! Serrina!" My mother noticed a woman responding to
the man in the water.
When my daughter got out of the water my mother told my daughter, "That lady
there has your same name." My daughter Serrina went over to the lady and
asked her how she spells her name, as my daughter's name is not the common
spelling. The lady replied that they're names were spelled the same.
My daughter Serrina told the lady that her dad Donald who had died when she
was a baby had named her after a girl he knew in second grade that he had a
crush on. The lady asked my daughter what her dad's full name was. When my
daughter told the lady Donald's full name, the lady began to cry. The lady
my daughter was talking to at the swimming hole that day was the lady that
she was named after.
