Original subtitles

Something clearly jarred his sleep

and woke him up in a really distraught way.

He would worry about how he was going to die.

He just said, out of nowhere, "Why did you take me away

from my other family?"

And then that's when he said that he was on a ship,

and it sank, and that he died.

One day I saw Jacob drawing something strange.

He told me they were the shadow people.

Anxiety is one of the things that would rear its ugly head.

He told me about the day he was murdered.

I knew this wasn't a normal young boy's way of thinking.

I was suddenly very afraid, because I wasn't sure

what he was trying to tell me.

What is going on with this kid?

And why is he doing this so frequently?

And I had no explanation.

I'm Erin.

I live in Oregon City.

I'm Seumas' dad.

And I'm a police officer.

It's a small town, got the small town feel.

The communities are close-knit.

There's plenty of things for kids to do.

There's lots to see.

The trees are beautiful.

There's fishing.

There's rivers.

There's lots of rural to it.

We've just got a really comfortable place to be.

Liisa and I met in February of 2005.

And we married in February of 2006.

And Seumas was born in December.

Short of being just getting married, the rest of the year

just-- it just beat us down.

My name is Liisa, and I'm a rehabilitation assistant.

The year 2006 was a bittersweet year for my husband and I.

I couldn't have got through that year if I wasn't pregnant.

We lost so many significant people.

Her stepbrother died.

My dad died.

Her grandfather died, a couple of really good friends.

It was really just a traumatic year.

That took its toll on everybody, emotionally.

I kept trying to keep it together for the baby,

trying to stay calm for the baby.

Everything will be OK.

We definitely were forced to change gears

when, all the sudden, there's a baby in my arms.

When Seumas was born, he was our very first.

And talk about just an amazing moment.

When they put Seumas on my chest, Erin whispered in my ear

that it's a boy.

And we started crying and stuff, because we both wanted a boy.

And with Erin's father passing away,

it was just a special moment.

And then, as he went on and grew up,

he didn't demonstrate the things that you always hear about--

the kids that don't sleep through the night or cry every

20 minutes or hour.

He wasn't that guy.

He slept longer than I did sometimes.

As an intellectual scale of things that babies can do,

he was always quick to be able to do any of them,

whether it was eating with a spoon,

crawling across the floor.

He was always ahead of the curve--

just the inference of more intelligence than a toddler,

for gosh sakes, should have.

As he got a little older, he would leave his room

in the middle of night.

And then he'd just insist to cuddle with mom and dad.

At first, we'd let that happen.

Think, hey, this is cute, it's fun,

this is what everybody does.

It's part of the experience of having a young kid.

But when this became persistent, it

began to affect certainly me, because, at the time,

I was working a day shift and getting up

at 4:30 in the morning.

So when disruptions came in the middle of the night,

that became problematic.

This would be him coming in to our room in the middle

of the night, being in tears, talking about being scared--

something that's clearly jarred his sleep

and woke him up in a really distraught way.

To that end, it was kind of disturbing,

because this was to the point where

it was happening every day.

What is going on with this kid?

And why is he doing this so frequently?

When Seumas was three years old, Liisa and I

were watching the movie "Titanic."

Seumas woke up and came out.

And he just immediately was absolutely glued to that movie.

And it seemed like he was in his mind somehow.

You could look in his eyes and know that he was digging deeper

somehow.

Ever since then, he wanted to know all the details

of that tragic story.

He was just fascinated.

And he would draw detailed pictures of it.

As time went on, Liisa and I would, every now and then,

catch ourselves just looking at each other, kind of scratching

our heads, and thinking, gosh, is there

more to this than just his fascination with a movie?

When Seumas' obsession with ships became escalated,

we started to become concerned.

My name is Rebecca, and I'm an English teacher.

My family lives in Oklahoma near Oklahoma City.

It's a fairly close-knit community.

It's not what people think.

It's not all cowboys.

It's really a pretty nice place to live.

My son is Jacob.

Jacob is my second child, and I decided to have him fairly late

in life.

I was really excited to get pregnant, especially

on the first try.

I was concerned and kind of scared.

I had hoped that my pregnancy would be OK and not

have any major issues.

I had complications early, around three months,

and was on partial bedrest.

And there was a concern that I might not be

able to continue the pregnancy.

Jacob wasn't due until January 15.

And right after Thanksgiving, I started having contractions.

And I was actually at work, and it was lunchtime.

And I felt my water hemorrhage.

Jacob was seven weeks premature, and he weighed five pounds,

four ounces at birth.

And he was 19 1/2 inches long.

The doctor said had he gone full term,

he probably would have been a 12-pound baby.

I was so excited to have him here.

When Jacob was two years old, he said something that completely

shocked us.

Jacob was a very articulate child very early.

We had just finished lunch.

And we were in the living room.

And he just said, out of nowhere, "Why did you take me

away from my other family?"

I wasn't sure I heard him right, and so I asked

him to repeat what he said.

And Jacob said, again, "Why did you take me away

from my other family?"

And I tried to explain to him that I hadn't.

And he said, "Yes."

He then described his father as having a hat,

and his mother wore her hair pulled back at her neck.

He really seemed to recall having had another family.

I had no idea where Jacob might have gotten the idea.

It made me sad.

I think he was hoping for me to be able to explain why.

And I had no explanation.

My name is Heather, and Jacob is my little cousin.

Jacob told me about his other family.

I did not really believe, because I feel like children

can experience things in their lives

that can cause them to feel and remember things that weren't

necessarily there.

Jacob seemed to be a really happy child.

He didn't seem to have a lot of concerns.

He made friends easily.

He and his brother got along well, for the difference

in age, especially.

He and his father did a lot of things together.

Everything was fine.

You know, I couldn't imagine why he would

want to make up another family.

He also said other things that confused me.

One day Jacob asked me, out of nowhere,

why he wasn't the older child.

He said, "I should be the older brother."

Jacob's brother is 12 and 1/2 years older than he is.

Jacob seemed really angry.

I explained to Jacob, I had his brother first.

And that wasn't a satisfactory answer.

He still, especially on that day,

he was really adamant that he should have been born first.

I think that's a typical thing that children feel when they

have an older sibling.

It came up at other times, too.

The anger was what was confusing.

How could he be mad about not having been born first?

You know, that was something I felt was out of my control.

Jacob was always a really calm child.

He was always really passive.

That's why this was so weird.

This wasn't some sort of sibling rivalry thing.

Jacob was truly angry, because he continued to feel that he

belonged with another family.

He never slept normally.

He's a flipper and a tosser.

He'll go sleep at one end of the bed.

And then the next day when I wake him up,

he's down at the other end of the bed.

And the covers are twisted around,

and everything's thrown off the bed.

He seems to have some pretty fitful nights.

And he's up through the night.

I sometimes thought that Jacob was trying to stay awake

at night to avoid his nightmares.

One day, I saw Jacob drawing something strange.

When I looked close at the picture,

I couldn't believe my eyes.

The images were frightening.

Was this what was haunting him in his dreams?

Seumas was a great baby, and he started out sleeping

through the night.

But as he got a little older, he became

unable to sleep through the night.

He'd wake up every night, usually in tears.

Ever since, he's been absolutely fascinated and obsessed

with large ships.

When he wanted toys, it was LEGOs that he could build ships

out of.

He would sit down at the table with pencils or crayons

and draw pictures of ships.

He's just absolutely fascinated.

At first, it did seem odd.

But I was quick to assign it to the fact

that, hey, this is cool, my kid likes historical stuff.

He likes things like I like.

And he does so in kind of smart and intelligent kind of way.

I appreciated that.

This started at the age of three,

and it continues on to this day.

Anxiety sometimes is one of the things that would rear

its ugly head with Seumas.

He seems to worry about death and dying.

Erin and I were on our way to a concert.

It was going to be an overnight event.

And Seumas was staying with some family.

Seumas wanted to say good night.

And when they tried to reach us, they

weren't able, because we didn't hear our cell phones.

And then he was afraid that we had gotten in a car accident

and died.

I became even more aware and concerned about his worry

about death and dying.

It seemed like all the time.

It made me feel a whole new level of compassion

for this little being.

How can he worry about more than if his shoes are tied

the right way and he's got all the homework in his bag

that he's supposed to have?

This wasn't a normal young boy's way of thinking.

We went on a family vacation this year,

taking the boys to stay on the Queen Mary

for the night because of Seumas' fascination with ships.

The "Queen Mary" is an old ship that you can stay at.

It's like a hotel and has restaurants.

And you can stay the night.

Seumas was just wide-eyed--

I mean, just couldn't believe it.

It was like he was a free spirit on the Queen Mary.

He just was calm and free and just looked around.

And he was intrigued by everything--

just all the details.

He was fascinated with everything.

He was more calm, but yet emotion-- something strong--

some sense or something was going on.

One night after our trip, something changed.

He came up to me, and he was really upset.

And then that's when he said that he was on a ship,

and it sank, and that he died.

I had a difficult pregnancy with my son, Jacob.

And he was always a restless sleeper.

Almost as soon as Jacob was able to talk,

he began asking the question, "Why did you take me away

from my other family?"

It hurt me to hear him say that, because we were his family.

What could he possibly mean?

I really became concerned when I saw Jacob's drawings.

I noticed Jacob continued to draw the same characters.

They were dark, scribbly creatures with red eyes,

usually.

They remained constant in his drawings-- not just

the typical little boy drawings, but these black figures.

So I finally asked him what they were.

And he told me they were the shadow people.

Jacob drew the shadow people all the time, even at school.

But the one that was different was the hat man.

The hat man is mean.

The hat man always seems to stay away from Jacob,

as far as proximity.

Jacob says he taunts him.

He knows Jacob's afraid--

that he harasses him, standing outside of his bedroom door,

saying, "Jacob, you only have to take five steps

to reach the bathroom light.

Do you think you can do it?

I don't think you can do it, Jacob."

And so it's a constant bullying from the hat man.

As he got older, he began to sleep with the TV

on so that the room would be lighted.

He felt more comfortable with it being lighted.

I guess it keeps the shadow people, especially

the hat man, away from him.

I was scared of it, in some ways,

because I know that he really thought

he was seeing these things.

The nightmares that keep him up at night do concern me.

It is interfering with his sleep schedule.

And I feel like that can make him more tired

and experience these feelings more.

I think Jacob has a great imagination.

Jacob had a period of headaches.

At that particular time, the headaches

interfered with Jacob's daily activities.

The pediatrician thought possibly

that his headaches might be interrupting his sleep some,

too.

And he had to have a brain test done.

Jacob's test didn't indicate that he had any kind of brain

disorder that could cause the headaches-- really

unexplainable.

Jacob was having nightmares.

He was drawing shadow people.

He was having severe headaches.

I wasn't sure what to make of all the talk

about the other family.

I just know it seemed real to Jacob.

He had been talking about these people for years.

And then he told me something that made me wish he had never

told me about any of this.

He told me about the day he was murdered.

My son, Jacob, had nightmares his whole life.

He had debilitating headaches.

Jacob would talk about a family he had had before,

and he was angry that we had taken him away

from his other family.

I was confused and saddened by the talk of the other family

because I felt I was a source of his unhappiness,

if somehow I had actually taken him away.

I thought the shadow people were scary enough.

But I was in no way prepared for what Jacob was to tell me next.

Jacob and I were watching a movie.

And he turned to me, and he said he had something to tell me.

Jacob was afraid to tell me his story for a long time.

He was afraid it would upset me.

And now I know why.

He said he finally realized what he had been seeing,

but never been able to put into words.

And he told me he had seen the day that he died.

I was suddenly very afraid, because I wasn't sure

what he was trying to tell me-- if he was trying to tell me

something he had remembered or something that he had foreseen.

He told me that he could see himself in the woods.

And he's probably 15 or 16.

And he turned his head to the left to look over his shoulder.

And as he turned his head back forward,

he was struck against the side of the head.

And he fell on his side, looking up,

and he could see someone holding an aluminum baseball bat.

And he had difficulty seeing it, because his eyes

had blood in them.

It took me a minute to respond at all,

because I kind of had to digest it.

And he was looking at me with this really serious face,

I guess worried about how I was going to react.

I asked him first, of course, if he was sure.

"Are you sure?"

And he was positive.

Jacob was visibly concerned about what he was telling me.

I could tell that he was worried about whether it was something

that had happened or would happen and that the fear of it

might be something that was going

to happen in the next few years really bothered him.

I began to wonder if it could be a past life experience.

I think that Jacob could have overheard that story somewhere

or overheard a couple of stories and put them into one.

I grew up in a family of strictly religious family

members.

My mother was Pentecostal.

The group that she is in, they're very conservative.

Based on my upbringing, I wouldn't

have been able to believe in reincarnation,

because that church especially does not believe

that a person is reincarnated.

But the more Jacob talked about his previous family and things

that he remembered, the more it provided evidence for me

to believe in reincarnation.

I think it's possible that the pain that Jacob exhibited

with his headaches could be pain that was carried over

from having been struck with a baseball bat.

And it's possible, too, that the shadow people and the hat man

were somehow connected to how Jacob died in a previous life.

Jacob finally stopped talking to me about having been taken away

from the other family when he was around 10.

I'm not sure if he gave up on the idea of it having actually

happened or if he just got tired of people thinking that he was

strange.

With Jacob's story, most of the time,

I would relay it to family members

because, obviously, it was something

that was in my thoughts.

And most of them thought it wasn't possible.

I did start asking him more questions about his story.

And I feel like I did open up a little bit more to his idea,

but I'm still very skeptical.

I don't think it's important that other people believe it.

But it's really important that he stop dwelling

on the possibility of whatever happened-- that he doesn't stop

living now, worrying about it happening again.

It was a past event that happened that one time.

I wouldn't let him die ever.

He lives with constant anxiety.

I want to help him understand that what happened in the past

does not determine his future.

My son Seumas, had a hard time sleeping alone.

There were times when he just wouldn't stop crying.

He seemed inconsolable through the night.

He was fascinated with ships.

Out of the blue, he said he was on a ship,

and it sank, and he died.

We didn't really know what to think.

We thought, Seumas has an active imagination,

he can be a storyteller.

I wasn't sure if he was just watching too much TV.

The first time I heard from Seumas

that he'd been a boy on a ship that sank

and he lost his life that way, my first reaction

was to be skeptical of that, to some degree.

When I would tell different people about Seumas

and his fascination, obsession, with ships,

a few people would say, well, maybe he was on the Titanic.

And that got me thinking, well, maybe--

maybe he was.

I've always believed that it's possible for people

to have past lives.

And the thought of Seumas having a past life,

it explains why other people say he's wise beyond his years.

In his past life, Seumas said that he was 10 years old.

He had a sister who was 14.

He also had a green jacket suit on.

Seumas recalled the ship sinking as it rolls to its

right side-- the starboard side.

And then it sinks straight down into the water.

I'm Seumas, and I'm seven years old.

I had a mom and a dad and a sister.

The ship was red and black.

The carpet was red and green.

And then something hit it in the back.

Like, it had an explosion.

And then it kind of sank, and then tilted on its side.

There were white boats made out of wood.

Some people were on pieces of the ship.

And some people were in the water, panicking and swimming.

His recollection is not dying in the shipwreck itself,

but making it to a lifeboat.

And he described white, painted, wooden lifeboats-- again,

some pretty specific knowledge.

It was cold when we got on the lifeboats.

And I wore two jackets--

my green one, and then my dad gave me a black one.

But I died on the lifeboat.

Hearing this from Seumas made me sick to my stomach.

It's devastating to think that Seumas experienced

a ship sinking and dying.

How can this little boy be telling me about these things

as if it really happened?

I can tell when Seumas is telling me a lie to keep

from getting in trouble.

But when he's serious about something,

I can tell that, too.

And he believes what he's telling me.

He's not making this up.

Could my son, Seumas, really be experiencing a past life?

My son, Seumas, has had trouble sleeping through the night.

Sometimes he will wake up crying and come to mom and dad's room.

He worries about a lot of things.

He recently told us he was on a ship that sank.

The details of the ship that he was on that sank--

he was in the open ocean.

And it was going along, and then it rolled to the side,

and then went straight down.

At first, I thought the Titanic was

the ship I was on and died on.

But then I thought, because of the details and how it sank,

it couldn't have been.

That's when I knew I didn't die on the Titanic.

But Seumas asked his dad what it meant to have an old soul.

And then Seumas said he was afraid that how

he died as an old soul in his past life

is how he's going to die in his current, present life.

It was almost like a hit to the gut, you know.

That's pretty heavy for a seven-year-old

to be worried about that.

Erin and I just told Seumas that you're not going to die now

how you died in a previous life, thinking that that would be OK.

And he seemed to understand and get

that until just the other day, he started talking about it

again.

Obviously, our explanation wasn't sufficient.

It's affecting us today.

You know, Seumas is still not sleeping through the night.

He's still coming into our bedroom.

And now he's sleeping on a separate little couch

that we have in our bedroom.

And, for him, it needs to be worked through, because there's

some anxiety and worry in his poor little heart and mind.

It's so hard being the parents.

And you're so connected to your-- to your kids.

And you just want them to be happy and not

worry about anything.

I don't want him to relive that experience,

because it's so tragic--

all those people dying.

And we want to help Seumas.

We're just not sure what to do.

Maybe there's another ship that sank in the way

that Seumas describes.

That's what we're going to try and help him figure out.

We did a little online research, just to informally

find tales and accounts of other shipwrecks from in the last,

say, 100 years.

Today, we're going to talk to Seumas

about the different ships that have sunk--

have different options of different ships.

And we're going to talk to him and see if we can't narrow down

which ship he thinks that he was on.

Well, I'm hoping to help him find closure

to what his previous existence was all about.

And gosh, I'm excited about that, because I think

that'll help him not have to worry about the kid he was then

and to let him know that now it's all about this life.

Let's live this one.

You know, you've been talking about boats and shipwrecks

and those kind of things.

Mom and I have looked up a bunch of different ships and boats

and other stories.

And I wanted to have you look at these

and tell you these stories and see if any of these

ring a bell to you.

So this boat-- this one is called the "Callum,"

and it's from 1904.

It was a ferry boat that sunk in a storm.

Does that ring a bell at all?

Does a ship this size or shape ring a bell at all?

Maybe a little bit bigger that ship.

- Bigger than this one? - Bigger?

OK. - OK.

Look at this one.

This is called the "Princess Sophia."

And this was in 1918.

This one's larger.

This thing got stuck in a storm.

Maybe, like, one size bigger than that.

When you were on the ship, did you see any land around you?

Or was it just open sea?

Open sea.

Open sea?

So Seumas, this one is a much more modern ship.

This is the "MS Estonia" which sank in 1994.

And what's similar about this one to the things you've

described is-- see how the boat is listing

to the starboard side?

Does that look familiar to you at all?

No, that wasn't the ship, because the front has kind

of that more shape.

And then this is the lifeboat.

The lifeboats were wooden, and they were white.

Wooden and white.

OK.

So that's a definite no-no there, too.

So here's another one.

Look at this ship.

That one, I think, could have been it.

Our son, Seumas, thinks that in a previous life,

he died as a result of a shipwreck.

He talks about a ship that rolled over to one side

and sank.

He thinks he died in a lifeboat.

More importantly, he worries about the possibility

that he'll die this life in that same manner.

The "RMS Lusitania--" this one's torpedoed by a German U-Boat--

a submarine.

Here it is going down.

Here's a white wooden lifeboat.

That one, I think, could have been it, because it has four

smokestacks, and it looks a familiar shape

and has the colored white lifeboats.

After showing him options, we ruled out some of the ships,

narrowing it down to the possibility of which one

he was on.

There was one that he was really intrigued with--

the "RMS Lusitania."

That's the boat that was sunk by a torpedo strike in 1915.

So that matches a lot of the descriptions he's talked about.

We still have to get him to let go of his fear of dying

that way in this life.

I think Seumas is onto something.

I think it's up to us now to help him find closure.

Let's go out on a big fishing boat

and have a little moment of silence

and throw out a wreath in tribute.

It's just a way to close that chapter a little bit.

That sound like a good idea?

It's gonna be fun.

Erin thought of a wreath and flowers,

because that's kind of a tradition with any funeral.

So we've come here today for a moment or two

of quiet reflection--

Generally, there's always some kind of flowers.

honoring tribute to all those who've lost their lives

at sea, including the previous life of young Seumas here.

Anything you'd like to say?

He was more emotional than I thought he would be.

I felt physically his emotion and his sense of loss

as saying goodbye.

I'm hoping for Seumas to feel safe because of the fact

we've had our ceremony.

And we came back as a family.

And everybody's safe.

See the lines on the buoy?

Oh, geez.

It makes me feel better, knowing that I won't die on a boat,

like I did in my past life.

My 13-year-old son, Jacob, told me stories about being

taken from his other family.

And then he told me a story about how he was murdered

with a baseball bat.

I'd like for Jacob to be able to connect with something that

would clarify some of his past life for him.

My hopes are that he'll be able to sleep better,

the headaches will stop, and he'll

be able to be a happy, healthy child.

My name is Jacob.

I live in Oklahoma City.

I'm 13 years old, and I'm in the eighth grade.

I do remember how I died in my past life.

I was in a forest.

And I heard yelling coming from my own mouth, and then

a rush of cold, and something hitting me

in the side of the head.

And I saw a person who was standing and dropping

an aluminum baseball bat.

I started doing research about teens who were killed

with a baseball bat.

And, unfortunately, I came up with several examples.

I had in there my focus down to details

that matched Jacob's description.

And there were two or three stories really that stood out.

One of the stories I found was about a teen named Steve.

He was from Missouri.

He was lured into the woods by some friends, who

intended to kill him.

When one of them signaled it was time

and they all started swinging at him, Steve became afraid,

and he took off running.

He fell.

And the boys were standing over him.

And he asked why they were doing it.

And they said, because it's fun.

I continued to research.

And I found a story about a boy named Shaun.

He was 14.

And he was from Massachusetts.

He had gone with a kid that he barely knew, because Shaun was

new in his school.

And it turned out that the boy was a real bully

and that his intention was to lure someone into the woods

in order to kill him, because he wanted to know how it felt

to kill somebody.

So he lured Shaun into the woods and, without any real warning,

he hit Shaun with a baseball bat and killed him.

I felt that Jacob's story was very similar to Shaun's story,

the reasons being that Shaun was basically alone in the woods.

And in Jacob's story, he was in the woods, also.

He heard someone call out and looked over his shoulder,

and when he looked back, in Jacob's story,

that's when he was struck.

And it appears that the bully who

killed Shaun waited until Shaun was totally unaware.

And then he hit him.

I began to think then about Jacob's being

adamant about having been the older brother, why wasn't

he the older brother?

And it turned out that Shaun was the older brother

to a handicapped younger sister who was bound to a wheelchair.

I thought farther back into Jacob's childhood.

And in his grade school, there was a small child--

a little girl-- who was in a wheelchair.

And she had very few friends.

But Jacob was one of them.

And I wondered if he were drawn to her because of similarities

in Shaun's past.

My hope is that Jacob finds the answers

that he's looking for and that he gets to feel normal again.

I just want the best for him.

I have decided to share my research with Jacob.

And I feel it's a story to share.

I feel it's maybe unfair not to.

And I'm hoping that maybe he can make a connection with one

of these stories and, if he does,

that we can put all these things behind us.

My son, Jacob, believes he had a past life where he was murdered

in the woods with a baseball bat.

I feel it's my responsibility to help Jacob understand that what

has happened in the past doesn't determine his future now.

How would you feel about reading a couple of stories

I found that have similarities?

I would actually really like to do that.

Yes.

This one, of course, is, the bully had sought out a boy

and had taken him to the woods, because he had planned

to kill him.

And it was wintertime.

Yeah.

It was cold.

And you'd said something about the cold.

This one was a group of boys that killed him.

They chased him for a while, caught him,

and they all hit him.

And when he asked them why they were doing it,

they said, "Because it's fun."

Does either of those stories remind you of anything?

This one's one that I find similarities in the most.

So this one's the most--

is more like your story.

Yes.

"Rod Matthews killed 14-year-old Shaun Ouillette in 1986

by luring him into the woods and killing him with a baseball

bat.

Matthews chose to kill Ouillette because he

would be the least missed, as he did not have many friends.

Investigators found Ouillette's body on December 11, 1986."

That's the one.

I related to the story that was about a boy who was lured

into the woods by a bully, who struck him on the head

multiple times.

It was in the wintertime-- so snow on the ground.

And I remember the forest in my--

remembering my death.

Our plan is to go to Massachusetts.

I think it would be a good experience,

and just by being able to go and maybe

meet the family, if that's possible, go to the grave site.

It might give him even more closure.

I'm feeling kind of nervous.

Oh, me, too.

I am, too.

I think it's going to feel kind of awkward.

Why do you think it's awkward?

Well, because this is sort of like saying, hey,

I could've been your son who died.

Well, I'm still feeling kind of nervous right

now, because I'm talking to someone who should have been

my mom in my past life.

Jacob, can I give you a hug?

Sure.

I wasn't sure what to expect when she asked if she could hug

him.

And normally, he's not a touchy-feely person at all.

He's not a huggy kid.

And he went right to her.

The expression in his eyes was Shaun's.

And I said, this is-- this is right, and this is real.

How can I help you?

Is there anything you need to know from me?

What was he like?

He was very adventurous.

He loved the woods.

He loved building forts.

He loved his sister.

But he liked to draw, too.

Yeah, loved to draw.

Yeah, I always carry a sketchpad around with me.

Do you really? Yeah.

Shaun did-- my sketchpad.

Wondered where they were all going.

He had them.

It was a great conversation.

And I was able to talk to her really well.

And I did feel a complete connection.

I think Shaun found his way home.

That's how I feel right now.

I really feel that way, Jacob.

I don't know how to thank you.

I will give you my number.

And you can call me anytime.

Don't ever sit on anything anymore.

Just call.

Pick up the phone and call.

And if I don't have the answers, I'll tell you.

But you'll also know that I have your back

and that I'm right beside you.

OK.

OK?

I'm so happy for both of them, because they both seem

genuinely relieved, I guess.

There's a really beautiful memorial headstone

for Shaun in the Canton cemetery that

was put together and donated by a lot of wonderful people

in this town.

I really want to go.

OK.

I placed some flowers down at his grave.

And I said a few words.

And it felt awesome.

I know "awesome" is my only word to describe things.

But it's just 'cause it's a word that fits everything.

I'll have to stay in touch with Jeanne, because I still

might have things that I can talk about.

And now I consider her a friend.

I feel that the smile that Jacob put on his face today

was a smile I'm not sure I've ever seen.

Honestly, in his whole life, I don't know if I've ever

seen him that radiant.

And I think now he'll know he has a long and happy life

ahead.

And so he's got a more positive outlook.

Like, I felt happy.