Tag Archives: Closure

Daughter’s Balloon Message to Dad Brings Message to Her

In a situation defying explanation, a grieving widow and daughter received the most unexpected encouragement and peace on Father’s Day.

Johnny Seibold was only 43 when he died from pancreatic cancer in May, leaving behind wife Sandy and 13-year-old daughter Saige.

“He was an amazing man,” Sandy Seibold told the New York Daily News. “He was a hard worker, and he loved us. He did everything he could to get us everything that we wanted. We had a really good life, and that was hard to lose.”

On Father’s Day, Sandy took her daughter to her father’s grave.  Saige wrote a letter to her dad and attached it to a balloon that read “#1 Dad.”  The letter asked whoever found the letter to contact them.

“We thought the idea of sending balloons to heaven sounded good,” Sandy said.

The mother and daughter then left the cemetery to run errands and returned home 25 miles away from the gravesite.

To find the balloon and the letter hanging on a fence 100 feet from the house…where Saige and her father would often spend time working together.

“What are the chances?” Sandy said. “I think I started crying. It felt like a message from him.”

The two women say that they now have a lot of peace about losing Johnny.

Hawaii To Let Residents Watch Lava Destroy Homes

The state of Hawaii has announced they will create a staging area where residents of the community of Pahoa will be able to watch the lava from the Kilauea volcano consume their homes.

Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira told the Associated Press it’s a way to help the residents find “a means of closure” in the situation.

The lava was reported to be 70 yards from the first home in its path on Tuesday morning.

A spokeswoman for the Hawaii Volcano Observatory said that the lava’s pace is being controlled by the topography of the area and in some places has slowed significantly as the lava moves up small inclines.

Oliveira says that many of the residents in the path of the volcano have already made arrangements to live somewhere else or have just left their homes in anticipation of the lava.  He said he doesn’t believe he will need to issue a mandatory evacuation order.

The last time lava threatened homes was in 2011, when one home was destroyed before the lava changed course.