Delaney Riley left home to go to school one day. Then suddenly, the 10-year-old girl died. Doctors discovered she had an undetected heart defect.
While Delaney couldn't have predicted the tragedy, it was something the young girl did earlier that year that is bringing her mother peace today.
On June 18, 2015, Delaney and her friend Abigail wrote a few letters, put the messages in a bottle, and watched it drift into the ocean. They imagined it would float to some faraway place. Instead fate carried it somewhere far more beautiful.
The following November, two other best friends found the bottle — written on the message was a phone number. The two little girls had no idea what had happened to Delaney when they texted the number that belonged Abigail's mother, Debbie Watson.
The text began, "We'd thought you'd like to know we found Delaney Riley’s message in a bottle. We're two best friends…”
Debbie immediately called up Delaney's mother, Chrissy, to share the unbelievable news. The message in the bottle circled back to the grieving mother who needed one more piece of her little girl.
“That letter that she wrote showed her excitement about life," Chrissy said. "It was a whole page long and it was written like the way Delaney writes. She had a lot of dreams. She was going to be a residential architect. She was very intelligent; she was a very smart girl.
“She's with us. She's our angel watching us. It was a sign that she's here with us, and a sign that we really needed.”
Even in tragedy, there are little glimmers of hope that remind us we're not alone.
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