to heaven and back..

A grave accident leaves a young boy paralysed and in a coma. When he awakens, he displays extraordinary abilities. His mother documents their story in a book.


Retha McPherson is a striking woman with piercing eyes and she wears four-inch heels, as can be expected of a former beauty queen.

But those eyes tear up when she speaks about her experiences in 2004, which she writes about in her book, A Message from God, that was launched in Kuala Lumpur recently.

It began on June 19, 2004, the same year Retha, a Christian and an image consultant, was chosen as Mrs South Africa.

“My life was so perfect,” Retha wrote in her book. “I had a wonderful loving marriage, two beautiful healthy children and a successful business.”


Against all odds: Aldo McPherson and his mother, Retha.

All that was to change when the family had a car accident on a highway in Free State, South Africa. In an attempt to avoid a stationary car, her husband, Tinus, swerved onto a watercourse and their vehicle rolled over several times. When Retha came to, her children Aldo, 12, and Josh, three, were gone.

“My children flew out of the car,” recalls Retha at the launch. “When we found Josh, he only had minor cuts but I found Aldo on the other side of the highway. I could feel his cracked skull and blood gushing out. I couldn’t feel a pulse.”

The paramedics arrived on the scene by helicopter, revived Aldo and punctured his collapsed lungs to insert respiratory tubes.

Aldo had a four-hour operation in Union Hospital, Alberton, Johannesburg, and doctors informed Retha he had serious brain injuries.

Tinus, in an e-mail interview, remembers having to deal with the trauma and guilt that followed the accident since Aldo was the one who bore the brunt of it.

“I felt so responsible for the accident and the first few weeks after were the lowest points of my life, seeing him on the bed and not responding to anything,” he says.

“I stayed with him in the intensive care unit for a week and doctors told me to say goodbye to him,” Retha says. “On day 12, they told me, ‘Mrs McPherson, you have no medical funds left and we cannot detect any brain function. So we are going to take Aldo off the life-support machines. Either he lives and becomes a vegetable, or he dies’.”

That day was a defining one for Retha and her family, because as she prayed in a room by herself, she felt as if God was talking to her.

“Despite my son’s condition, it was the best day of my life,” she says. “I felt peace, love and acceptance all at one go. I even forgot about my son, everything just disappeared.”

It was then that she decided to take her son home. Two months after the accident, Aldo left the hospital. Still in a coma, he was hooked up to respiratory machines and a feeding tube.


When he was 12, Aldo was hospitalised and hooked to life support machines after an accident left him paralysed, comatose and severely damaged his brain.

One side of Aldo’s body was paralysed and the other, spastic. He was blind in one eye and could not open his mouth to eat.

But Retha refused to accept his condition and with depleting finances, set out to slowly help her son recover.

At the airport one day, she saw Aldo’s favourite candy called “sour worms” and bought four pieces. Every day, she would stick one in his mouth and on the fourth day, he opened his mouth. From then, she began feeding him soft food.

Six months after the accident, he ate his first hamburger.

At the book launch in KL, Retha showed photos of her family putting Aldo on an exercise bicycle to strengthen his legs although five people had to support him.

As Aldo’s limbs strengthened, Tinus would cycle with him on a tandem bicycle.

“I borrowed a tandem bicycle and put Aldo on the back,” Tinus recalls. “Initially, we had to strap him in, even his hands were tied to the handle bar.

“We soon got the hang of things and three months later, we completed a 40km cycle race.”

Only eight months later could he speak and almost a year after the accident, he could see with both eyes. In April 2006, Aldo stood up for the first time in two years and a year later, he started to play football although he still falls down often.

Aldo’s story

Four months after Aldo’s accident, a therapist suggested putting a pencil in his spastic hand, which eventually relaxed, so that he could doodle.

“I held his hand and he started to write. I knew then that his brain was fine,” says Retha. “Even now in school, people still have to support his wrists when he writes because he has a twitch.”

Aldo communicated through writing and one day, he wrote that he had gone to heaven.

“In heaven, we played and sang for Jesus, the angels were all around us,” Aldo wrote. “No one is sick there.”

Aldo had also written that when Retha found him at the accident scene, his spirit was “taken up” and he could look down and see what had happened and describe the details.

Retha admits that she and Tinus kept all this a secret at first, not wanting people to think that they were mad.


During his recovery, Aldo communicated frequently by writing before he could speak. This is one of his notes in which the first few lines reads 'faith in God'.

Aldo, however, kept telling her about his heavenly experiences and once, kept making a circular motion with his hands over his head.

“Tinus and I asked him to stop it, but he wouldn’t and said it was about two boys, Dwane and Anton, whom he had met in heaven,” Retha reveals.

Aldo wrote letters to these boys’ parents telling them that their children were healed and happy, but were concerned about their parents. He put the letters in envelopes and gave Retha their addresses.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is too much, the medicine is too strong’,” Retha laughs. “I told Tinus that we had to get Aldo off the medicine somehow.”

But Aldo was adamant and in the end, the family made contact with these two families. They found that indeed they had had boys by those names who had died. When shown family photographs, Aldo could point out their faces. Anton had Down Syndrome, and the circular hand motions were Aldo’s way of describing it.

“Anton’s mother told my husband that she had been taking pills for depression,” says Retha. “But she has gone off the pills since she received Aldo’s letter.”

That was not the only incident which stumped his parents and others around him. One time, he had a “vision” of water flooding housing areas in December 2006.

“He kept telling me to put sandbags around our house because water was coming. Then he wrote ‘Mum, you’re going to need rest because you’re going overseas’,” Retha recalls. “I told him, ‘I’m not going anywhere’, because I usually don’t travel in December.”

Two days later, the Dec 26 Asian tsunami struck and because Retha was Mrs South Africa, she was asked to go and help those affected in Aceh, Indonesia.

Apart from Aldo’s extraordinary ability to “see” difficult situations and people’s thoughts, Retha reveals that he is a normal boy who is struggling with his weaknesses.

One eyelid still droops, he has stitches and bruises due to falling every few steps, he speaks in a painfully slow monotone and has epileptic fits when he is tense.

“When he talks, he puts up his hands even in public, we don’t know why he does it,” she says. “Some people don’t react well to him, especially initially when he hung his head and drooled – people would stare at him and say ‘look at that freak’.”

Tinus describes the entire experience as a “very lonely road” and not many friends were willing to walk the journey with them.

But he and Retha have learnt to take things in their stride, because they have seen the big leaps in Aldo’s recovery.

“Aldo is now in a regular private school where he is the only ‘disabled’ child,” Tinus explains. “He has a private tutor who picks him up at the house in the morning, takes him to school, helps him there and then she will take him to speech and physiotherapy in the afternoon.”

Though Aldo, now 16, has come a long way since the accident and defied medical logic, some have asked Retha if she is disappointed that Aldo is not completely healed.

But Retha points out that people are more likely to believe their story when they see Aldo in his recovery stages. She is thankful for the journey that has made her family selfless.

“I tell my husband that nothing in this world impresses me anymore,” she reveals, adding that she realises that not even good works can make her happy.

She is on a mission to share Aldo’s story.

“Before this, I was an image consultant but today, I do workshops in church sometimes on total image – body, soul and spirit,” she says. “How can you tell women to dress up when they are hurting inside?”

So far, Retha has travelled to the United States, Indonesia and Singapore to promote her self-published book. A Message from God has reportedly sold 25,000 copies around the world.

Retha ended her book launch here on a light note about Aldo’s hope to marry someday. “Aldo is praying for a woman who loves scars!”

*taken from The Star

When i read this story yesterday in StarTwo..i almost cried...it touched my heart...to know that someone who had a near-death experience is still alive, till now...this are examples of miracles in live...those who dont believe in heaven..u should be changing your mind by then..