“Little things have been happening to us since she’s been gone, and I would always say, ‘Blame it on Jessica.’ Well, I never expected anything like this. I think she’s trying to tell us that she’s OK, and everything is fine.” “My son Josh (Gryder) from San Angelo had stopped off Sunday with a friend on their way to Colorado, and we were all in the house piddling around,” she explains. “Josh went to the back door to look out at the snow and said, ‘Oh, my God, ya’ll come see this.’ There on the doorknob of the shed was the most perfect little angel. At first I didn’t know what to think. It’s kind of weird, but I just know it’s Jessica.”

Born and raised in Louisiana, 36-year-old Jessica Gryder moved to Plainview with her mother and the rest of the family about 8 1/2 years ago. A single mother, she was raising her 12-year-old son Colton while working at the Walmart store and later at the distribution center. “A lot of people knew her because she worked at Walmart,” Kaminski says. “She helped them move from the old store to the new one, and then worked in the garden center for a year and a half or two years before going to the distribution center.”

After working there for about a year, she enrolled at Wayland, where she was a student for three years before she began to experience serious health issues. “Right before Thanksgiving she was in the hospital for three days because of pneumonia, but we thought she was getting better so we all went to Canyon Lake, near San Antonio,” to spend the holiday with another daughter, Kaminski says. “Jessica woke up on Thanksgiving day and told her sister that the toes on her left foot were turning blue. That’s because she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. “I told her that we needed to go to the doctor, and on our way we stopped at the fire station at the end of the road so they could get her to the hospital at New Braunfels, since I didn’t know how to get there.”

During the ambulance ride, Jessica’s lips started turning blue. However, once they got to the hospital, the medical staff was able to get Jessica stabilized and oxygen levels in her blood back to acceptable levels. “Since she was much better, I decided to head home for lunch, since it was Thanksgiving, and to get her medicine. On my way home, she texted to tell me that they were going to put a tube down her throat to get more oxygen to her lungs. She didn’t answer me back.” Thirty minutes after arriving at her other daughter’s house, Kaminski received a call from the emergency room saying Jessica had taken a turn for the worse. Jessica was already gone by the time her mother got back to the hospital.

“I’ve really missed her, and I’m still not ready to put her away yet. We had her cremated because her son wanted to have some of her with him all the time, so we still have her ashes at my house. We haven’t had a memorial service, either here or in Louisiana, or even put her obituary in the paper. It’s only been two months, and I’m not quite ready for that.”

But the snow angel has given her some peace of mind concerning her daughter.

“The snow was just so light and fluffy, so there is really no other explanation,” she says. “The four of us — me, my son Josh, his friend Tony and my grandson Colton — all were there to see it. And everyone I have shown the photos to say ‘Oh, my God.’ It really is something to marvel at.”