Kaitlyn Bernhardt’s parents, Jennifer and Robert, and her grandmother, Frances Fallon, all say that the girl seemed to be connected to heaven in a special way.

Kaitlyn’s parents both said the girl understood things that others didn’t and had special graces granted to her in her suffering, the most notable of which was during . the night that she would have arrived in Lourdes, France, had her sickness allowed her to travel.

“She jumped up from sleeping and said, ‘Mommy, mommy, Mary is with me,’” Jennifer said. She recalled her daughter saying that Mary told her that it wasn’t her time and to remember the numbers 1 and 5. She also said she saw heaven as a field of yellow and green flowers.

Kaitlyn was supposed to go to Our Lady of Lourdes shrine in France, but couldn’t make it because her bone cancer had progressed too far. Kaitlyn, who was a parishioner of St. Bernard’s, Mill Basin, and a student at Bishop Kearney, Bensonhurst, is now officially being considered for sainthood in the Catholic Church.