A Surprising Visit From A Family Member

Yesterday, Sunday, April 6, had been a very busy and active day for me, as I had helped an 88 year-old neighbor and dear friend, to do a very substantial shopping trip to the largest local grocery on Sunday, as her food was running low. The store was mobbed, the aisles crowded, and there were very long check-out lines. I had separated from her and had finished doing a bit of my own shopping, so I was scanning the throngs to try to find her, so we could check out. While blocked temporarily in one aisle, I caught a glimpse of a man passing the further end of the aisle that, in that instant, looked a lot like my father, but somehow different. I'd never seen anyone, anywhere, who reminded me of my father, but I thought no more of it.

I had to go to the Service Desk and have my friend's name called out to find her, but the truly difficult part of the trip was figuring out how to lift the large number of bulky and heavy items, like gallon jugs of milk, several quarts of juices, and big cuts of meat into my car, and then unload it and get it up to the second level of her house. We are both very independent and a bit feisty, with very different ways of problem solving, but we managed to laugh a lot and, perhaps by divine intervention, attract help from another neighbor, who, seeing us struggling to get heavy packages up her path and up the inside set of stairs, came to help us, just in the nick of time!

But my friend is also a person of enormous spiritual presence, and in the past, has counseled others professionally, with her ability to see/understand things about people that they sometimes don't know, or are not in touch with, themselves.

I say that because I wonder if she might have somehow enabled an amazing thing that happened to me later that day. I was very tired in the evening, having also helped to celebrate two of my young grandchildren's birthdays, so I sat down to watch some TV, loving the exquisite photography of the Americas series on WNBC at 7 and 8 PM on Sundays.

About 9:30, I think I dozed off, waking up just a few minutes later, with a clear vision right in front of me, clear as if on the TV screen, of my long-deceased father sitting in his "reading chair," behind me in my bedroom, over by the window, improbably placed where part of my bed sits, but nonetheless, I could see all of him sitting in his chair. It was momentary, and I could see no expression on his face, but the overall message was clear that "he is behind me all the time."

That meant the world to me! I've mentioned before, on other places on this website and in my book, that I had the feeling that someone has been looking out for me, but I didn't have any idea who it was. My father would have been my last guess, because he was a very quiet New England gentleman, whose best life was just reading a book or writing humorous poetry. He worked because he had to, first in management for a family-owned coal company, then for a bigger company, but he never talked about it. He was the 6th of 7 children, born in 1904, his older siblings born in the 1800's, all of whom went to college, extraordinary for that time. From his 4 older sisters, strong willed and merciless in teasing their 2 younger brothers, by their own admission, he learned to "let the women run everything," to do what they told him to, and to not hazard to voice opinions they didn't like.

He was passive about almost everything. I knew he often sided with me, when my mother scolded me, which she often did, because I looked like my father and not her, and I wasn't a son, which my older brother was, but my father almost never risked speaking up for me. Instead, we silently commiserated with glances, knowing we were both in the "same boat." My mother was the only, much-adored and worshipped child of an older couple; she had always gotten her way in all matters with everyone, but she also shouldered most of the burden of running the household and then, when my 18 year-old brother became a quadriplegic in a terrible car accident in which his friend, the driver, was killed, my mother's strength of character and determination to have her world run her way, really saved the family, when we were wiped out financially by my brother's accident, his having no insurance, and the level of home care required every minute of every day.

At this point in my life, therefore, to see my father so clearly, characteristically behind me, but silent, is a huge surprise for which I am eternally grateful! To understand that those who have gone before, have the power to communicate with us, and may have been with us all along, changes the way we see most everything else we are processing in this difficult world.

It was only this morning, when waking up, that it came to me that that dark maroon, lightly brocaded, wing-back chair, in which I saw my father sitting in the vision, actually sits directly below where I saw it in the vision, on the lower level of my house, where it has stood since I moved into this house, some 34 years ago. My mother's silk damask wing-back chair is downstairs, too, almost exactly under where I was sitting last night in my bedroom.

Does the placement of those chairs downstairs have any meaning? I can't even guess. But I also know that this experience was not a figment of my imagination. I saw what I saw with my eyes open, my mind alert. It's just the way it is. I can only say that when an extraordinary revelation comes to you, most people who have shared their experiences with me, and I, just feel greatly blessed to have received such a vision that is uniquely our own.

I treasure the fact that I have a visitation from my father. In his chair, still himself, still spiritually standing behind me!