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The Long Journey Home
I was blessed to have a second father who was the sun, the moon and the stars. He brought joy, peace, love and a true sense of family to our world. He is what you would term a step-father but it was never a word I used to describe him, to me he was just Dad.
My mother could count on one hand the number of times she had ever been inside a bar, with one exception, Leo’s Bar and Grill, located next door to the small insurance company where she worked. It was the only place to eat lunch within a one mile radius. So on the days when she was running too late after getting five children off to school to make her own lunch, she would be forced to go into the dark little hole in the wall for a burger and fries.
Dad says he fell in love with her the very first time he saw her sitting at the bar. He worked at the meat company located on the opposite side of the bar and was a regular visitor for lunch. Mom had her wallet open showing the bartender pictures of her children. He said that there was such love and pride emanating from her he just knew this was a woman who knew how to love with all of her heart. He took the seat next to her and left with her phone number.
Dad was the rarest of men in 1964, a single father. After 26 years of marriage his wife had left him, taking the furniture and leaving him the children. The two boys were still at home and one daughter recently married.
Dad inherited his attitude about children from his mother who passed when he was just sixteen. Born in 1915 he was the youngest of thirteen children; his mother was 42 years of age when she gave birth to her last child, christened Francis Anthony. A staunch Catholic she loved God and the church, but more than anything she loved children. Precious gifts from God they were her purpose for living and her greatest sorrow was the fact that only six lived to become adults.
The great influenza epidemic of 1918 ravaged the entire planet taking the lives of an estimated 50 million people. More correctly categorized as a pandemic it was the primary reason WWI ground to a halt as there were no young men left to fight. No one really knows why it targeted primarily young people, but it took the lives of four of my father’s siblings all of them buried in one mass grave. People were dying at such a rate that undertakers couldn’t keep up, so family members were forced to dig their own graves to bury their loved ones. Four other siblings were lost to diseases and injuries that are completely treatable today but in the days before vaccines and penicillin they perished.
I am still amazed that my father didn’t run like the wind from this 29 year old widow with five children ages 4-9. A man of 49 years of age with three children aged 14-24 and one grandchild he should have been looking at enjoying his freedom. He was head over heels in love and he loved the whole package, a second ready made family.
Theirs was not a fairytale world and the opposition to their relationship was pretty strong. First was the age barrier. Twenty years separated them, a whole generation, and my maternal grandmother was the first to voice her opinion. She was born in 1918, three years younger than my dad; she had an arranged marriage at 13 to my grandfather who was 38. She had spent the first half of her life raising six children and the last half of her life supporting and caring for my grandfather. She wanted something different for her daughter.
The second wave of resistance came from my fathers children. They hoped their parents would reconcile despite the fact that their mother was already on her second marriage since the divorce. And what about all of those kids? Did he really want to saddle himself with another family and another twenty years of raising children?
My mother caved to the pressure and packed up our family and moved back to New Mexico to be near my grandparents. Undeterred my dad would drive from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque every single weekend in hopes of winning her back. On October 19th, 1964 my dad and their love finally won out and they eloped. In an instant we became a family.
Dad was a devout Catholic and when he married my mother he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. In Catholic terms that meant he had given up his chance to get into heaven. He didn’t stop going to church but he was excluded from receiving the sacraments.
My parents together were the greatest ghost magnets on the entire planet, everything I know about haunted houses I learned from them. Dad loved to buy houses like most people buy socks. The very first house they purchased together was built on a plot of land adjacent to an ancient Native American sacred spot known today as the Garden of the Gods. It caught fire three times in six months, not one fire was set or caused from human origins. Trust me; you have not lived until you have enjoyed the stars of a Colorado winter sky from your living room with a huge gaping hole in the roof.
We moved as often as three times a year, my parents would buy an old house, fix it up and move again. This played havoc with making friends as I attended 17 schools by the time I graduated. Thankfully they figured this out and stayed in the same area once we reached high school age. The one constant was they would always buy houses that came with extra inhabitants. I don’t know if they were doing their bit for humanities purpose by sending these disembodied spirits to the Light or they just liked the company, but the end result was always the same.
We liked to play a little game with every move called “find the cold spot”. The premise was to locate the place in the house where the temperature was vastly different than everywhere else in the house. We thought that every house had one; at least every house we lived in had one. I was an adult before I discovered most houses do not come equipped with a live in ghost.
My mother had to be a good sport to be married to my Dad. We moved so often that we were a precision moving crew. One day my mother came home from work and we didn’t live there anymore. Dad must have forgot to mention that he had bought a new house, sold the one we were living in, and moved all in one day. He could manifest a deal with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. You would think this would have annoyed my mother in the extreme, but it never did. In thirty years of marriage they had two fights, one was over kids, and the second was over her cancer.
Every Sunday morning my mother would drag us off to the Baptist church for hours and when we came home our bedrooms would have been turned upside down by my Dad. Anything that had been left on the floor was in the middle of the bed and if your drawers were unruly the contents would also be there. Everything would be dusted and vacuumed. I used to think that Dad was some kind of clean freak because my mother was an impeccable housekeeper, but I discovered around the age of 13 that there was another purpose behind these cleaning sprees. He was doing two things; first he would rearrange the furniture for he seemed to understand the principles of Feng Shui on some intuitive level. The second part was he was sprinkling our rooms with Holy Water. I guess he knew about the ghosts.
Dad wrestled with religion all of the years my parents were married. He counted among his friends ex-priests, Baptist and Methodist ministers and their discussions always centered on the after life. Mostly he was trying to find a loophole that would allow him to gain entrance into heaven. He loved being a Catholic; it was his comfort and his pain. He learned from his mother that there were always loopholes.
The one thing my Dad hated was fish. A butcher for more than 40 years he was a meat and potatoes kind of guy and in his youth the rule was that you ate fish on Fridays. His mother would give him meat on Fridays and declare that she would do the penance on his behalf so that he could enjoy his meal. This is what he based his loophole theory on; if you could eat meat on Fridays then you should be able to get into heaven through a backdoor.
Dad was one of the most genuine “nice guys” you could ever hope to meet. People always referred to the twinkle of mischief in his eyes. A practical joker he could never pass up the opportunity to get people to laugh. It wasn’t until he was old and in the throws of dementia that I ever heard him say a negative word about anyone.
We were all required to work in my Dad’s butcher shop after school and on Saturdays. In those days grocery stores didn’t sell meat, you had to go to the butcher shop to make your purchases. I worked as a cashier and many times Dad would slip up behind me and place a chicken or a pound of hamburger wrapped in white butcher paper in someone’s bag. Marked on the front in grease pencil was N/C, the abbreviation for No Charge. He just always knew when someone was struggling and in need of a little help.
When grocery stores began having their own meat departments the days of the neighborhood meat markets were numbered. My dad went to work for a local packing plant and that is where he met Gerald. Gerald was working in the plant while he attended seminary to become a Methodist minister. They became fast and life long friends, despite the difference in age and belief systems. Gerald like my dad was a genuine nice guy but incredibly sober, it didn’t take too long to develop a sense of humor from hanging around with dad.
Gerald graduated from seminary and was appointed to his first church. My parents attended services on occasion and the first Sunday that my parents were in attendance, to my mother’s great horror, Gerald stepped up to the pulpit and announced to the congregation that the collection plates were missing. “I see that Frank is in the congregation today, Frank if you could kindly tell the ushers where you have hidden the collection plates we can proceed with taking up a collection.” Such was the nature of their relationship.
Gerald was a sweet soul and he observed my father’s pain at his separation from the church. While Gerald knew that Source would never deny my father entrance into the Light, he understood my father’s need to believe that he could not enter “the pearly gates”. Gerald studied Catholic traditions and became my father’s co-conspirator in his bid to find the elusive loophole.
I always thought it was odd that my dad became a butcher. While he was never involved in killing animals he was a natural animal communicator, he never met an animal he couldn’t hear. While dogs were his animal of choice he could hold conversations with cats, squirrels, birds, mice, rabbits and raccoons. He was not overly fond of snakes, rats and skunks, but then who is? He trained the squirrels to come and knock on the door when they wanted nuts and every morning the ducks would trek to the house and bang on the door with their bills to be fed.
The animals tolerated my mother, especially my dad’s little Maltese named Kilo. Animals can see the angels and the presence of departed loved ones who gather near at the end of our time on the planet. Kilo was no exception. In the days prior to my mothers crossing Kilo would lie at my mother’s feet, already in mourning for her emanate passing. Several days after her crossing John and I were visiting with my Dad when Kilo started barking out of control at something on the couch. This was where my mother would lie when she was exhausted from the chemotherapy treatments and according to Kilo; she had stopped by for a visit. Over the next three years he was the early warning system that Mom was in the house.
The first Easter after my mother’s crossing we took my dad to the Catholic Church. He had not been inside a Catholic church for many years and had not received communion for more than thirty. I have only seen my father cry on two occasions, once at my mother’s funeral and on the day he took communion. He was so overwhelmed the priests became alarmed because he cried inconsolably for over an hour. It was the end of long estrangement and thirty years of fear and grief just came pouring out of him. Like the prodigal son he was once again welcomed home.
We all assumed that Dad would follow Mom in death very quickly but as it turned out we were all wrong. Dementia certainly played a big part in his continued existence on the planet and demonstrated repeatedly the amazing mind-body connection. Dad would spend the better part of his remaining time in and out of the hospital and even though he had a Do Not Resuscitate order in his records he never gave them a reason to exercise the conditions.
Dad’s body was ravaged by the effects of a long life and his medical history was complicated. He was a fixture at the local VA hospital and a favorite of the nurses. Dad kept a drawer full of candy in his room and the nurses had an open invitation to stop by and help themselves. Many of the employees at the hospital were my clients in those days when I still did taxes so I was always confident that Dad was getting the best care possible because visiting him in the hospital was like an extended family reunion.
Dad developed a bladder stone that was 5 inches by 3 inches and it required surgery. The doctors decided that as long as they were in there they would remove his cancerous prostrate. Something like 80 percent of all men who reach the age of 80 have a slow growing prostrate cancer but generally the medical community leaves it alone as the treatment is a greater threat than the cancer. The doctors told my father that he could expect to be incontinent for the rest of his life. He forgot, so he didn’t have one single day of incontinence. He fell and broke his hip and because it was the second hip they told him he would never walk again, he forgot. He was given last rites more times than I can count, he forgot.
You have got to have a sense of humor with dealing with someone who has dementia. One day Dad asked a nurse, “Who owes this hotel?” Her response, “You do sir, your taxes dollars pay for it.” I received a call at 11:00 PM that night asking if I would come over and talk to my father. He was wandering the halls turning off all the lights muttering something about the size of the electric bill.
Around the same time my mother’s older sister was diagnosed with ovarian, colorectal and pelvic cancer after having survived breast cancer years earlier. She had been a professional model and an avid user of amphetamines and barbiturates; coupled with the fact she used her extraordinary psychic gifts inappropriately she had become what we like to call a little “batty”. I watched for years this interesting phenomenon with my aunt connected to clothes. She would take on a different persona like an accessory with every outfit. I’m sure in the “make believe” world of modeling it is a normal part of the job, but she used it to her advantage. When she was diagnosed with cancer she had surgery to remove the three tumors the size of an orange and given only six weeks, was sent home to die. She went home and switched to a different personality that didn’t have cancer. That was twelve years ago, she now lives in an assisted living center and is still cancer free.
We had begun to think Dad would out live us all but finally there was a turning point, his first wife died. This apparently was the loophole he was waiting to manifest. In his mind he was no longer a “sinner” with broken vows, his first wife was gone and now he was a widower in the eyes of the Church, which to him, also meant in the eyes of God.
Dad began seeing the “Catch and Carry” angels a week after his first wife passed. He would point to the corner and say “why is that angel just sitting there, why doesn’t it take me home?” My mother became a frequent visitor at the same time. Kilo never left my father’s side except when Mom was around. When she was around Kilo would leave the room. At night Kilo always slept at the foot of Dad’s bed, but in the last weeks before his crossing he would jump down and go sleep in the living room.
Dad lapsed into a coma at home and we made a choice to let him go. He remained in a coma for almost a week when something interesting happened. My husband, my brother and I all began to experience chest pains that felt like a heart attack, but not exactly. We were my dad’s primary caregivers and it felt as if he was tapping into our energy field to sustain himself. We each described identical symptoms and as we sat around the table discussing the wisdom of our decision to let him remain at home, he woke up! The only thing he had to say was “what’s for dinner?”
Dad seemed completely fine, other than having a voracious appetite. He was totally lucid and had nothing to say about his absence for the past week. On Sunday he wanted to get out of the house and we had heard about a big metaphysical fair we wanted to check out, so we took Dad long for the ride.
Denver has one of the biggest metaphysical fairs in the country with 300 readers, healers and vendors all housed in a convention center. Everyone was so kind to my Dad as we walked around the exhibits. They would smile at him and greet him and I suspect that they could see the angels in attendance. We wandered past a woman that offered her services as a reader and healer but she also was a minister of a local Spiritualist church. She stopped us and asked if she could spend a few minutes talking with my Dad. I don’t know what she said to him and I didn’t ask but I suspect that she saw the cords he was using to keep himself anchored here.
We returned home and Dad went to bed and lapsed back into a coma. Something told me that this was the end so all of my siblings were notified that it was time to come and say good-bye. The last arrived on Wednesday and Dad passed peacefully minutes later.
Spirits rarely head into the Light immediately upon passing, they hang around attend their funerals and comfort the grieving and Dad was no exception. Time has no meaning for them so what may be a couple of months in our time is five minutes to them. My mother’s crossing was the most emotional and transformative I have ever experienced but Dad’s was the most spectacular one I have ever seen.
When Dad finally entered the Light it had been more than a year since he vacated his physical body. He was drawn into a corridor of Light that was lined with literally thousands of people. These were all spirits of the people that had been touched by his kindness during his lifetime. Some of them had not been directly touched by him or had even had a personal interaction with him but much like the pebble in the pond theory his actions toward one person had caused that person to “pay it forward” so they all came to honor his contribution.
The end of the corridor was a huge dining hall and seated around the table were all of the departed family members enjoying the biggest feast you can imagine. Seated next to my mother was Dad’s first wife and they were enjoying one another’s company, something that never would have occurred on this side of the veil. Dad was at the head of the table and his mother, wearing an apron rushes about making sure everyone has plenty to eat. This was my Dad’s idea of heaven.
Dad’s long term version of heaven involves animals. He travels the Universe with a huge group of animals in tow and whenever he stops by for a visit I start sneezing uncontrollably because in this reality I am allergic to some of them. I ask him to back the animals about fifty feet and I hear his laughter.
My parents who were inseparable in life, to my minor disappointment are not “together” on the other side. The irony being that in his belief system he gave up heaven for my mother and now they exist in different realities of the afterlife. They are soul mates, who are connected certainly, but they each have different ideas about what heaven should be and they are each “living” that reality. They have different missions and have moved on to the next phase of their learning and evolution. This is how it should be, we learn, we grow, we evolve.
Once we can fully understand that we create our afterlife experience when can apply that understanding to the fact that we also are creating our current life experience as well. The power that we have is boundless and infinite as we are the Source of our happiness and our discontent. When we accept anyone else’s version to be our truth whether it is a doctor, a religion, a family, we give up our divine birthright of creation. But that is okay! We are here to learn, to grow, to contribute. Day by day we learning to step into the role of Creator of Universes, to take back our power in increments like a child learning to walk. Of course we will stubble, of course we will fall, but just like the toddler we don’t give up on walking and just crawl for eternity.
Envision heaven; envision health, prosperity, love, peace and joy. Make them your reality and your truth. Allow for the fact that your “truth” can change as you learn and grow. Be amazed at the wonder of you!