A Night to Remember

Dad followed through on his signs the very night he died.

My dad passed away on November 1, 2020, after his eighteen month long cancer journey. As the sun set that evening, I went for a walk with my husband. I had just spent the last week at my parent's house and felt I needed to describe verbally all that happened in order to process it all. I told my husband the story of my last conscious chat with my dad in the middle of the night, just four days prior. I had asked him for a sign so I would know he was okay in his new 'home.' I didn't know what was possible, but I was willing to believe in possibility.

"You never responded to my email about a sign, Dad," I said to him. "Well I better get right on that then," my dad joked. I suspected he hadn't responded to the email because he was afraid to disappoint me if it didn't come to fruition. "How about a sudden wind or a leaf in my face, Dad?" He grunted in what I deemed disapproval, so I offered instead an encounter with a random animal out of the blue (both my dad and I shared a love for animals and nature). He didn't respond to that at all verbally, so I offered another. "How about a deer in my direct walking path, Dad?" "What color?" he asked. "Well brown of course, Dad!" He paused for a few moments and then said, "Everything will be near. You'll know in the eyes." I wasn't quite sure what he meant by all that, but I knew he was also in and out of lucidity. I laid back in my chair, grateful for this chat and my vulnerability. I told Dad I loved him.

As my husband and I walked through our favorite forested park fifteen hours after my dad passed, it was growing dark. It was also the windiest evening it seemed of the entire fall, an act of nature not entirely lost on me given one of the various sign opportunities I had offered my dad. I relayed to my husband the entire story above, and just as I finished, I hear barking coming toward me and a little black dog with no collar or owner greets us. He's barking, happy, and desiring to lead us somewhere. We follow for a bit but take a different path, and the dog starts barking loud and rapidly; he wants us to follow him! I begin to laugh a little as this is exactly one of the signs I offered my dad, along with these gusts of extreme wind in my face. The dog ran off into the cemetery of all places. We grab our vehicle and drive to the cemetery, in hopes to find the dog. He seemed to have a home and was well groomed and fed. I suspected he lived in one of the houses that outlined the forested park.

We eventually found the dog and his home, and it was fully dark as we headed back to our own house. As we turned a corner, there appeared a young buck in the middle of the road, right in our headlights. He didn't move. Just stared. And so did we. He sure was in my direct path, and not moving. A true deer in the headlights (lol)! He eventually slowly walked to the side of the road but stayed very near the edge. We pulled up right alongside him. I rolled down the window and just cried so hard. I told him how beautiful he is, I thanked my dad aloud, and simultaneously yelled, "I can't believe this is happening." If my dad were able to pick a deer for this moment, it would only have been a buck. The young buck stayed for minutes, completely comfortable with my proximity, crying, and yelling. "Do we have any food?" I ask my husband. "Just this beef jerky," he says. "Do deer like beef jerky," I ask? He looks at me blankly and so I just start throwing beef jerky at the buck. Again, he's completely undisturbed and just staring at me. He smells on the ground a bit, but I guess I learned that deer don't like beef jerky. Ha!

Except for a leaf in my face, all the signs I offered my dad occurred within a twenty minute window, and all just sixteen hours after my dad passed. Little did I know, this was only the very beginning of the pure magic that was to come; magic beyond all generally accepted possibility.

Nature defined: The natural forces that control what happen in the world; a creative and controlling force in the universe; an inner force or the sum of such forces in an individual; the external world in its entirety. (“Nature.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nature. Accessed 27 Aug. 2021.)

Nature's Way is beautiful. Read on to be inspired by the journey. The way is through the heart.

Open the Heart!