I haven’t written about this because it is something I will not share. It was intended for me alone. I know this because I saw the decision that he made while thinking about whether or not to flee. Somehow, I startled him. He did not readily know when I walked into the room, intruding upon their very intimate conversation. I have written down this conversation, not needing to, it will never be erased from my mind.
~~~
When I walked into my father’s bedroom to check on him, he was, what I assumed, talking in his sleep. “I understand” is what I first heard him say. I approached the bed where he was lying on his back but somehow turned to the side of the bed reaching out to what I can only describe as a presence of something, or someone that was nearby. He continued, “I’m ready.” At that I froze. “Yes… I know you’re here” he said.
My mind jumped to thinking that he was definitely talking to someone. I assumed it was my step-mother there by his side, comforting him, telling him she was on the other side and that it was time for him to go. As soon as I thought this, I knew definitively that my assumption was wrong. Not only was this not her, but it was not a woman, and seconds later, I realized, not human.
I don’t know how to describe it. There is no way in the human experience, let alone language, that makes this easy. I suppose I could say it was a vision, however there was no seeing him. I could say that I felt him there, but how would that explain how I knew what he looked like. There was actually nothing etherial about him, he was solid, but also like a shadow of light, or a reflection in the water.
I stood there. I had walked in on a conversation, somewhere in the middle of it, and it only took two seconds for me to instantly see him sitting at the foot of the bed. He was turned with his back partially to me, leaning toward my father, his hand resting upon his knees. He whipped his head around to look at me. I had clearly startled him. He didn’t realize I had walked in. I froze. I was caught. We were both shocked momentarily, him with slight panic that he had been found out, and me with witnessing something that I should not be witnessing.
Somehow, in the silence and stillness of that moment, I was under the impression, that he looked into me, my being, and decided to go ahead and allow this to continue. I felt that he could have disappeared, for lack of a better word, and come back later. He could have erased my mind, probably not, but I had all kinds of strange thoughts at that moment. One of the strangest being that he was young, and this was one of his first jobs, again I don’t have the words, and he had been caught and had to make a split second decision about what to do so he would not get in trouble.
Things were quiet then, for a moment, and then I heard my father say, “It’s okay” and it was the way he said it, he was comforting this young angel whom I still thought might be worried about something. I had the feeling that he was offering to give my father more time if that’s what he needed. This I do know, I don’t know how. My father reassured him again with, “It’s okay. I’m ready.”
I knew I should be walking out of the room. I should have been walking out of that room for what felt like hours ago, when this interaction only took about twenty seconds, but my curiosity got the better of me, I could not contain myself. “I’m here dad.” There was only silence. At this point the angel was gone, and I simply had to know more, “It’s your daughter.” There was another bit of silence and what followed was the humorous confirmation that revealed to me that I had intruded. He slightly exhaled and in a very perturbed voice said to me, “Yes… I know.”