The day my dad died...and lived

My dad, circa 1980, Nunley's Amusement Center.

My dad, top left, just over the third guy in bottom row. This was taken back
in the early 1940s in Ireland when he worked on the Irish Rail System.

August 26, 2014
Day 118

Today is the 15-YEAR anniversary of the day my dad died.  I can't believe it's already been so long, but in some ways, it all makes sense.

But unlike every other loved one I've lost, my dad's death was a one-of-a-kind experience for me.  I've told the story many times, but it always bears repeating!

I was on the Long Island Rail Road, heading home to be with him in what I was told was looking like his final hours.  He'd been dying of lung cancer for the past 8 months or more, and it was clear the illness would soon claim him.

Somewhere between Jamaica Station and Rockville Centre station, time stopped.  I've often quoted the one and only Robin Williams to say that mine was a total Na-Nu Na-Nu type experience.  I was in another state of reality I'd never been in before, and have never been in since.  It wasn't brought on by stress, and no part of what happened could be explained away by science, though some would certainly try to tell me as much.

My father's soul appeared to me as clear as day.  It wasn't that he was a ghost, or that I was asleep or daydreaming, or any other weird variance.  He was just there, standing or floating in front of me, in complete communion with me.

"Well, you're out of pain now," I said, and he nodded.

"Say hi to Jesus and Shakespeare for me," I requested, and he nodded and smiled this time too.  He smiled!  I had an instant knowing that he couldn't speak, so I didn't wonder why he wasn't.

And then, as quickly as it happened, he was gone again, and ordinary reality resumed.  I was back on the Long Island Rail Road train, and we were approaching Rockville Centre.  Though there were people around, no one was looking at me as if I'd just been talking to no one (this was before cell phones too).

Once my station came and I got off, I began running home to my parents' house, where my dad was in a hospital bed in the living room.  The house was only about six blocks away, and my sister had told me earlier that this was looking like the end, so I was running fast.  Halfway home though, maybe 2.5 blocks away, I stopped running.  It wasn't because I was out of breath, or scared about what I'd find at the house.  It was that I remembered.  I remembered he had passed!  I just saw his soul, and it was gone already, moving forward to somewhere other than my parents' house.

I walked in the house, and my family members were all sitting around the living room in tears.  I was told that my dad had just died a few minutes earlier, and without any hesitation, I assured them I already knew, that I'd just seen and spoken to him on the train.  I wasn't trying to impress anyone with this; I was just letting them know an absolute fact.  I knew my dad's body had died because his soul stopped by briefly to say goodbye.

Today is the 15-year anniversary of that day, and it's a moment in time (or nontime) I will never, ever forget.  On August 26th, 1999, my father died.  And then, quite beautifully, he lived.