LDD

I just want to hold onto him. There's so many sweet moments from when he was in the hospital, but I don't want to depress everyone so I don't talk about it. Like, near the end, his lungs collapsed and I think he thought he was going to die right before they rushed in to do emergency surgery, so he kept waving me over. He couldn't talk by then (well. He could talk a little, but his voice was gone and his throat was raw, plus he had the thing in his neck to help him breathe.). I couldn't tell what he wanted, but I went to his side because I knew the medical teams would soon rush me out of the room. He grabbed my arm and kept pulling, re-gripping, pulling. His hand was moving up my forearm, and I figured he wanted me to lean down. And do you know what he did? He kissed my cheek. In his darkest hour, my daddy wanted to kiss me goodbye.

He didn't die, that day. I think he lived for another week or so? But I am so... impressed with him, that he was literally on the verge of death, getting an emergency procedure, and his thought was "let me kiss my daughter." He had done the arm grip thing before, but I didn't know what he was doing, then. I'm sad that I missed it, and I hope he didn't feel rejected. I know it must be frustrating to not be able to communicate well, especially when you've spent your entire life communicating for a living.

Part of me is calm about the whole thing, now. Some days, I can't feel him with me and I am extremely scared about what happens after we die. I fear that he just no longer exists- I fear no longer existing, one day. But other days, it's like he's talking directly to me. I can't explain it. It's not like a thought. It's not like hearing a voice. It's like I suddenly know and then I know it was him who told me.

I asked him, last night, why I can't feel him anymore. I heard nothing. I was so sad, and I kept telling him that I couldn't believe that there was a such thing as heaven, anymore. That the afterlife felt like something I was using to comfort myself more than something real. I'm telling you, I got no answer at all. Radio silence. Nothing.

Then today, I was walking through the house and thought I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. I paused and looked, saw nothing, and rolled my eyes. "Hello, the dead," I said sarcastically, and went to the kitchen to grab food. When I went back upstairs, I felt compelled to go into the bonus room, where Dad would work when he worked from home. Once in there, I thought about him, and I kinda just said, not serious at all, "Dad, are you haunting me?" And I swear, I heard an answer. Like, just suddenly knew. It was "No, I don't need to haunt. I got Jesus." Listen if you know me, you know I'm not that religious. But my Daddy was. He played piano for various churches during his life, and prayed up into the day he died. That was exactly the type of answer he would have given.

I know people think that we mourners make experiences like that up in our heads to comfort ourselves, but it came to me as if it was placed into my head. It wasn't like a thought, or like writing dialogue. And more than that, I went from feeling like "there's probably nothing after we die" and not being able to feel my dad at all, to immediately feeling... good? Like, I knew immediately that he told me that. It's not even my first time... he's done it before. Like, soon after he died, the garage was broken and wouldn't go down. I knew it could be fixed and I casually asked Dad to help. Moments later, the fix popped into my head. I knew to pull the red string on the garage door opener and realign the thing. That's something I wouldn't have known, but that Dad would. As evidenced by me not even knowing what the thing is called. (It's like a little level that has to fit into a notch so that the chain can move properly to pull the door up and down.) It worked, too.