Visitations

My dear mother died in March 2007, from lymphoma that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for too long.  The loss of her felt sudden, and almost unbearable.  She and my father had the kind of marriage that inspired everyone they knew, and, in the months and years afterwards, I watched my dad with more care than before, wondering if he'd follow soon after.  To my quiet joy, he took pretty good care of himself, keeping doctor's appointments, going to church, staying social.  But in March 2012, he fell, cracking his pelvis and striking his head.  My sister found him in his den, conscious enough to ask her to call 911, but in bad shape.  Surgery and weeks of rehab could not restore him to his former self.  He longed to drive again, to retrieve his autonomy, but it was not to be.

I visited that Christmas and then again last year, by which time, he was enduring other ailments, including a bum knee that no one seemed to be able to diagnose or treat effectively.  One afternoon in early January, we were sitting together in his den.  He looked me straight in the eye and said "I don't like being 88, and I don't want to be 89."  "Okay, Dad, noted," was all I could say.


Three days before his 89th birthday, he succumed to what was called "end stage COPD."  My siblings and I all had the same thought--that he had left to join our mom.  I was on a plane when he died, and when I landed I went to stay at his house.


The next day, my sister spotted two giant luna moths mating on our mother's miniature rose bush.  The day after that, while she waited for me in her car, two dragonflies appeared in front of her windshield, hovering and dancing for long enough to be carefully observed.  Then, a day or two later, she and I were sitting in the glassed-in "Florida" room when a pair of cardinals appeared, a shy, buff-colored female first, and then her brilliant mate.  They made quick, splashy use of the birdbath and then perched in the large hibiscus bush just outside--and stayed there.  Every so often they switch branches, but they seemed in no hurry to fly away, which was unusual because they could see us watching them.

A bad case of magical thinking, perhaps, but I was vastly comforted by these visitations of pairs of winged creatures.  They felt like loving communication.