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Did My Dead Father Come to My Aid?
My plea for guidance was promptly answered
There hadn’t been much activity in the bar where I worked that Sunday evening. I chatted idly with one of the few customers who had braved the February cold, until the conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the public phone at the end of the bar. I picked up the receiver and was surprised to hear my mother’s voice. She had called to tell me that my father had been taken in to hospital. The prognosis, she said, gave little cause for optimism.
My parents had divorced many years earlier, and Dad had remarried. It was his second wife, Helen, who had called my mother to relay the news, adding the ominous warning that we should prepare for the worst, as Dad was not responding to antibiotic treatment. I said that I’d arrange a visit with my brothers in the morning.
I got through the rest of my shift and went home. At around eight o’clock the following morning, my younger brother called at my apartment with the news that Dad had died during the night. The antibiotics still hadn’t worked, and pneumonia set in.
The passing of a loved one is always painful, but a sudden death, where family and close friends are denied the chance of a final goodbye, is particularly distressing. As I came to terms with the grim reality, I tormented…
