Peaceful Reunion

You’re going to think I’m nuts, if you don’t think so already.

For months now, I have not slept well or often enough. Nearly all of my physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional energy has been focused in one direction. Exhausted, I went to bed early and struggled to catch the ever evasive sleep. Finally, I started to doze off, slipping from a conscious thought and barely into the outskirts of sleep. Then, shortly after that, I recalled vividly, the following. Writing just after midnight.

So last night I had a little sleepy interruption. Some would call it a dream but I don’t know when conscious thought ends and dream state begins. Either way. As I was dozing into sleep I thought I heard a voice say, “Hello!” In my sleepy state, the voice paralyzed me because the voice was unmistakable. It was my Dad. I was laying on my side and I slowly turned to look over my shoulder at the origin of the sound.

The foyer at Dana Farber. April 16, 2021. It’s snowing in Boston. One of the saddest days of my entire life. Rob would have been to my left in his wheelchair. As we waited in line to check in for his appointments I captured this view. (C) 1inawesomewonder. 2021.

In the moment I was standing in the sunlight on a street outside of a glass windowed wall of a building that looked a lot like Dana Farber. I saw two people sitting together on a bench inside the foyer, behind something like several different layers of glass, back in the shadows. The bench they sat on was the same wooden bench that I sat on by myself on Thursday at Elliot Hospital while making phone calls in arranging Rob’s move to Community Hospice House. The distance, the light, the shadows, and the layers of glass made them appear somewhat faded as in an old photograph or a distant memory. The two people sitting on the bench were my Dad and Rob. Both of them were grinning like mischievous kids playing a lighthearted, if not heartwarming prank. Dad was waving his right hand at me and holding a smart phone in the other. I could see that the screensaver on the phone said ‘Rob’ on the display, like he received a call from Rob, or he was holding my brother’s phone. There they sat together, and smiling like their wonderful escapades had just begun.

I sat up, awake, and stunned. My heart was beating faster and faster. I looked around for a source of sound or movement, looking for anything that would have revealed a source of coming or going. Nothing. Dark. Silent. As I put that brief mental picture through the analysis of my now very awake mind I smiled and started to cry. Tears of joy at the thought of their heavenly reunion, a specific event that I’ve been praying about for awhile now. And tears of sorrow, as in my loss, our loss, in continued life here without my brother, or my father.

I truly don’t recall anything like this ever happening to me before.

I have been praying and praying, more than ever. Perhaps more importantly, I have been submitting to a power far greater than me more than ever. Submitting to my Lord and Saviour. Someday maybe I will take the time to write about all of the arrangements and realignments that have happened recently, that have positioned themselves not so coincidentally just as I had prayed for them. More likely these things have always played out according to His will. Maybe I just started getting onto the correct frequency to better understand these displays of awe and wonderment. Thank you Lord.