There is No Such Thing as Coincidence

My father was incredible: handsome, very intelligent and very well-respected. He was a civil engineer who had graduated summa cum laude from ATM University in Texas. He knew about everything including medicine, which is why it was such a shock when he became bedridden and had to suffer from insulin reaction after insulin reaction. He was diabetic and finally, his body couldn't take it anymore. We three children stood there in shock when the last seizure made him sit up in bed, take a deep breath and collapse back onto the bed. My brother tried CPR but it was in vain. The right people were called. They mulled around. The body was taken, and I remember going out to the backyard looking up at the great expanse of sky and asking, "Why didn't you take me?"

The next few days were a blur of passages of people and forced memories. The one woman who stood out was the one who was in the single file of people giving their condolences to the immediate family at the funeral home and said, "He left his children so young." I wanted to scream, "He was taken! He did not leave us! He was taken " Every minute of every day was agonizing. I was his favorite, I was his "consentida". I felt hurt, angry, confused, abandoned, betrayed, and shocked. All the stages of grief that people take days or weeks to go through I went through over and over every single day.

About two agonizing weeks later, I was fast asleep one night when I heard a knocking at the front door. We lived in a wooden frame house with no insulation so my mother, brother and sister slept on mattresses on the floor in the living room heated by one electric heater. I sat up, no one else had stirred, so I got up and went to the door. It was my father. "Daddy, what are you doing here?" I asked. "Come with me," he said, "I need to explain some things to you."

He took my hand and instead of stepping down the steps of the porch, we rose. Gravity had no power over us. I felt completely attached and safe just from holding his hand. I did not feel fear with the ever-increasing height as we rose into the star-filled sky. I felt the strength and power that I was so used to feeling when he was with us, before as that lady so rudely put it, "he left us." He said, "Mijita, this is what it is like to be free. The body is just a shell. I had a bad shell but I am free of it now. You need to know that I will always love you. I will always be looking over you and watching you. I will always be protecting you but you need to know one thing. You need to quit crying over me. That is too much grief and you are burdening my spirit. I cannot fly and be free with so much grief over me. Please see how beautiful and wonderful it is to be free and be happy for me. Do not cry anymore. I am free." I will never forget feeling the flapping of my nightgown on my legs as we flew free in the night sky. The stars twinkled and glowed in the depthless sky above me and below was the wide expanse of farmland my father toiled on from sunrise to sunset every summer on a tractor. He returned me my to my front porch and I enjoyed the real feel of a hug from him once again. Whether that was a gift from God or him or both, I do not know, but I will never forget I was allowed to feel the physical sensation of a big hug one last time. I went back to bed and slept a relieved and free sleep.

The next morning I awoke and remembered my "visit". I ran next door to tell my aunt, his sister who adored him too. When I opened the door to her house, she was sitting there with the most swollen, puffy and red eyes I had ever seen. "Aunt Modesta, what happened?" I asked. She said, "Your father came to see me last night and he was pissed. He stood there in the door and told me to quit crying for him because I was burdening his spirit and holding him back. He called me an unbeliever and stood there saying, "Look at me! Look at me! Unbeliever! Look at me and believe!" I was shocked. I collapsed onto the closest chair, crying and said, "Meta, he told me the same thing last night. Not to cry for him because I was burdening him and he needed to be free." I walked over and hugged her and we both knew that it was not a coincidence that we would both have the same dream about the same visit from the same man with the same message on the same night. I have had a few people tell me that my dream was a coping mechanism from my unconscious mind meant to relieve the burden of the grief that was great for a twelve year old girl. I also had a drunk girl tell me once that that story "was great and all but it was just a dream and my way of dealing with the death" of my father. I know what I saw, what I felt, and what my aunt felt and experienced and with all psychologist's justifications aside, that was a blessed visit that was too amazing to be called "a coincidence." Now when I go through a major crisis or am plagued by demons encouraging me to give up on life, I remember the words of my father assuring me that he will always be there watching over me and the amazing sacred visit bestowed upon us that night and it allows me to believe in the immortality of our souls and how love is eternal.