by Marie Garner

Created on: February 24, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

My father died from Alzheimer disease several years ago. It was the same day as my husband and I moved into a new home. We were exhausted both from the move and the worry over my father. My parents lived an hour away and it was important to me that I was there before my father passed. My sister kept us posted by phone on dad's condition as we stoically continued on with the move. Our closing was that day and we had no other choice but to persevere.

I left my husband with the movers once we had vacated and cleaned our old home and drove myself to the long term care center were my father was dying. I was having trouble focusing on the drive and staying alert, my mind kept drifting. Suddenly I felt my father's presence in the car. The feeling jarred me alert as I had never had this sensation before and I felt he must have died else I would not have been aware of his spirit sitting beside me. Eventually the feeling passed and I continued my drive; but, again as I began to drift I felt his presence and was jerked again into attentiveness. It seemed as though he was guiding me safely on the road. When I finally arrived at his bedside he was obviously very ill but as I took his hand he looked at me with a knowing that I had not seen in years because of his disease. It was a tremendous gift. The closer he neared death the clearer his mind seemed to become. It seemed that he again recognized his family.

My youngest brother had quite a distance to cover and did not get there until an hour after I arrived. Our father's condition had not changed in the past few hours and my mother, sister and I decided to leave for an hour in order to have a quick rest. We expected that his condition would not alter in that time, and if it did we were to be called back. However, fifteen minutes after we left, with both his sons at his bedside holding his hand, our father passed onto the next life.

If he had been able to orchestrate the exact time of his death that would have been it, with only his sons at his side, and all of his children home safely. He was a man who liked to protect the females in his life and with us gone he was able to die in peace.

I find it amazing how a man who had lost the ability to recognize any of his family and care for himself could manage to assure his daughter arrived safely and die within a small window of time that would have been of his own choosing. How can this be explained within the confines of our physical world? He had deteriorated so appallingly that he did not even know who he was himself and yet he ended his life with seeming clarity.

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