My Bridge to the Afterlife

My Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer in the spring of 2020 while the world was in the midst of covid lockdowns. I live in Virginia, but my entire family is in Oklahoma. My Dad was terrified I would get covid and give it to him and my family if I traveled there, so I relied on video chats to check in on him.

For eight years leading up to this, I had immersed myself in the world of natural remedies and food as medicine. I had listened to numerous alternative health practitioners talk about healing cancer with natural methods and always said if it happened to me, I would take the road less traveled.

Although my Dad loved plants and the natural world so much, when it came to his cancer treatment he was all-in on the conventional path. He did everything his oncologist recommended. By winter of 2020, he had completed his treatments and was back to his usual tricks - up on roofs and underneath cars making repairs, tending to his garden, photographing his family and tooling around with his plethora of hobbies.

This was around the time the v a c c i n e s were being rolled out and he was first in line. Shortly after he received it, the cancer resurfaced with a vengeance and it wasn’t long before he was back in the hospital and out of treatment options.

I found a doctor near my parents that offered alternative cancer therapies, but by the time my Dad agreed to try them he was too sick to benefit from them. He ended up passing away a week before Father’s Day of 2021.

I stayed in Oklahoma for a few weeks after his death to be with my Mom and sisters. Before my Dad’s diagnosis I was already angry and frustrated with the medical community, but observing the dysfunction and corruption that is intertwined with conventional cancer treatment put all those feelings into overdrive. I felt like I had to do something to prevent this from hurting anyone else I loved.

During my stay I booked a reading with a Medium my sister had met with on a few occasions. My goal was to find out what I should be doing with my professional life. I knew it wasn’t interior design and that I wanted to help people find healing, but I just couldn’t figure out my next steps. 

I was skeptical, but needed something to take my mind off the pain my family and I were experiencing. What I encountered during my reading changed my life forever, as well as my family’s experience of losing my father and our relationship with the afterlife.

The Medium started out my reading with a meditation to ‘sync our energies.’ As she became quiet to start my reading, she informed me that a gentleman who had passed was asking to connect and asked if I was open to listening. Perplexed and wondering who this guy could be, I agreed.

She proceeded to tell me that the man had just passed and was apologizing for not staying around for Father’s Day. She was listening to him talk and interpreting into spoken words that I (a mere Muggle) could hear. He was saying my Mom’s name, Sharon, but it took her a while to get it, “Sh, Sh, Sherry? No, Sharon?” I was speechless.

He went on to tell her details about his time in the hospital, how he loved having his entire family there with him, and that he appreciated how we all wore charm necklaces with a train and a boot on them. During my lifetime I had only seen my Dad’s bare feet a few times. The rest of the time they were donned in work boots and he loved photographing locomotives, hence the two charms. He instructed me to have my Mom do certain things with his camera equipment (keep this camera, sell that one), and told us that he was fishing with my Grandpa, his father.

The personal detail she relayed to me was remarkable. No one could ever fabricate the information she revealed to me that day, and I left completely stunned and forever aware and in awe of how close our loved ones are to us after they leave their physical bodies.

Several days before my Dad passed, my husband and I were sitting with him at the hospital. He was still quite aware and conversational. I pointed out that the time was 11:11, and without acknowledging what I had said, he pointed toward the ceiling and told us that something up there looked very familiar. Soon after that, his pain became so unbearable that they upped his morphine and the hospice nurse met with us to prepare for the inevitable.

My Mom, sisters and I stayed at the hospital with my Dad each night, but my daughter and husband were staying at my parents’ house. The morning after my Dad saw ‘something familiar,’ my daughter saw HIM sitting on the sofa at their house and then again outside on the back porch - his two favorite spots. She told my husband and it perplexed us because my Dad was still alive, or at least his physical body was. 

I will always wonder when my Dad’s spirit left his body, but my guess is it happened well before he actually died. And that he paid a visit to my daughter very intentionally because kids are more open to spirits than adults have been conditioned to be.

I know this may sound completely wackadoodle to the average reader, but I’m ok with that. I know that if and when you need this information, it will find you. I cannot imagine living life believing any other way. Having my Dad with me whenever I need him has made losing him so much more bearable, and in some ways we’re closer than we were when he was alive. 

If you are going through the aftermath of a loss, I hope you can find comfort in knowing that you are fully supported, that your loved one is with you anytime you need them, and that the other side is nothing short of beautiful and magical.