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Dad's Sign

Leeann, NSW, Australia
September 2005

In 1996 my best friend at the times mother was in hospital with a list of different illnesses and had lapsed into a coma. I was in daily contact with my friend and told her that if she needed me day or night, no matter what time, all she had to do was call me and I would be there.

I lived by myself in a 1 bedroom flat and regularly my boyfriend at the time would be at my house. This particular night he was messing around with my cordless phone telling me he was going to ring another country, so I took it off him and put it behind the lounge. Later that night when he left I forgot about it and went to bed. NOW I need to explain at this point that I always took the phone to bed with me because if I am asleep I don't hear the phone when it is in the loungeroom as there are two doors before my room (one being a hall door).

About 4am I woke up to someone shouting my name at me, I sat up in bed with my heart going 100miles an hour and was convinced that someone was in my flat. I got up, heart still pounding and searched the flat to find no one there, which shocked me because I was sure of what I heard. I jumped back into bed wide awake and rolled over trying to go back to sleep. I had my eyes shut for about 10 minutes when I heard someone shout my name again, but not as loud. By this stage I had the creeps and was laying there freaking when I heard the phone ring, it was my friend and she said things were not good with her mum and can I come to the hospital.

Jumping in my car and racing to the hospital I was half way there when I started to think about what woke me up and how I would never have heard the phone if I was asleep. When I arrived at the hospital my friend, her father and three brothers were around her mum's bed holding her hands and talking to her (she was still in a coma). One brother told me that the doctor had told them she doesn't have much longer and that if there was anyone that they wished to contact to be there they should do it now. He said that my friend had wanted to call me so he passed his phone over to her and said she will have to go downstairs to turn it on and make the call so it doesn't effect the equipment. It was then that I realised that the 1st time I was woken up would of been when they had that discussion in their mum's room with my phone ringing at about the time it would take to get the lift downstairs to make the call.

My friends mum died the next day, but I will never forget how her mum woke me to be there for her. I will make note though that the voice that woke me was not her mothers, in fact I can't recall if it was a woman or a man, I know this sounds strange but it was just a voice!!

In January 2003 my father was diagnosed with a kind of lung cancer. He has never smoked, it was brought on by a condition called sarcoidosis, a fibrous growth on the lungs that 1 in 10,000 men between 25 and 40 can get. Dad was not only unlucky to get it but it wouldn't go away and had to have it monitored for the next 45yrs. Basically his oesophagus and his lungs rubbed together and caused a tumor (I am explaining this as dad use to get annoyed if I told someone he had lung cancer, so out of respect I have explained it).

My dad didn't believe in the afterlife and as he put it "when your dead, your dead", and use to laugh at me when I would tell him things. One day I said to him, ok, which ever one of us dies first has to try and send the other one a sign, he scoffed at the idea, but eventually agreed.

After his diagnosis in Jan 2003 my brother and I took dad home where we all lived and vowed we weren't taking him back to hospital no matter what. The doctors gave him 3 months, he died 3 weeks later with my brother and I with him, holding his hand all night and talking to him (he was in a drug coma since earlier that evening). He loved us so much and worried about us all the time and I could feel him holding on for us so I told him that it was ok for him to go and not to hold on for us. He died shortly after.

The funeral was 3 days later and I was very distraught, so my friend drove my car to the funeral with my brother and another friend.

After the service I jumped straight in the back of my car as I wasn't feeling like talking to relatives as we still had the cemetery to go. A friend jumped in beside me and my friend that was driving got in and waited for my brother. I have a Toyota Celica that I had just brought 4 months before and it was getting quite hot in the back with no windows to wind down. I wished my brother would hurry up so we could get going and turn the air-conditioning on.

He finally jumps in and comments how hot in is as we start to pull out behind the hearse and head for the cemetery. He and I say at the same time, "put the air-cond on" and when my friend does we all notice that all the lights on the air-conditioner started flashing, it does not normally do this, whats more it only did it while following the hearse, not when we left the cemetery nor ever again... whats more my dad was an electrician.

We all think it was dad and his sign.

I have had other encounters since, mostly electrical and its when I am talking to Dad. Recently I have been through radiation and chemotherapy for cervical cancer and would feel Dad with me on chemotherapy days worrying about me as usual....

Thank you for reading my experiences and I would have loved to write more, but I am still getting use to my computer and don't type that fast. Yes, sad to say I am 33 and basically computer illiterate, sorry gang....LOL

Leeann, NSW, Australia
00:00 / 01:04
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