Personal Testimony: The Way Station
Signs and wonders surrounding my Dad’s final illness and passing
Back in November, 2022, I wrote a rare personal testimony for Heaven on Wheels, which can be found at this Link. It described the amazing encounter I had with a stranger in an Outback restaurant in December, 2006; this woman was told by God to speak to me about the fact that He loved me and would give me strength, which was certainly needed after my Mom had massive strokes a couple of weeks later and passed away in early January, 2007 without recovering consciousness. My 79-year-old Mom left my Dad, who was thirteen years older than her, a bereaved widower (something he never expected to experience given their age difference).
I’m going to give a backstory about my Dad after my Mom passed so that you will know a little bit about him. First, Steve and I started going to church regularly at this time after my Mom passed and also spending as much time as possible doing things with my Dad, who still lived independently and had a couple of helpers who cleaned his apartment and got him to the grocery store and another couple who brought him to his church every Sunday. We did everything else for him. Now, another ironic development in our lives is the fact that Steve left his regular full-time and high-pressure job in 2004 to start a consulting business. This, I believe, was also part of God’s plan for us. Steve was able to do a few things for my parents before my Mom died; after she passed, he took my Dad to doctor appointments quite regularly and they became great friends, going to lunch together quite often (they weren’t close for many years before this). Steve later did many of those tasks for his parents, becoming the caretaker of all of us!
My Dad was mentally sharp and he loved to travel and experience new things. He had some vision problems (macular degeneration), was very deaf (he really hated those hearing aids) and had to use a walker, cane or scooter to get around, but he was eager to go somewhere or anywhere! Steve and I had already booked a 12-day Disney cruise in the Western Mediterranean for June, 2007 before my Mom passed and we raced to get his passport renewed and get him airfare and a stateroom near us on that same trip. He was so thrilled! He had a marvelous time on that cruise and made friends with several children. We did a few other trips with him, including a short trip to Las Vegas, a river cruise from St. Louis to Red Wing (MN), and a Disney World trip with a short Disney Cruise (this was our last trip with him). My Dad and Mom and had saved quite a bit of money for her to live on after he expected to die first, so he paid for some of these trips. We also took him to so many events, including Rockies games, concerts, and other outings. He loved every minute of those events.
As I noted above, the Disney World trip, with a short Disney cruise to the Bahamas, was the last trip we took with him. This was in February, 2008. We noticed that he seemed distracted and very tired on that trip. We had another river cruise planned for May with him (Columbia river), but that, alas, never happened. In early May, he collapsed at his apartment (their security called us, like they did with my Mom) and he was taken to the hospital. We met him at the emergency room and found out from the doctors that he was extremely anemic. They admitted him to try and figure out what was going on.
My Dad had fought a battle with a disease known as Wegener’s Granulomatosis when he was in his mid-80’s. This form of autoimmune disease attacks the soft tissues, like the lungs, the eyes and the sinuses. I had a work friend die of this disease at the age of 48 after it destroyed his kidneys and lungs. We thought we were going to lose my Dad during this health crisis and he was on some serious drug treatments, like Cytoxan (a chemotherapy drug) and high-dosage prednisone. He eventually recovered and got well and was declared in remission, although he was weakened in the muscles and joints, requiring him to use assistive devices. My Mom was completely stressed out by this experience and she had her own battle with Stage 1 breast cancer to fight. These factors likely led to her anxiety and overstressed condition and eventually her fatal strokes.
Now back to Dad in the hospital in 2008. He had a blood transfusion, which seemed to make him more energetic, but the doctors found out the very next day that he had Acute Myeloid Leukemia, likely brought on by the Cytoxan treatment that he experienced fighting the Wegener’s Granulomatosis. The doctor told me that his age (he was 93 at the time) precluded treatments like radiation and chemotherapy; the doctor also said that this was a blessing for an elderly person as the advancing disease and death was painless (he would get more and more fatigued, lapse into a light coma and then pass away). We agreed to put him into hospice care, selecting a small hospice center that was not far from our home. I’m not a good caretaker type and I certainly didn’t expect Steve to be a nurse, so we thought he would get the best care with a 24-7 hospice team.
First interesting sign: My Dad had to wait a few days in the hospital before a room was available at the hospice. We were visiting him one evening and he kept talking about hearing a dog barking. We were on the 12th floor of a hospital with soundproof windows, but I went to the window to see if I saw a dog down on the street in the vicinity of the hospital (nope). A woman down the hallway had a horrible barking cough, so I asked my Dad if that was what he was hearing. He said no; he was adamant - he was hearing the bark that our dog Buzzy used to make. Buzzy was an Eskimo spitz that we got in 1970 and my Dad LOVED that dog, taking him for walks every day. Buzzy passed away in 1984, so this was 24 years later but Dad was certain he was hearing Buzzy (more on the dog sign later).
Second interesting sign: We had toured the hospice center before Dad was brought there and we liked one particular room (14) that was in one of the two hallways because of its location. The hospice building only had 18 rooms and was in an L-shape, with a courtyard, a dining area, an elegant common room, lots of beautiful flowers outside the rooms, and a bird-feeder outside every room window. Dad was born on June 14, 1914, so we thought that room would be ideal because of the numbers. That’s the room he ended up being assigned to!
Dad was pretty energetic for a few weeks after he arrived at hospice. He walked the hallways with his walker, ate lunch in the dining room, and enjoyed time with us every day. If they had not given him the blood transfusion in the hospital, he likely would have passed fairly quickly but he ended up living there almost six weeks. We had a party for him on his 94th birthday, inviting friends and family, and he ate pizza and gulped down a couple of beers! He suddenly went downhill the next day and passed away 10 days after his birthday party (those folks who attended that party could not believe it).
My next part of this devotional is the story of some of the signs and wonders and stories we experienced in that hospice. We started calling the hospice “The Way Station” (explaining my title) because of the strong sense of the Spirit of God moving through that place (it was a “way station” before the afterlife). We also found out from the great staff at the hospice that there are no atheists who can work in a place like that because of the strange and spiritual things that happen.
There were “waves” of death that would take four or five people at once in that small hospice and we saw a few of these happen while my Dad was there; he was also part of a wave when he finally passed. Some of the people who passed away in a “wave” were looking just fine a few hours before they died (sitting in a chair, chatting with people, or even walking the hallways).
We had a chance to talk to some of the young nurses one night while thinking my Dad was quite near death (he rallied for a few more days). They told us that no one was really fond of the night shift because the “waves” often happened at night and there were other strange things that would occur. One nurse told us about an incident with two patients who were at opposite ends of the L-shaped building. One of them called for the nurse and asked her who the child was outside the window smiling in at her. This patient even described what the child (a girl) was wearing. There was snow on the ground and it was cold outside and there was no one outside the window. A short time later a woman on the opposite end of the building called the nurse and asked about the child she saw outside her window. The girl was described identically, including what she was wearing! There were no footprints in the snow and both patients died shortly thereafter. Talk about chills up and down your spine!
Near the end, my Dad was mostly uncommunicative, but he was seeing people in the room (quite common as people approach death). He did a very interesting thing, however - he was smiling and petting the air in front of him for quite a while! I think he had a visit from a certain dog! I know some folks may think I’m a heretic, but I believe that God loves us so much that He would allow us to be together again with Him, our families who believed and our beloved pets in Heaven. My Dad also had a very negative reaction to one of the people he was seeing (he became very anxious and upset). We’re not sure what this was all about, but we found out later after he passed away that one of his sons from his first marriage had died in 2007 (interestingly, on my Dad’s 93rd birthday when we were on that Mediterranean cruise) and Dad had never heard about it. His other son was already deceased and his daughter from that marriage died of cancer the year I was born.
On the day my Dad died, we were there early in the morning. It was a beautiful and warm day in late June. My Dad had a habit of calling my Mom “Dove”, especially when she would start one of her nagging sessions (it would usually make her laugh). I was over by the window in the room, looking out at the bird feeder. Suddenly, one of the mourning doves that fed off the seed on the ground jumped up onto a small sill on the window and looked in, staring right at my Dad. A nurse was in the room when this happened and she was amazed. She said that this strange occurrence would certainly be discussed at their next staff meeting (they would go around after the business meeting and talk about signs and wonders that the patients or the staff witnessed).
Also on the day my Dad died, I was able to get in touch with one of his grandchildren from his first family. That grandson talked to my Dad and said that he was sorry that he never knew his grandfather very well (Dad was estranged from his two sons). My Dad’s face got a calm and peaceful look after that phone call (he was not communicating at that point but I held the phone to his ear). He had still been anxious about someone or something he saw in the room, but this relieved that anxiety.
After that phone call with his grandson, my Dad died that afternoon. He made sure we were out of the room, somehow. We decided to go to a nearby Subway for lunch and we slowly made our way out of the facility, chatting with the doctor and petting her rather unfriendly hospice dog. We got our sandwiches and decided to sit outside to eat. We finally walked back in and passed two nurses that were doing rounds in the hallway. I came up to Dad’s room and knew instantly that he had just passed away. The nurses thought he was sleeping. I also had the distinct sense that there was another being in the room, but the atmosphere seemed very benevolent and peaceful. We sat with him until the funeral personnel showed up. I have found it interesting that many people want to pass away alone with no one else in the room. This happened with my Dad, my Father-in-Law, my Grandmother (on my Mom’s side), and my Mother-in-Law. My Mom hung on at the hospital until we got there and then passed away with us and her pastor in attendance.
The experiences at that hospice have been a constant reminder to me that God’s ways are indeed mysterious and wondrous. They may seem like “small things” to my readers, but we were profoundly changed by our six weeks being near people that were near death and talking to other families about their experiences. When we cleaned out the few things in my Dad’s room at the hospice, we found a beautiful prayer card in the closet that someone had left that had me in tears (again) and I consider it another sign.
I miss my parents, but I am comforted by the fact that they were both believers and are together again in Heaven. I regret not doing many things with my parents (like traveling with them) when they were both still alive, although we saw them quite often and I called them almost every day. I sometimes had a difficult relationship with my Mom. I am grateful to the Lord for allowing me to get to know my Dad really well in his final months; he would be very quiet at dinners because of his hearing problems, so I would yap with my Mom and he would eat and happily sip his wine. I believe now that we should always look forward in this life, repenting, praying about regrets (and leaving them behind), and anticipating the glory at the end of all things.
Here are some of my favorite verses for those who are grieving or are appropriate to the experiences we had:
”Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.“
Proverbs 3:5-6 NASB1995
”Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.“
Matthew 10:29-31 NASB1995
”The Lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.“
Psalms 34:18 NASB1995
”God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.“
Psalms 46:1 NASB1995
”Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.“
1 Peter 5:6-7 NASB1995
”Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.“
Philippians 4:6-7 NASB1995
My next devotional is an introduction to a deep dive series exploring Psalm 22, a psalm of David that is prophetic about the suffering of Jesus.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Thank you for opening our eyes to the small signs and wonders of Your love during the final weeks of my Dad’s life. Although we were back in your pastures after my Mom’s death, those experiences and Your guidance and strength helped us in so many ways to grow closer to You. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org.