Michigan Summer of 1993 I was 24 years old and living with my Dad. It was right after my Junior year of college and the July heat was feeling a bit muggy. One evening I went to bed early because we celebrated a friend’s birthday the night before way into the early morning hours. Our house was a small two-bedroom with a quarter-acre garden and all the windows were open to let in some air. Around 10 o’clock, I heard a woman’s voice at my window desperately calling my name and trying to wake me out of a deep sleep. I did not recognize her but she said my Dad had been in a bad car accident and that I needed to go to the hospital. It was a twenty-minute drive but I knew it well because at the time my Father was the director of the psych ward at Saginaw General.
The next thing I remember, I was standing in the emergency room looking into a curtained-off area where my Dad was propped up in bed wearing a hospital gown. His abdomen was distended and the life was gone from his body. A priest was in the room and I could tell right away that my Father did not survive the accident. I learned later that the impact was fatal. He died immediately on the scene and I recognized that the hospital staff must have prepared his body for viewing. I was there to identify him as my father, Donald Raymond Brown. That is the last thing I remember before I ran from the room and into the parking lot where I managed the drive back home.
I don’t recall what the time was when I made the first call to my grandmother who lived a couple of hours away. It was quick and painful. There was not much either of us could say before she dropped the phone and collapsed on the floor. Her husband picked back up only to say that they were on the way. My next call was to my Mom. They had been divorced for twenty years but I didn’t think I could break the news to my sister. It was a terrible and long evening. Around 9 am the following morning, I finally laid down on the couch exhausted. My eyeballs felt like sandpaper as I continued to cry but the tears had all dried up. I must have surrendered to sleep at that point.
My next awareness is this vision I have of my Father in the garden. It is a sunny day in the dream but he is in the same hospital gown and not standing but hovering above the ground. His smile was big and beautiful. I reached out my hand to his but it was as if we were numb to touch and his words were not reaching me. During his life, he worked as an advocate for the hearing impaired so I signed to him using ASL “are you okay?” He returned with a “yes.” He asked me not to worry and said that he was alright. I woke up with a sense of peace and from that moment on, I have never worried for my Dad. I have missed him and mourned him but I have always known that he is okay.