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Ten Things Every Dad Should Tell His Son
Aloha everyone,
My dad had Alzheimer’s and I had arranged for hospice the day before I left for the mainland. I hurried home after finishing the retreat in Sedona and was able to spend two days by his side as he transitioned. About an hour before he passed he opened his eyes and looked right at me. I could see the love and the gratitude. I know he knew I was there. I spent hours talking to him and spent the night before he died listening to his breathing on the baby monitor. I read him the story of the Rainbow Bridge again and again as well as some of the stories from my book Mastering the Toltec Way.
I used to love the TV show Touched by an Angel. There was no Tess or Andrew or Monica by his side but the room was filled with angels none the less. Interestingly enough I had opened my angel book to Archangel Azrael who is the angel of death. One of his jobs is to make a person’s transition as easy and pleasant as possible. His name means ‘he who helps God’ and he helps people feel safe and loved. I could immediately feel his love and have no doubt he helped with some of my insights.
I used to have a story about my childhood filled with abuse, anger and neglect but once I began to apply spiritual principles to my life all of that began to change. I was able to care for my dad in my home for the past nine months with love, compassion and a great deal of gratitude for the experience.
Over the years I spent a great deal of time forgiving and standing in a place of gratitude. While I sat beside my father as he approached death I understood that his only desire, all his life had been to feel loved. As a young boy he used to kill animals and yet I knew he was an animal lover. Sitting by his side I began to talk to him about that time in his life I realized he had to be cruel in order to survive so I told him I knew that he was really a very gentle soul. I told him I understood his actions and realized how much pain that must have caused him. I saw his love and gentleness and as I shared that with him a tear trickled down his check.
After he passed I did some prayer and energy work, washed his body with rose water and got him all dressed him up. He was the head of a Masonic lodge when I was a young girl so I put his apron on him and got to see it for the first time. It was beautiful!
The men that came and took away his body were wonderful. They wrapped him in a shroud and then covered him in a velvet cloth. They treated his body with such gentleness and respect. His death was an incredible experience. This Father’s Day I will have a memorial service to honor the man who gave me life. I love that man and am so glad we had this time together.
What a gift life is. It has given me the opportunity to love my dad and understand his actions from the perspective of love. Life is too short to waste precious moments judging others and closing our hearts to the love that always surrounds us. As they say in a Course in Miracles, we have two choices love or fear and only the love is real.
I love you daddy. I know you are swimming in a sea of love reveling in the experience and looking back, seeing it all through the eyes of love and probably thinking that was quite a ride.
With love, aloha, gratitude and sadness,
Susan
posted June 18, 2009 at 9:34 am
My deepest sympathies!
posted June 18, 2009 at 10:08 am
that was a great story my god bless you in may ways.
posted June 19, 2009 at 12:28 am
I send you my love Susan. I admit I will always be a father’s girl and I am so blessed to have been showered with a father’s love that has given me beautiful memories to look back and share with my son.
It is true that when we choose to stand with love everything else just disappear fear, pain, anger and even Alzheimers…
posted June 19, 2009 at 2:21 am
What a wonderful and beautiful experience you had with your fathers passing. I always felt it was an honor to be present when someone passed away.Thank you for sharing your beautiful memories and strong loving heart.
posted June 19, 2009 at 11:22 am
I too love my daddy,the finest person i ever had.Though he’s soo
strict,i am still glad we have each other.Knowing that there’s a
person who is there watching is enough for me,i don’t require much
of anything.My love and prayers goes to all my love ones.
posted June 19, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Susan that was a great story. I lost my mother 4 years ago, and my daddy is 84. He is a great man and goes out of his way to help others that need it. He takes in strangers and lets them stay in his home and gives them food to eat. His father died when he was in the 8th grade, daddy quit school to help support his mother and siblings. I have learned alot from him and still learning.
posted June 19, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Thanks for all your kind words, thoughts and prayers.
With love and aloha,
Susan
Angels really are everywhere, we just have to open our heart to them.
posted June 19, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Dear Angel Susan
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story.
YeSsssssssssss ……. I believe in Angels … and have been tagged as one !!!
Angels are everywhere !
Thanks !
leelee
posted June 20, 2009 at 1:27 am
that was wanderfulllllll….thanksss
posted June 20, 2009 at 9:44 am
Dear Angel Susan – Thank you for sharing your experience of the death of your Dad. It must have been very comforting for you to be with him during his last hours. My aunt died from Alzheimers 9 yrs ago & right before her final breath, I asked her if the angels were there with her & she said “yes”. I knew then her suffering would be over soon. God Bless.
posted June 20, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Dear Susan – I am so glad to have come across this post. My beloved dad passed 2 weeks ago and I’m finding myself walking around in a bit of a grief coma, despite knowing he was ill and really needed to go Home. I was with him when he died and thought it would be gentler…it wasn’t…I wish I could forget the last 5 minutes but they seem to be burned into my brain. I guess I was expecting to feel the presence of angels or maybe be honored to witness his spirit leaving – but perhaps I’m not as open or spiritual as I believed I was.
I’m glad for you and hope to feel as serene and as accepting as you seem to be. This experience feels humbling to me in many ways. I have a great deal more work to do, I guess. Thank you for showing up today, just when I needed you.
posted June 20, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Thank you so much for sharing your heartfelt story of your dad’s death,my dad passed away seven months ago from lung disease caused mainly from smoking.My dad and mom divorced before I was a year old so daddy and his mother raised me,almost everywhere dad went (fishing,camping,movies etc.)he let me go with him.I took care of him in my home until his passing,he was in the hospital when he died,I was by his side as he took his last breath and I could see the love and compassion in his eyes as he looked at me as if he were saying “I’m going home with the angels now to live with Jesus,I love you so much,I’ll see you again.” I know angels were in that room that night and they took him home.He was unable to attend church so he was babtised in the hospital,so I knew he was ready to go home.I’m a christian and I know I’ll see him again,I miss him so much but I know he’s ok now,he’s not hurting anymore. In honor of my precious dad on Fathers Day. I Love And Miss You Daddy. “Happy Fathers Day” Wilma!!!!
posted June 21, 2009 at 10:15 am
Thank you for sharing your stories and comments. I also lost my father last August 2008 and it was difficult but knew he was going to a better place. He would be with my mother and his family. I remember the last time I spent with him was to hold his fraile hand and telling him how much I loved him. He would squeeze back and I knew he loved me too. I miss you Dad and know your at peace.
Laura
posted June 21, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Wow!!! This was amazing. I lost my dad too. I hadn’t seen him in 17 years and got to know him in the last 10 months of his life. He was the dad I always wanted. Can’t wait to meet him in Heaven.
posted June 22, 2009 at 2:56 am
Hi Susan,
I too lost my father and every Father’s Day I miss him even more. It’s been 13 yrs. now and it sure feels like only yesterday. They say as time goes by it gets easier and sometimes I wonder if that is so because I miss him so very much. He was a very good man and would give the shirt off his back to anyone. I lost my father on my birthday and I remember when he said that I would have a big party on my birthday when he came down for a vacation the last time and would you believe I did my aunty had given me a surprise party when I took my dads ashes to his father’s grave. It was something I will never forget. Every year I celebrate another birthday I always have that one special thing that I share with my dad and that is something that nobody can ever take anyway from me.
I hope and pray that you will find peace in your heart and that everyday that goes by you know that your dad appreciates everything that you and your family did for him
Take care and God bless.
Aloha from Hawaii,
Sandy
posted June 22, 2009 at 8:54 am
My father passed away 2 months ago. This weekend was especially hard for us because:
1. it was a relatively simple operation that was supposed to see him out of the hospital in 2 days NOT dead after 3 weeks in intensive care
2. this was also his birthday weekend.
I was joking with a collegue who is also a Father’s Day birthday boy and about how we would give my Dad a Father’s Day card with a birthday gift OR a birthday card with a Father’s Day gift.
My Dad was not perfect. We weren’t an Ozzie & Harriet family. There were things I wish had been done differntly, very differently, but my Dad was there. We never starved and always had a roof over our heads.
I miss him so
posted June 22, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Aloha Sandy,
Of course I am still grieving the loss of my dad and I know it will take time. Yesterday I had a memorial service for my dad at the edge of the ocean. My friends gathered and I couldn’t read the quote I had written because of my tears.
I know that pain of loss and know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that light isn’t a train getting to run me over! On Tuesday I am writing a post that might help you with your feelings of loss and help you reconnect with your dad.
With love and aloha,
Susan
posted June 22, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Susan,
Thank you for that beautiful post! A very,very close family friend lost their Dad on the 11th of June. He was a wonderful man,some might say he was an angel himself. He suffered with cancer for the past year or so,and finally succumbed to it. My friend is 24 and her brother 28,the youngest child is a mere 9 yrs old. Her name is Stella. She will never get to have her Dad as she walks down the aisle,or graduate’s from high school,or goes on her first driving lesson,or any of the wonderful things that we get to do with our father’s as we grow older from child to adult. I am grieving more for her than I am for the loss of such a wonderful soul. I was relieved when he passed,as he had been suffering so terribly for so long. He is at peace now.
I loved this so much,because I love my Dad so much,and can only hope that as we grow older,I can be there for him in some of the ways that he has always been there for me. He is a silent man,but he is such a deeply loving person,and it makes me so proud to know that he is my Dad. I can’t imagine having grown up without him. He is our families rock!!
I pray that for little children like Stella,that they have the strength of someone around them like that of a father or grandfather. The love we experience from a father figure is without measure. You are in my thought’s and prayer’s today,and I hope that you can find peace in the memories of your Dad.
posted July 22, 2009 at 11:03 am
Dear Susan,
it is very sad to hear this. My own dad almost died about a month ago, this is difficult experience…
I wish You inner strength!
posted July 22, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Aloha Jurgita,
Thanks for your wishes.
I have found the death of my father to be a very powerful opportunity to open my heart to more and more love and surprisingly to expand and change many of my thoughts and feelings about life and death.
With love and aloha,
Susan
When I look at the stars I often think of each one as an angel sending the world its love.
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