My father tells me that he’s happy now that he’s dead. Freed from the constraints of the body he lived in for 89 years, he slips me cues to the nature of the afterlife through dreams and words and even a prank.

Dreams of him began almost immediately following his death. He didn’t speak to me in them – that would come later – but he smiled, winked, laughed, cajoled. Swinging from his knees on a sort of jungle gym in one dream, he waved to me to do the same. I didn’t. Instead, I watched him, confused to see this side of my father, but also amused and encouraged. Right after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, my brother and sister and I were in another dream together in the Denver airport. Dad showed up offering us pot. And in yet another, he and I sat together atop a tall building looking out over a busy cityscape. Inching closer and closer to the edge and dangling his feet over the side of the building, he laughed at my warnings, fears, and general anxiety. He was already dead, after all. Playful and light-hearted, Dad was having a little fun with me. Teasing me to lighten up.

But my vivid dreams also demonstrated to me that Dad was hanging around. He was waiting for Mom. He would wait for 14 years.

In the two or three years before my mother’s death at age 100, the dreams in which my father appeared became more pointed and more and more about her. They were lively and memorable and took place mostly when I was there with her in her retirement community home in North Carolina. This was when he began to speak to me.

In one dream when I was there with Mom, I heard him calling me from outside. It was shocking to hear his voice, his exact voice, so clearly in this dream. And it was thrilling to remember what he sounded like now that he had been dead for over 10 years. In the dream, I walked outside to find him waiting for me, looking well and happy. We hugged and as I held on, he pushed me back a little. 

“Well,” he laughed gazing at me fondly, “someone’s going 90 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone.” And that made sense to me in the way that nonsensical things do in a dream. 

“What are you doing here Dad?” I asked. 

“Oh, I’m always here,” he said with a little wink. Then looking at me seriously, he repeated with more emphasis, “I’m always here.” 

On the next visit to North Carolina, I dreamt of him again. This time he didn’t speak but this dream, like the last one where I had heard his voice so clearly, featured a fun memory of his former self. I saw him sitting in the chair that had always been his favorite in their home. Dressed up in exactly the way he often was if he and Mom were going out somewhere, he wore a sport coat and tie, polished shoes, his full head of hair neatly combed. He was reading the paper, something he had always loved in life, and he held it open wide in front of him such that I couldn’t see his face.  I stood quietly watching him. Slowly, he peered out from behind the newspaper and flashed me that same bright smile I’d seen in so many of my dreams of him. I understood clearly, in the wordless way we do in dreams, that he was waiting for Mom, that they were going off together, and that she wasn’t quite ready. When I awakened, I felt I knew exactly what his message to me was: She’s not ready to die yet, but I’m waiting for her. And it’ll be a special occasion for us. That’s why I’m dressed up. 

For some reason, I never spoke to my mother of these dreams in any detail, or of the fact that I felt strongly that her husband of 62 years was waiting for her. That disturbs me now. 

One day I asked my mother if she had any regrets from her life with Dad.

 “Only one,” she said. “I could never accept the dementia. I always thought I could bring him back, that if I just reasoned with him, he would become his old self. But he couldn’t. Sometimes I got mad at him for it.” 

Had I shown her what he was showing me – his happiness, his patience, his loyalty – I believe that information might have relieved her guilt. Perhaps I didn’t because my mother could be somewhat dismissive of things like dream messages. The one time I did mention that I dreamt of Dad from time to time, she grew angry. 

“He never visits me!” she said. 

That made me feel as if I had bragged to her cruelly about the times he had come to me. I always wanted to share Dad’s messages with her but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. My mother was a formidable woman and, although we had a lovely relationship, I was perhaps a bit frightened to tell her what I believed about those dreams. I also wonder if I wasn’t hoarding this special relationship I seemed to be enjoying with my father. It felt so intimate. I guess I wasn’t willing to have it questioned or mocked in any way. 

Dad, however, would have none of that.

In what would be the last year of my mother’s life, my father took things into his own hands. At this point, I visited as often as I could, making the trip from Oklahoma City to Greenville, North Carolina every few weeks. She was remarkable for her age but still, she was slowly going downhill. Each time I visited, I wondered if it would be my last time with her. I always secretly hoped there would be another message from him. He had been dead now for 14 years. 

Eventually we had to move Mom into a little apartment at her community. The small house she had been in for many years no longer felt safe to us or to her. We wanted more people around her to check in regularly. And eventually, in the last few months of her life, she had to surrender to Assisted Living, as even her apartment became unsafe. But on one of my last visits to her when she was still in the apartment, things were unusually quiet. Mom dozed off frequently now. I would sit with her and read or maybe watch the little television that she insisted was “big enough” but that I felt certain she couldn’t see clearly. She wasn’t really able to get out too much although she often asked for a car ride around town, just to see what was happening and to be out and about with people. The pace was very slow in her apartment. And, to my disappointment, Dad wasn’t showing up in my dreams this trip. 

Mom had fallen asleep in the chair, and I decided to do a little cleaning up. I left the apartment briefly to take out the trash. When I returned, I found my mother sitting there, wide awake, with the phone in her hand. She had a puzzled look on her face. 

“We just got the oddest call,” she said. “A woman asking for Dad. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that he’s no longer here. She just kept talking. I think it was a recording.” 

“What did she say?”

“Well, she said that this was Dr. Brown’s office calling and they just wanted to wish John McCarthy a Happy Birthday. That was it.” 

I pulled out my phone to look at the date. August 11, 2016. It would have been Dad’s 102nd birthday. 

“Funny,” she said. “In all these years, I’ve never gotten a Happy Birthday call for him before!” 

Funny indeed! That rascal. Somehow he’s orchestrated this.

 There he was, reminding us to think of him today. He might even have been a little miffed that we weren’t paying attention to him. “Look at me. I’m still here. It’s my birthday.”

But Mom was puzzled. 

“What a weird coincidence,” she said. I realized that she didn’t have the sense of his presence that I had. I also realized that it was time to tell her all about these dreams. 

“Not a coincidence Mom,” I said. “Dad’s here all the time. Let me tell you about some dreams I’ve had since his death.”

She listened carefully as I told her about him telling me that he was always there. Then she listened even more carefully as I told her about him waiting for her, dressed up for their journey together. A big smile spread slowly across her face. 

“Do you really think it was a message from him?” she asked.

“Absolutely Mom. He’s been visiting me ever since he died. But now he’s just here with you. I think he wanted you to know that.” 

A little later the phone on the table next to her chair rang again. She dove for it, in hopes I think, that it might be another message from him. But it was my daughter, calling just to say hi. 

“Veronica,” my mom shouted into the phone. “Do you believe in messages from the dead? I think we just got one from your grandfather.”

When Dad arranged for Dr. Brown’s office to call in on his birthday, Mom’s life was almost over. Despite what was now becoming a rapid decline in her health, she fought on. She never seemed to allow herself to think about giving up, even as tired as she was becoming. But in retrospect, I hope and believe, these messages from Dad helped her to let go. The promise of seeing her husband of 62 years, of experiencing once again his humor and his love, both of which seemed to be intact beyond the grave, cheered her up. I hope they gave her a shot of courage and a measure of confidence that, once you get through the rough passage of death itself, everything will be OK. Maybe even fun. Perhaps they offered her something to look forward to at a time in life when there is very little to look forward to. She passed away almost four months to the day after Dad’s birthday message.

Since my mother’s death, my father hasn’t visited me once in a dream. He really was waiting for her and, once she was with him, they were off on whatever adventure they’re involved in now.

I was to have one more message from my father though, one last bulletin from him (until now at least) to confirm my beliefs. At a regular Saturday morning yoga class, I saw an announcement about a medium coming to another yoga studio in town and offering private sessions of communication with departed loved ones. I wasn’t sure about communicating directly with the dead through a medium, but was it so different from dreams or the odd phone call Dad had made happen? And I had recently lost a very dear friend. I made an appointment in hopes of hearing from her.

“It’s a man I’m feeling,” the medium stated, which disappointed me a little. Clearly not my friend.

“Could it be your father?” she asked. “He’s indicating a daughter to me.”

“My father passed away several years ago,” I said.

“Well, yes,” she said. “In fact, he’s pushed his way in front of a woman who was coming forward, a friend of yours perhaps who died not long ago.”

“Your father wants to tell you something. He wants me to tell you that you have gone further, done more than he could have ever imagined for you. He’s proud of you.”

Even though I knew how general this message was, how it was something any daughter would be thrilled to hear from a father, and not much of an insight perhaps for someone who claims to communicate with the dead, I believed it. The voice, the message, were of a piece with the father I’d come to know before, but especially after his death. As he neared the end of his life, and from beyond it, Dad had expressed his love in a variety of uncharacteristic ways. He’d shown his emotions and let down his guard. With this last little message through a medium, he demonstrated to me that the essential loving part of him lives on. And that the dead can be happy.