The Friday before Thanksgiving 1999, my father was diagnosed with cancer. It had already spread from his lungs to his brain and there was basically nothing the doctors could do except to keep him comfortable. The duration of his life, he took like a real trooper.. he never complained, he developed a peace that he did not have before and he would not talk about dying.
One evening, he and I were sitting on his back deck smoking a cigarette. I asked him, if it were possible, that when something happened, would he let me know he was okay. Of course, he didn't respond and I didn't even expect him to. My dad passed away July 4, 2000 at his home, where the sun was shining out front and it was raining in the back.
I came back to our house to discover that my Christmas Cactus's-located on my front porch in direct sun had bloomed. Odd, there had been no cold weather, it was 90+ degrees. Odder yet, they have bloomed every July 4th since Dad passed away.
July 3, 2007 our son-in-law passed away. Laura, our daughter, told me she had gone for a walk the next day and a butterfly kept following her. Over the next several days, she had several encounters with a lone butterfly.
I went to Washington to be with her as quickly as possible. At one point, I was sitting outside the base hotel on a park bench and a lone butterfly landed in my hair.
Yesterday was Laura's 24th birthday. Yesterday there was a lone bloom on one of my Christmas Cactus's. It is in my bedroom.. it has heat-not a forced bloom, and it has relatively no light. It was the most perfect bloom. I like or have to believe this one is from Josh... Just can't remember if I ever told him the story of my Dad or not...
