This is a true story of what I experienced after my father's death recently.

My father passed away on January 24, 2004 while in a diabetic coma and suffering from a complicated kidney infection. Being an only child, I was so caught up with all the funeral arrangements, being strong for my mother and little daughter, and dealing with the post-death legal matters that I did not get a chance to grieve properly.

A month after he died, sitting in my room one night, the pain and emptiness of his death suddenly overwhelmed me, along with all the responsibilities that I was now forced to carry. With tears streaming down my face, I started to speak to my father, reliving the good times we shared as a family and asking him for forgiveness for the things I did not understand about his illness, and for guidance on all the decisions that I now had to make on my own.

Suddenly the light dimmed for about two seconds and came back on....and I felt a tremendous and wonderful sense of peace around me. With that, I retired to bed and, after praying, fell into a deep restful sleep for the first time in a month.

That night I had the most wonderful dream of my father and it felt so real. He sat on a couch looking thirty years younger (he died at 63), full of life and healthy and smiling broadly at me. Then someone whispered that it was time...and the next thing I saw was a beautiful rainbow shooting up to a blue, blue sky. It carried my father up to a platform from which thousands of little lights glowed. I instinctively knew these were the souls of the departed looking down on their loved ones here on Earth, just like my father was.

He wanted me to know that he was happy in a beautiful place and was there to look over his family until we met again. It was the most comforting feeling I had ever experienced.

Carlene Jubraj - Posted 3-1-04

cjubraj@hotmail.com

Trinidad and Tobago