It was both touching and validating, as it was so similar to a story from when my father died. I was 13. He was a physician also who died of cancer. After the last rights mass at our home, everyone said their goodbyes, but I could not. I couldn’t kiss the forehead of that cold lifeless shell of a person. Afterwards, I felt intense pangs of guilt for not kissing him goodbye properly,like the rest of the family. it just didn’t feel like he was in that shell. His paternal, ever caring, ever watchful spirit had left.

As my big brother and I lay on the family room sofa, waiting for the hurst to come and take his body away, we looked up through the glass doors of our family room, past the pool area and up onto a hilly 1/2 acre where my father had planted numerous fruit trees. It was our special place to go on Saturdays to pick plums, have picnics and just be at peace in the Sonoma county sunshine. Around it, my father had built an 8′ white fence to keep the deer away from the fruit trees…. But this morning, right after Dad passed, a 12 point Buck lay there, right in the middle of our special hill…a splendid masculine, beautiful animal facing down into our home, watching us, proudly, and peacefully. After about 2 hours…When the hurst came to take my fathers body away, and as the orange light of dawn began to break through the darkness, the Buck left.

Our priest who had just implemented the last rights sacrament walked into our family room, with a book in his hand. It was the daily scripture around which every catholic priest around the world that day would center his homily. That morning of January 17th, the scripture read: “As the deer yearns for running water, my soul yearns for you, the God who is my life, When shall I see the face of God?

It was then that I knew a sign was being sent to us: that my father in fact was not in the hurst or in the shell of humanity being sadly carried away… that he was in fact with God, and that beautiful, powerful animal was there to tell us so.

Dena and Roger, our angels communicate in such subtle but glorious ways… to the hearts and minds who are sensitive and open enough to hear them.

… and WE most certainly have.

Yes, he left a powerful legacy!
Mom/Gram Kemp