Most people have different reasons for believing in immortality. Some believe in it on authority. Other on sheer hope. Some even appear to have communicated with the dead.
…
But people have had experiences. There are those who claim to have had visions of Mary.
I’m interested in such experiences with the dead, if anyone here wants to share. I’ve had at least three occasions of my own to sit up and take notice.
…
.
I had the experience of my father turning up in my room the night he died. He started with an apology, we argued and conversed, and then he gave this almighty scream and disappeared. Since he died in 1979, there’s a fair amount of the conversation I’ve forgotten, but the following narrative may give some idea of what happened. My Catholic psychiatrist thinks I saw him that night.
Narrative begins (to keep it within 6000 character limit, I’ve edited it) -
"So on the night of the 11th January 1979, his father visited him instead.
He remembered the setting well. It was January, hot in Brisbane, … all the windows and doors were locked …
The old double bed had a sag in the middle of it. He had spoken to the landlord about it, but the landlord has simply pointed out the lease said “partly furnished”. By which he meant that if Bob wanted a better bed, he could buy it himself. So far he hadn’t, and as a result he always rolled into the middle.
,
Then at some ungodly hour, he’d felt something shaking his back. He shrugged, and tried to go back to sleep. It happened again, almost as though somebody was trying to wake him up.
So he woke up and turned over. …
Then something misty began to appear in the corner of the room, near the bedroom door. It seemed to sharpen, and his father appeared.
He watched in amazement as his father approached the foot of the bed.
“Hello, Robert” he said. Yet Bob had the sense his father was not really looking at him, but was mainly focused on something behind him, and above his head. His father did glance at him, but then looked up again, almost enthralled.
Bob was startled. “How the hell did you get in here!” he demanded.
The question remained unanswered. “I’ve come to apologize for the way I’ve treated you” his father said. “We had no idea of what you were going through”. He looked at Bob again, then over his head.
Bob was angry. “You mean you had no idea what you were doing to me”, he replied bitterly.
At this his father appeared distraught, shook his head in fear, and held both hands over his face, as though he could not stand what he was seeing.
Then he seemed to recover, and he resumed looking above Bob’s head, as though gazing at something beautiful. Then at times he would again cover his face with his hands, and a tortured, frightened expression would come over his face.
His father looked devastated. “I’ve completely wrecked your life” he burst out. “And I did it deliberately!”
Bob broke the silence. He had been thinking about the years of intense verbal cruelty his father had lavished upon him, and the intense frustration that had resulted.
“Why!!” he demanded.
The answer was almost immediate.
“I was jealous” was the admission. “I didn’t have the same opportunities that you did. And it wasn’t easy for me either, you know. And I didn’t have the chance to see anything like this!”
“I know it wasn’t easy! Why do you think I was so patient! I knew that by the time I was twelve!”
His father looked deeply ashamed, and shocked, as though realizing for the first time just how much his son had understood, and from what an early age.
But his next reply came as a bit of a shock. “You weren’t very patient”.
Bob was taken aback. He’d thought he’d been very patient, considering just how vicious his father’s diatribes had been. He remembered the constant humiliation, the dripping sarcasm, the cruel comments that followed his every little mistake, or child’s effort to do something…
Not patient? Compared to what? He’d like to know. He wondered how many other people would have put up with so much deliberate contempt for so long, without cracking.
…
Bob turned around to see what his father was gazing at with such an enraptured expression. But all he could see was the plasterboard, behind which he knew was the brick wall at the end of the building.
He turned back to his father. “What is all this, a dream or something?”
His father looked slightly bemused. “No, it’s not a dream. I died tonight.”
Bob shook his head. “What?”
His father replied again. “I died tonight.”
There was mutual silence.
(Substantial section removed from narrative…).
And then his father seemed to be desperate. “Son, you’ve got to forgive me!” And a look of complete dejection came over his father’s face.
Bob was angry. “Why should I? You’ve spent the whole of my life …”
But he never finished. As he was talking, his father was turning to his right, Bob’s left, as though he could see something in the distance. He seemed to be taking fright, and said “No!”
Then louder “No! No!”
Then finally, he screamed and shook from head to foot and raised his arms in what appeared to be an attempt to ward something off, something hideously frightening, and cried out in sheer terror, “No…. Arrrgh!” It was so frightening, Bob started to cry out.
And then his father just disappeared.
And Bob was left staring at the bookcase, in the darkness, alone."
************************************ (End of narrative)
One thing I’m curious about is how we communicated. As far as I was concerned we were talking. But he had no lungs, voice box, or brain, as his body was several kilometres away.
So there it is.
