Suddenly, there he was. Unbidden. I hadn’t planned on making contact—but I guess that’s the point. We generally don’t consciously plan these things.

My bedroom was dark, except for the slight glimmer of moonlight slipping through the slats of the closed blinds at the bay window. My husband was downstairs reading, and I was alone for the first time in nearly a day. I slid into bed, softly resting my head upon my pillow, grateful to finally be able to rest.

And then, there he was, my father, right there, standing in front of the bay window. Two spirits, angels or whatever we wish to name them, but certainly higher beings, were standing at his side. The bay window, moonlight dripping through the blinds, framed them all in a soft glow.

At the time I was not surprised. Or frightened. To some that might seem odd. But actually, this all seemed quite familiar. It was as if somehow we had stepped into another realm, more real than my bedroom, where it was perfectly normal for us to come together. As if we had done this many times before.

I immediately acknowledged their presence with a nod, of sorts. They all responded, with a slight nod, they saw me. I felt love flowing between us, and we began communicating nonverbally. Time stood still as so much began passing through, not in sentences but as a large flow of love and understanding. Meaning, without the limitations of words. Mere words and sentences cannot even begin to describe the richness and the flow of our communication.

My father asked my forgiveness for failing me as a child. He had been such an absent father that years and years before I found myself another father. With this exchange between us, it was clear he knew I had given up on him and that he wished he had done better by me.

I felt the grief he experienced as a child. He was born into a family already carrying a long lineage of absent fathers. At age nine he was taken from his home on a small island in the Norwegian North Atlantic and brought to Chicago, a large inland urban city. Holding all the father loss, he then lost his home, the ocean he loved, his name, and his language.

With this exchange between us, it was clear he was not making excuses for his absence. He owned his mistakes, his losses, and asked for my forgiveness. I saw his humanity. I asked his forgiveness for giving up on him. He forgave me and asked that I forgive myself. And as I forgave myself, I experienced my humanity.

I cried for the first time since learning of his death the day before. The tears were sweet with love for my dad. All the way down deep into the marrow of my bones, I forgave him. I became aware he did love me after all.

But somehow that was not what was important to me anymore. I experienced a forgiveness of all humanity. My heart opened and I felt a great love connected to all of life itself.

Sweet with knowing that this love is and has always been forever. The brief moment of pain in this lifetime only adds to the wonderful sense of love from all of eternity.

This experience changed my relationship with my dad. And it changed me.

Dad’s personality here on earth could never have felt and conveyed such a deep level of love and desire for forgiveness. But that evening, with help from the other side, he was able. It was then when I began to separate the man I called dad from the man he was separate from being my dad. And paradoxically, to see them both as one. I believe I began to grow up then, and began to see him face to face.

One spirit remembering his life in a human body trying to do the best he could as a father and a man and facing another spirit in a human body trying to make human sense of it all.