The Raccoon

The Raccoon

© Janice Bumbalough Marler

STRANGE PHENOMENONS

“You have a telephone call officer.” “Who is it?” “She said it was your sister and to tell you it’s urgent.” Norma told me it was imperative that I come home immediately. “Dad is dying and we don’t know how much longer he has to live. Hospice has been called in.” “Joyce, put the phone up to his ear so I can tell him I love him.” She did. “I love you.” “I love you too.” His breathing was labored. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. You hold on.” “I’ll try.”

Someone contacted my supervisor. He was a believing man. He believed in healing and speaking in tongues. “You need to stop this crying. Everyone is watching you.” What did he expect? I had just been informed that my father was on his death bed. I don’t know about him, but I cared, and I loved my father. “You don’t need to go to Tennessee. You’ll see him again. Why do you feel that you need to leave in the middle of your shift?”
How insensitive could this man be? His only concern was filling my post and how he would have to answers to his superiors.

I was working for Wackenhut Security Forces in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. I was a good officer and I knew it. “You’re upsetting the employees with your crying. Go and get yourself together and get back to your post.” Dave lost his own father. I can only imagine how he reacted. I am not a cold, unfeeling Christian. I raised my voice to him, “Look, whether you like it or not I am going to Tennessee after I get off. Do what you want to me, and don’t expect me back until It’s over and he’s buried.” Security jobs are a dime a dozen and good workers are hard to find.

I had been a police officer, retired, and I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding another job.

My supervisor didn’t frighten me, but he disappointed me. He knew me to be a Christian because I had gone with him to one of his group meetings.

It only took me thirty-minutes to get home after work; it would take me another hour to pack my luggage, change clothes, and get on the road. Then it would take another thirty minutes to get back to the Triangle and pick up I-40 East. That would have been too easy. I took I-40 west. A half hour into the drive I realized what I had done. After being told about my father, arguing with my supervisor, working an eight hour shift while distraught had worked my last nerve. How could I have done something so stupid? My emotions were in fourth-gear. I pulled myself together, turned the car around, turned on the radio to soft-rock music and began the long trek to my country homeland. My worn out body was operating on adrenalin and I refused to give in to the weariness. If I gave in, I might not have made it to Tennessee in time to tell my father, in person, how much I loved him in spite of our differences.

What normally takes seven or eight hours to drive the four-hundred miles always takes me twelve. It must have been somewhere around nine-o’clock central standard time when I pulled into my parents driveway. I had been awake for over twenty-four hours. As a police officer I had been conditioned for long exhausting hours. I was fatigued.

Losing a parent is entirely different than any other kind of stress. Death does strange things to people. Death should bring families closer, but in a lot of cases it drives them apart. I had no idea what death would do to our family until my father passed away. I was in for the shock of my life.

“It’s your turn to watch dad.” My sister proclaimed. “For crying out loud!
I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours and I just drove four-hundred and thirty some miles. I’m not a robot! Let me get a few hours sleep and I will be glad to.” I knew the pressure was getting to her too. It was taking its toll on all of us. Mother was in her own world. She had Alzheimer’s but she knew something was amiss. Several members of the family had already dropped by, and church members brought covered dishes.

The Hospice nurses had arrived prior to my awaking. One nurse took me and my and sister outside onto the back deck. “Whatever you do, do not say anything when he takes his last breath. The dead can hear.” I asked her how she knew that. “Because people that have had clinical death have come back and told us what they heard.” My curiosity was peaked. I had heard this rumor in the past, but until now no one had confirmed it for me.

Someone had converted the first bedroom, located across from the small bathroom, (normally my room), into a hospital room. Twin beds had been exchanged for two hospital beds. Dad was in one and mother slept in the other. He always called her his ‘baby’ and wanted her near him.

“It’s your turn to stay up with daddy tonight. I need some rest.” “Not a problem.” Our father was in a lot of pain and agony. We had been giving him morphine but he was still lucid. I got a pillow and a blanket to make a pallet on the floor between their beds. Mother was sleeping soundly. Dad and I had been talking about nothing in particular when he broke wind. “I’m glad I wasn’t standing behind you. You would have blown me into the other room.” He laughed so hard it brought tears to his eyes. This would be the last time I would hear his infectious laugh. Every time he would get tickled about something he would laugh until he cried.

Dad had the most beautiful blue eyes. His once dark black hair was now silver. He was a tall, handsome, man. He had never been a heavy man but did have a pot-belly. Now he had dwindled down to a more slender frame. Dad was always meticulous about his clothes. Whenever he and mother went anywhere they had to dress in the same colors. If he wore blue, my mother did too. Wherever they went, they looked as if they had walked out of a fashion magazine. If I went to the store with him, he expected me to wear a dress or a skirt. He wasn’t happy if I went in blue-jeans. When he passed, we dressed him in a blue suit to match his blue casket.

I recall a time when fashion dictated mini-skirts, shorter dresses, and shorter skirts. I was taller than my mother and sister. It was a Saturday and he didn’t like what I was planning to wear to church that Sunday.
He took me all over Springfield to find me a dress that would come below my knees. None could be found. “That does it. When we get back home you’re wearing one of your mother’s dresses.” I tried on every dress she had in her closet. All of them were above my knees. He gave me a handkerchief to put over my lap in church. He was just too funny.

Around midnight he sat up in his bed and began talking to someone in the upper right hand corner of the room. “How did you get up there?” I heard him ask whoever it was. “Who are you talking to?” “Why it’s Eula.”

He thought I could see her too. Aunt Eula had passed away in nineteen-ninety one. This was nineteen-ninety five. O.k.; I got up and immediately grabbed a pencil and a tablet. He would say things like, “I declare.” Or “You don’t say.” In my excitement I recorded everything he said but neglected to ask him what she was saying. I regretted this later.

He began shooing something out of his way. “Get!” Whatever it was irritated him. He kept saying, “I want to go home.” I knew what he meant. It wasn’t his earthly home; it was his heavenly home. I told him it wouldn’t be much longer. Daddy knew it too. He wanted his baby. He told me he needed to tell her something. I woke mother up and sat her on a chair beside his bed. He took her hands in his and began telling her how much he loved her. I left the room so they could be alone. I felt they needed their privacy.

Around three o’clock I heard a rattle in his throat. There’s a word for it but I don’t recall what it is. I went into the living-room to wake my sister and tell her what had just happened. She went out onto the deck to smoke a cigarette. Now we watched helplessly as our protector lies on his deathbed. He wants to go home but is afraid of taking that last breath. No matter how brave we think we will be when death knocks on our door, we cling desperately to that little thread of life unwilling to let death across the threshold.

Mother was still awake so we placed her in her recliner in the great-room while we tended to dad. I smelled rotten garbage when I opened the kitchen door to the garage. I turned on the garage light to see where the odor was coming from. I had intended to place the soiled chuck in the trash can, but was reluctant when I saw ‘it’.

I’m not sure I believe in omens but locked in the garage was a baby raccoon. He was adorable. Never had a creature from the wild slipped into the garage before. A few hummingbirds found their way in and built nests, but nothing large. It was strange that of all nights, he chose this night to pilfer. Mr. Raccoon had been a busy little fellow. He had ransacked the trash cans, left his footprints all over the cars, had paper strewn all over the place, now he was laying on top of one of the shelves dad built to hold all kinds of things, eyeballing us. He must have snuck in before we closed the garage door for the night. Not at any time did he try to attack us.

We thought mother would enjoy this little varmint and took her to the garage door to see it. It gave us something to laugh about and relieve our stress if but for a moment.

Alzheimer’s patients have long term memory but not short term. I was surprised, when a couple of years later, she would ask, “Where did the ‘coon’ go?”

I had contacted my children that Saturday to let them know they needed to come to Tennessee. Pat told me she would come for the funeral, but she would stay in a motel located not too far from the house. All three of her young boys would accompany her.

Our father passed away that day. I walked past his door just in time to see him heave a heavy sigh. That was it. That was all there was to it. He had gone home just like he wanted to.

When my daughter saw my father in his casket she gasped. I asked her, “What’s wrong?” (The man in the coffin didn’t look like my father or her grandfather). “That’s the man that came to our room at the motel. The boys saw him too.” This affirmed my suspicions that there is life after life.

There was five years difference in mother and dads ages; there was five years difference in their deaths. I am certain they found each other again.

When I returned to North Carolina, I was so intrigued with what I had witnessed that I went to our local library and found a video about Life after Life. The man that wrote the book lives in Nashville, Tennessee. These were documented facts about people that had died and came back to tell what they had experienced. They told how they could hear when everyone thought they were dead.

I am a Christian and I believe that there is life after we pass on; there is hope. I only pray my children are careful what they have to say about me when I go. I will hear them.

Story ID:	2153
Written by:	Janice Dolores Marler (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Family Memories
Writers Conference:	$500 2007 Family Memories Writing Project
Location:	Wake Forest NC usa
Year:	1995
Person:	The Raccoon