Life (And Death) With a Lovable Bonehead

Two Spirals Ascend within Spirit

One of Three

My father and I had a contentious relationship filled with word battles, shouting, and a few “come to blows”. He was a WWII Vet, with Patton’s Third Army in Europe and suffered PTSD silently as a maintenance drinker who kept to himself within our family. Strangers loved him, though. Underneath all that suffering was a kindly kid that had never emotionally matured.

I had a dog — PeeWee. At one point, PeeWee fell in with the wrong crowd of dogs and ate sheep. He had to be put down. My dad announced at the dinner table on the day: “I gave PeeWee to Yale University to be experimented on.”

I hung my head and thought, How could he have? What a bone head.

“I thought you’d be happy because you like science,” he said, proud of himself.

“Not anymore,” I said sadly and dejected as I lowered my head again.

He continued doing and saying bonehead stuff throughout his life from time to time.

He taught me logic so that he could win arguments. Based on his premises, I tacitly agreed with his conclusions. But I felt crushed, squashed like a bug, and confused. I didn’t realize that he was acting like an emotionally manipulative boss to gain the upper hand. But, he was ecstatically happy because he was right and the winner.

My first true love helped me diffuse the same argument that my father and I had during the Vietnam War. I said: “I feel war is wrong.” My father continued to use logic to tell me that I was wrong. My girlfriend interjected: “The feeling is neither right nor wrong; it’s just a feeling,” and that was an epiphany. I am forever grateful to her for having said that; it changed everything. I saw the incongruity between feelings and most of his “arguments”. I was able to shut down his logical harangues by disagreeing with his premises. And because he could no longer win, he stopped trying. Fine by me.

After an O.D. and family therapy, I was asked what I wanted from my father. I said to my dad with the therapist’s encouragement: “I want you to be nice to me.” But I never believed he would do it despite his agreement. Nevertheless he was nice to me for a while. A year and a half later he turned into his old self.

“Why did you stop being nice to me?”

“I saw that you were you again, so I decided I could be me.” At least I knew that he loved me because he sacrificed his nature to be nice to me.

When I moved to California from Connecticut, I visited them at their new home near the shore of Long Island Sound. One afternoon I saw him installing a third stop-light in the center of the back window of his new pre-owned BMW. I couldn’t resist using some humor to jab at him, so I said:

“You know, Dad, the government is requiring car manufactures to install those as standard safety measure.”

“Humph,” he grunted and mumbled: “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have.” He stopped himself and said: “It’s a good idea, though.” Maybe that was a ray of hope. It was probably more of an afterthought.

Later that afternoon, he was driving us to town, and I said: “Oh my God,” a thought had come to me.

“What?”

“I just realized that your rebellion against the government all these years has been a substitute for rebellion against your father,” I said, full of myself.

“Humph,” he grunted.

Two of Three

In 1990 one night before going to sleep, I asked this question:

“God, what am I supposed to do with my life?”

I never really expected an answer. I don’t even know why I had asked the question. Maybe, I’d have a dream, I thought. I awoke in the morning, no dream and groggy. Lounging and dozing in bed, I felt a presence enter through my groin and curl up into a ball in my stomach. A name came to me. It was someone I had met and instantly disliked a few months back. But I just knew her name would never be in the phone book, so I’d be off the hook. But, there it was.

I called her. “I know this sounds crazy, but this is what happened to me this morning.” And I described what had happened.

She said, “I’ve been curled up into a ball thinking about killing myself.”

Because I worked as a Crisis Counselor in a mental health program in an adjacent town, I had some experience with people suffering from trauma.

I met her and listened.

She lived on, and we became friends. I thanked God, and I’m not religious, but… I worked at and became an interdimensional healer and “seer”.

One of Three

I believe I was a major disappointment to my dad in many ways. I think he expected me to become a scientist, but I don’t really know that for sure. He was disdainful of my work as a healer and an astrologer though he never came out and said it. There was always a wave of secretive slithering anger towards me. It was his shield against anyone getting too close.

After Dad had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis — a disease where the lungs’ alveoli turn to mush, he was refusing oxygen. His breathing was labored. When I went to visit him the next time, he had accepted oxygen. During the morning I was supposed to leave, his breathing was increasingly labored even with the O2.

I had been getting ready to make the 6-hour drive to the airport when I heard his struggle to breathe. I offered him hands-on healing, thinking he would rebuff the offer. I was stunned that he accepted. Momentarily, I did not know how to proceed. I dropped my expertise and channeled the unconditional love from Jesus Christ through my hands to his lungs via his chest and back. His breathing was no longer labored; he was breathing normally, albeit with the oxygen.

My father said, “Thanks.” He was humble. It was the first time he had ever thanked me in my entire life.

My sister and I visited about a year later, in Feb ’06. This was the last time we were together as a family.

The Passing — Two of Three

Four days before my father passed, my Guides came to me and said: “Your father does not have enough light to get to the other side. Will you give him some of yours?”

“Sure,” I said in my mind, and the transfusion occurred over several hours.

On my 55th birthday in Oakland, CA, I was about to get on the plane when conversing with my mom. She told me he had passed.

“No, he can’t do that; it’s my birthday,” I said, bursting with 9 mixed emotions at least: irritation with the injustice, anger, frustration, shock, slapped with grief, relief, perseverance, an oozing sense of sadness, and inner laughing…

I arrived in North Carolina around 11 pm EDT, exhausted. I knew that I would be unable to drive 6 hours at night on confusing roads to their place, so I checked into a motel at 11:30 pm — part of an advanced plan.

I threw myself onto the bed and unfurled myself from hours of cramped airplane coach seating and a rental car foray into a prone position, eyes closed, dozing off a bit. The end of the bed moved as if someone had sat down, and his words came into my head with a harsh commanding admonishment:

“You had better get some rest. Your mother needs you.” I was startled, wide awake, and sitting bolt-upright in bed. It was my bonehead father doing his counter-intuitive thing.

It took me two additional hours to calm down enough to fall asleep.

The next day I had a vision of how he had passed while driving. His biological functions lasted about 15 to 20 minutes after his heart stopped and brain functions ceased. The electrical activity of all organs of the body ceased as well as the body as a whole. Light dispersed into his wider (E.M.) electromagnetic field. His core light (from the base of his spine to his Crown Chakra) had been released from his body. The two frequencies of light caused the spin. I watched as he ascended through the spiraling bands of light which was much like descriptions of NDEs (Near Death Experiences).

He arrived to “meet” his mother, father, and two sisters at the family house in New Haven, Connecticut, at age 12 in 1932. This was his happiest time and place.

Three days later, I was waiting for my sister and mother to emerge from the department store — shopping for the memorial service clothing. I was sitting in the driver’s seat wondering what I could do to hasten sis and mom from the store when my father appeared outside the car. He leaned over the windshield and looked me in the eyes, winked, smiled, and was gone in less than an instant. With that mirthful wink and smile, I heard him say something sarcastic like — Waiting for Mom and Annie, eh?

I saw him one more time in a short space of alone time amidst the crush of cousins and neighbors. He was covered in off-white foul weather gear at the wheel of a four-masted schooner in a gale-forced storm, sailing. It was his favorite thing to do.

His mother had given him a 6-foot sloop at age twelve. Every summer, we sailed on my uncle’s sailboats from 13 to 18. Of sailing, my dad said: “It’s the only place in the world where I can be a dictator and get away with it.”

Nine Months Later, I saw His Spirit — Two of Three.

I was standing at my stove making a turkey and veggie stir fry when I saw a spirit image of my dad pass through the backdoor and stride across the kitchen. He stopped at my left shoulder and ever-so-lightly put a feathered hand there. He spoke softly in my ear:

Will you forgive me for all I did to you?

Sure, yes, I said in my mind, and I felt a burden release from him and from me.

In the moment of surrender, we transcended the father and son bond and became friends.

The medium of spirit held each of us in a triad of love.

©2021 F. K. Ontario (excerpts from the story above are from a forthcoming memoir on how I became a healer)