The day my father died was a perfect day. It was the 20th July 1995. He was 57.
I sat on the second floor balcony of the QE2 hospital overlooking the Hertfordshire countryside, watching the sun rise into a clear blue sky. It would hit 30 degrees again that day, as it had done, and would do for weeks.
Rabbits frolicked in the morning mist in the fields beyond, all was quiet and I was in a state of calm euphoria.
It had been only a few minutes earlier that I had rested my head on my dad's chest, as the last breath left his body and his warmth on my cheek began to fade and cool. The light was out. He was gone. We were very, very close and our time together as father and son was as good as it could get.
The next day he was laid in the chapel of rest as our family collected to say goodbye and see him for one more time. He lay, eyes open, with a blissful look on his face, now free from pain, almost a waxwork, made more surreal by the strong smell of embalming fluid that filled the room.
That evening I was settling my 2 year old son down in his cot when he began to giggle like crazy, like he had just remembered a favourite joke, absolutely laughing his head off. It caught my attention because I was not doing anything to generate that response. I wasn't even looking at him.
The next few seconds would change my life forever. I noticed that my son, lying on his back, was pointing and grabbing towards the ceiling, looking up beyond me, utterly enthralled. At that moment the room was filled, instantly, with the heavy smell of embalming fluid! The hairs on my neck sprang up and I felt totally spooked. All I could do was sit on the bed and try to accept what was happening.
Was I making this up? I looked again at my son who was clearly responding to some kind of stimulation and it was not me! The smell was almost suffocating. For want of something to do that would help me understand this experience, I could think of nothing other than to quietly say "Hi".
Somehow I was accepting that my dad was ‘with us' in the room.
After a few more moments, my son looked back at my shocked face as if to say, "what? Where's my juice?" The heavy sweet smell began to lift and I was left sitting, wondering what had just happened. The next day my sister out of the blue mentioned that she was in a boutique in Camden, looking through the rails of clothes when suddenly the whole shop was filled with the smell of the chapel of rest. She had no knowledge of my experience of the night before until then.
So now I had to look at these events and re-evaluate a few things.
Did my disembodied father do a farewell tour of his loved ones? Whisping through on his ethereal journey to ... wherever or whatever! I can never really know for sure but, if I trust my senses to provide me with evidence of reality, what I hear, see, feel, taste and smell ,then that is all I have to decide what is real for me. I allowed a few days to process the event and let it all settle. Obviously I was in a fairly emotional state at the time anyway, and even normal life was pretty surreal and timeless.
So basically it comes down to this. If someone wished me to accept that there is life after death, I would say "prove it, or at least show me some evidence". Now I have seen and ‘smelt' with my own eyes and nose, what I would consider to be evidence of an energy or entity that can be seen or at least observed interrelating with another present person, and can be smelt, or at least a residual cloud of matter and particles exist within the environment for my nose to record and my brain to interpret. That's how I decide all my reality and if I'm consistent, then for me it must be real.
Now, it's not the issue here whether I am believed or not, or that I should be trusted or not as a person who tells the truth. It is my truth, my experience, and my reality.
So if I am to accept this spiritual element into my life what are the implications?
Do I accept re-incarnation as truth? Do I now take it as certain as day and night that there is an afterlife, or that we may also reside on non material planes of existence?
