My Fathers Smiling Face at His Funeral

I was just entering my teens, my father had lung cancer and was struggling with it, and at the same time he and my mother were divorcing.

My mother had taken us to live with her in a small gulf side town, and my father had remained on the farm he had built up from nothing. My mother was so uncooperative and vindictive at the time we barely got to see our father and if we did she would throw tyrannical rages when we would return.

My father ended up taking a turn for the worse and was taken to Galveston Texas for care were he gave up his struggle and passed away. My older sister had to come to my junior high to pick me up and to break the tragic news to me and my younger brother. We were devastated and blamed my mother for missing out on time we could have spent with him before his passing. She ranted and raved and berated us for speaking to her in such a manner and tensions were stretched to their limits, everything set us to arguing.

It was during one of those arguments that I had stomped off to my room and slammed my door. I threw myself on my bed and was crying, when I got this whiff of my fathers aftershave lotion and I sat up and looked around expecting to see him standing there.

That evening we all went to sit with the body at the funeral home, and told stories of our time spent with my father. Two days later we buried my father and my brother and me just laid on the casket not wanting him to be gone and had to be pried loose. The burial continued and afterward we went to my cousins to visit.

The grown-ups went to the living room and all the kids went to the family room to horse around. Someone decided we should have a séance to call my fathers spirit to see if he was ok, and if he was happy. We all sat around this long table, with the lights off and a candle shining was our only light except the moon shining through the two windows facing me and my brother.

We said a prayer and asked that my fathers spirit join us, everyone waited for a sign. We were all breathing hard and more than a little scared when my brother and me looked straight ahead and saw the image of my father smiling through the window pane and nodding his head to let us know he was ok. My cousins looked at the window and at all at once there was screaming and chairs being thrown back and kids running to get away from the image of my father in the window pane.

As my brother and me started to join them my fathers image nodded at us once again and smiled as he faded and was gone. I have asked for him to return many times since I became and adult but he has never shown himself again.

Sent in by Elizabeth