Dad - Signs

1. When we visit Dad, the Nurse says, "Who is Molly? He has been calling out for Molly all afternoon. The day before he called for his Mother. Today it is Molly"

We look at each other and reply, "Molly was Dads older sister, he was very close to her, she died over 5 years ago."

"Molly! Molly!" he calls, staring into the corner of the room.

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2. Waiting in his room, around 1.45am, asleep. Suddenly my right leg is being 'shaken' awake, and the extreme coldness of it stuns me awake. I sit bolt upright, and I feel as if Dad has woken me to say " Hey Sweetheart, good to see you" in the friendly manner he used.

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3. We phone Dad's surviving sibling, his younger brother Jim. As it turns out, he is out shopping, and his wife Joy answers the phone. Before we can tell her of the news, she tells us that Jim woke her with a happy startled cry in the early hours this morning, as if greeting an old friend, and she could hear him laughing and chatting away as if with an old mate. "If I didn't know that the cat had died, I would have sworn he was talking to Puss, in such a happy, relaxed way" she says. Then, she said, the most extraordinary LOUD snoring, then silence. Jim remembers nothing of the incident, at all.

"What time was this, Joy," we ask. "4.45am" she answers, which was the exact time Dad passed over. Again, we look at each other.

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4. The afternoon of his passing, the most beautiful sunset hangs over the city. Clouds of oranges and pinks drape the sky. Everyone is out on the street, pointing, exclaiming. Wow!

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5. The afternoon of his funeral, a large, no GIANT rainbow forms over the mountains, just as the news report on his funeral coverage comes on the telly. The rainbow stays over the city for 20 minutes. Too large to photograph in one lens. Too big Dad! Larger than life!

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6. At Jim's funeral -my father's younger brother - he is the last of the original Warby family, the last sibling to die. I am photographing, as usual.  Archiving.

We gather around his grave, and just as the coffin is being lowered, an enormous gust of wind springs up, we gasp and shield our eyes, stunned.

My immediate thoughts were: it's his brothers and older sister Molly, coming to gather him, to claim him, to laugh and run again like the kids they were, to sit and chat as they watch over us.

Later, when I visit his widow, my aunty Joy, we recount the funeral.

"And the wind!" she recalls. "That wind!"

I burst into tears at the memory, it was an amazing spiritual experience.

It's just wind mum, says my eldest. No Lockie, to everyone else, it's just wind.

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