My bruised heart mourned the absence of Dad, but the machines connected to him in his hospital room, with their rhythmic whooshing and clicking, reminded me he wasn’t gone—at least not yet. The day was sometime in September 2006, in the hazy mass of twenty-four-hour periods, one flowing into the next, in the last week of his life.
My mom, sister, and I had camped around Dad’s bed for months already—not sleeping in the bone marrow transplant wing, although we did that at the very end. Tuesday, September 18, Dad’s official departure date, marked almost two months since the doctors shut down his voice by putting him under sedation, and I was left with his last words to me in July, “I’ll call you back later,” an unrealized souvenir to keep for the rest of time.
Before the machines and monitors ceased for good, though, I spent hours near a motionless and silent Dad, peace thrumming through my veins. The hallmarks of our days—the quiet of the room, Mom’s Bible splayed on a small table, jaunts down the hall for food or drink, the waiting—seemed to be on a forever loop. But one day—similar to the previous ones in every way except one—changed me.
I strode to a nearby single restroom. The sterile look of the small space reminded me again of sickness and The Severing. Exhausted, I washed my hands, assessing my reflection. I bent over the sink, cupped palms under the running water, and doused my face. Two hands, firm and warm, came to rest on my back. Probably Mom or my sister, although I hadn’t heard the door open. I inhaled a sob at the calming gesture, serenity swallowing my sadness, and lifted my gaze from the porcelain to the mirror above it.
No one stood behind me. And the door remained locked.
The weight of the touch slid away.
Over the past sixteen years, I’ve thought of the hands on me in the restroom that day. Last week, I heard someone tell of a time of distress when he had felt hands on his back too. It was likely angels, he said, and maybe the ones assigned to him from the very beginning.
Maybe so.
But I’ve always thought it was God Himself—powerful enough to pierce earthly time, loving enough to interrupt a wounded moment, humble enough to enter a hospital bathroom—Who had visited me that day in 2006.
And maybe that’s true too.
Time will tell.
