In April 2005 my father was 70 years old and suffering from end stage cancer.  He passed out quite suddenly in his back yard while attempting to do some spring yard work.  He was rushed to the hospital unconscious and we learned that he had developed sepsis (toxic shock) from an advanced case of pneumonia.  He had shown no signs of pneumonia and we had no idea he had it.   My father went into a coma on April 9, 2005.  We were told that he almost certainly would not survive.  Pope John Paul II had just died a few weeks earlier from sepsis, so the term was very familiar in the media and we truly felt that my father was going to pass.  We spent our days with him in ICU and prayed for him. 

Ten days, at Easter time, later my father woke up and made some rudimentary sounds, which were funny because he sounded like a cow "moo-ing".  He couldn't speak for about 24 hours but we were still overjoyed.  When he began to speak he wanted to know who drove him back from Bronte.   He said that he had been in Bronte, a small town about 20 minutes away from the hospital, where his father had lived as a boy.  My dad was adamant that he had flown to Bronte and visited all of his dad's boyhood "places", with his father at his side.  He said they spent a lot of time playing with his father's childhood dog in Bronte.  My dad remembered going into the hospital but that his father had picked him up for the trip to Bronte because he was having trouble falling asleep on his first night in ICU (This doesn't make sense because my father was comatose the whole time in ICU).    My dad was very upset that he was back in the hospital upon waking and he couldn't understand why we were all so happy to see him there in the bed. 

For this reason, I always wonder what really happened for my father during the comatose time.  At the time I just assumed he was hallucinating during the coma and that his mind wandered.  Now I have read more about NDE and I wonder if this is what happened to him.  For months afterward he still believed that he really had travelled to Bronte, and he did not believe for a moment that he was in the hospital for that entire duration. 

MY father lived until Christmas Eve.  He passed away December 24 2005.  The last words I said to him were "Fly away home". 

It is interesting that his passing is associated with Christmas (Jesus) and his "resurrection" is tied to Easter.  Easter is now my favorite holiday because I associate it with rebirth, and my father coming back from his coma. 

Fast forward to my ADE:  

It is now 2011.  I have a six month old puppy who, of course, has never met my father.  The puppy was neutered last week and it developed complications during the surgery.  It flat lined momentarily but was revived.  I recently brought him home wearing the "cone" and I am not supposed to give him very much activity because of his stitches and the surgery ordeal.  The day I brought him  home he was very sluggish and zonked out from all the medication.  He started whining and looking at a drawer where I keep his brush.  I opened the drawer to brush him.  In the drawer there was a photo of my dad, upside down, which I stuck in the drawer a couple of days ago planning to put in an album one day.  The dog usually goes crazy for his brush.  He sniffed around in the drawer and his tail wagged like crazy and then he pulled out the photo very carefully and gingerly carried it in his mouth.  He put it in his crate.

He has never carried paper before without chewing it apart (he absolutely loves eating paper).  This was so odd.  He can't get in the crate because his cone is too large but he set the photo in the crate on his pillow, just inside the door, then went to sleep on the floor. 

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Today is Easter and of course I always think of my dad waking from the coma.  I wanted to go see him at the cemetery but I didn't want to leave the dog home alone with his cone on, and he is still recovering from the near-death surgical experience.  I decided to put the dog in his brand new car harness and just keep him in the car at the cemetery, so I took him with me.  The parking area is a good ten minute walk from where my father is.  I decided to let the dog out just for a moment to relieve himself on the side of the street at the entrance to the cemetery, and then leave him in the car because he was so groggy anyway.  He jumped down from the car and absolutely ran off.  I was terrified because of the local traffic and a deep ravine nearby.  I couldn't see which way  he went and I was sure that he went into the ravine.  I knew the steep climb and cold Canadian water would kill him.  I looked for my dog for close to an hour, even asking other people in the cemetery if they had seen him.  I was beside myself in tears when I decided it was getting dark and I should go get my children to help me look.  On the way out of the cemetery I decided to hike quickly to my father's grave and ask him for help finding our pup.  I could not believe my eyes that the puppy was laying down panting on my dad's grave, with a giant puppy grin and much satisfaction.   He knew that was where my dad was even though he had never met my dad or gone to that cemetery. 

I believe that during my dog's "flat line" moments in surgery, he must have seen my father. 

Nothing else explains him putting dad's picture in the crate, or rushing off to dad's grave when he had no way of understanding the significance. 

I just put it all together now, realizing that dad had played with his father's dog during his own near death moment, in his coma.