He looked at me. "What?" I said. He sat back down and then shuddered again. He then jumped off the lounge bed saying that a dark entity had sat down inside him. Later that night when Andrea and Aravinda were leaving, we were standing at the front gate talking and we suddenly noticed that the wind chime, that hangs on the front verandah at the top of the stairs, was clattering away. It was making quite a commotion. A few seconds after we were all focused on it, it stopped moving.
My father died at approximately 10.20pm on 18th June in 2004. He was buried on 25th June, at Leppington Lawn Cemetery on the outskirts of western Sydney. I was sent a photo with what looked to be a few people standing around on a suburban paddock. I thought, that is my father going into the ground.
For exactly one month after Dad had died, I was followed from room to room by an energy force that was blowing bulbs, switching lamps on and off, and banging in the walls and the roof. It had also switched my bedside lamp on when I was about to go to bed one night. I wrote the following in my journal: "On 15/07/04 just on dark, the left touch lamp came on by itself in the main bedroom. I was facing that direction looking down the hallway from my seat on the lounge while talking on the phone. I did not see it come on. When I went to check the other lamp in the same room it was still off. The discussion I was having with Andrea was about remaining positive no matter what and not to give up. My mood was calm. On 16/07/04 at 8.52am there was a loud bang into the side of house in the main bedroom. The study light bulb blew out after I left the room. At 11.08pm there was a loud bang on the roof over the second bedroom. Then at 12.04am when I was about to go to bed the touch lamp beside the bed went up a setting, like it had the other night."
During the worst stages of the CFIDS, email and phone remained my only means of contact with the outside world. This allowed me to keep my small company up and running. On 17th July in 2004, I was on the phone to Andrea at dusk. I said, "It's starting again." The lamp on the filing cabinet in the study was flickering on and off. At 7.54pm the left lamp in the main bedroom was also flickering. As I stood in the room the silver study lamp dimmed up and down twice. This was followed by one medium mallet rap on the roof above the second bedroom. Then I woke up in the early hours of the morning and within a few minutes I heard another medium sized rap on the roof at the other end of the house, again in the second bedroom.
Much later into the night I was sitting at the desk in the study, thinking about dad's funeral and how angry I was. I now knew that there was no chance of him ever loving me like I had wanted him to. While he was still alive there had always been that hope. I was also angry about the way the family had treated me when he died and I was angry that my self-destructive father had allowed himself to die so young. I had wanted him to have a happy and long life. But my mother had told me that he had died alone with a grimace of agony. I was mainly angry because I had always loved him but I could not save him. At that moment there was a huge crash to the roof in the second bedroom, like someone had dropped a large steel safe on it! I recorded the noise in my journal. When I looked at the date on the laptop, I saw that it was the same date that Dad had died one month before. It was also 10.21pm, which was approximately the same time that he had died alone in Liverpool hospital.
As I realised this, the silver lamp in the study dimmed slightly and then returned to normal. In my mind I had a sudden mental flash of two 'angelic beings' rushing my father off the face of the Earth, with one supporting him under each arm. I looked towards the ceiling. I said, "I love you dad. It's okay. Go to the light." When I said those words I was uncertain. I did not think I was speaking to my father's spirit. What it felt like was an energy, a life force that was conscious in this world, but also conscious in another world. It felt like all existed as one and that one existed as all, like there was a transformation, involving an ending and a beginning at once. The physical death of my father was nothing like I had imagined it would be. While my father's body was gone, I felt like he was still alive and that his consciousness was everywhere at once. As Tricia had said, "When my mother died, it felt like she was in another room that I couldn't get into." While I would remain uncertain of many things during these experiences, I remained certain of love. It was as if the angels were holding open my eyes to God.
At 5.30pm on 19th July in 2004, I thought, the second lamp in the main bedroom never switches up anymore. Then I got up to find that it had. Around 8.00pm I was in the bath thinking, I am going to find out more, but I know that it will all be okay. Then there was a small mallet rap on the roof over the study. At 11.20pm while reading on the lounge, there was a flicker of the square lamp. At 11.42pm there was one thump to the front verandah outside the study window. The silver lamp flickered.
