When Heaven Feels Close — Lessons My Dad’s Passing Taught Me

My dad was a big, mostly quiet man. He used to say my favorite line, one that still makes me smile when it comes to mind…

“I don’t talk just to hear my head rattle.”

That was my dad. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, you listened, because he meant it.

He also carried a lot of anger in his younger years. I know now that wasn’t who he truly was, it was the weight he carried from life, from hardship, from the unspoken things that lived inside him. My brothers felt more of his anger because they worked outside with him on the farm. I learned early how to walk on eggshells inside.

But when my mom passed, something softened in him. Maybe it was grief that opened him up, or maybe he realized he had survived something he thought he never would. He had always assumed he’d go first, he was ten years older than my mom, and everyone thought that was how it would go. He hugged my brothers. He told us he loved us.

After she passed, I started spending one night a week with him, Sundays. I’d cook, clean, and do laundry for the week, and then in the evening, we’d sit down together and watch Hee Haw.

He’d laugh at the same jokes he’d laughed at years ago when I was little. And hearing him laugh, that rare, genuine laugh, felt like medicine. We’d sit for hours sometimes without saying much. But it was peaceful. It was connection.

About five years later, Dad went in for what was supposed to be a routine check-up. The doctor said he was fine, so I didn’t go in with him. But he wasn’t fine. Within a week, he became very sick, and when we took him back, they discovered a large mass in his stomach. The doctor said, “This wasn’t here last week.” But I think it was there, it was just missed. Or maybe my dad, being who he was, didn’t complain. He didn’t want to make a fuss.

From that moment, everything happened quickly. Within two weeks, he was gone.

But those two weeks…were holy.

He softened more than I’d ever seen in my life. He hugged my brothers. He told us he loved us. Those simple gestures meant everything because he had never been one to express emotion easily.

On his final day, we were in the hospital. My brothers and I were making arrangements with a social worker because he was too sick to come home. We hadn’t told him yet he would be going to a nursing home, we knew he wouldn’t like that.

When we came back upstairs after signing papers, I knew right away something had shifted. He was sitting up and talking earlier, but now, his energy was different. Something inside me just knew.

I walked over to his bed. My brothers stood quietly in the doorway. Without thinking, without planning, I said the words that came straight from my soul:

“Dad, it’s okay if you go. We’ll take care of each other. We’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine.”

And in true Vernon fashion, he looked up at me, paused, and said,

“Huh. Okay then. Just give me a drink of water every once in a while.”

That was him. Always simple. Always steady.

I took his hand and said, “Thank you for being a good dad. I love you.”
And he looked at me and said,

“Thank you for being a good daughter, I love you.”

Those were his last words.

He let go about ten minutes later. Just like that. Quietly. Peacefully. In his own way.

And in that moment, I understood something sacred:
Death is not something that happens to us, it’s something that happens for us. It’s a homecoming.

My dad’s passing changed me. It softened me, too. It showed me how death can bring healing, reconciliation, and love in ways life sometimes can’t. It’s what inspired my path as an end-of-life doula — to help others experience that same peace, that same release, that same sense of sacred closure.

Because when heaven feels that close, you never see life the same again.

Reflection Prompt

Think of someone you love who has passed.
What would you want to say to them if you had one more conversation?
And what do you imagine they’d say back to you?

When we change the world changes.