I Remember

Dad’s Presence Still Felt

August 2023

My family owned a home in the country near the Ashe and Wilkes County lines. My parents, Robbie and Tony, and younger brother Joe had built it by hand and filled it with items near and dear to them. Mom was a native of Wilmington and always loved going home to North Carolina. Dad was a New York boy, who grew up on Long Island there, but fell in love with the North Carolina countryside.

My parents spent as much time as they could in that mountain home, and on one fateful night, my dad died there. His death was not gruesome nor terrible. He and my mom were talking while they watched TV that night. Suddenly, dad just stopped talking. My mom, a registered nurse, knew immediately that something was wrong and rushed to his side. She did what she could, but there was no bringing him back.

We’d rush upstairs to see if we could figure out why these distinctive noises were happening. Was it wind rushing through the house, joints expanding, squirrels loose on the roof?

When she summoned up the courage to go back to the mountain house, Mom found it to be as lovely, warm and welcoming as she had remembered it. She had feared the home would be a constant reminder that her partner of nearly 50 years had died there, but quite the opposite, she found it most welcoming, and in fact asked her daughter to bring her young grandson up from Florida to learn to love life on the mountain, too. And he did. Her younger son, too, began going back to the country house and enjoyed teaching hunting and archery skills to his nephew.

But she and her children noticed something was a bit odd. When they were downstairs in the storage room, bathroom or garage, or even in the yard, they all heard the sound of footsteps above, footsteps that seemed to mirror the unusual walking noise her husband made. Tony had to have the big toe on his right foot amputated due to an infection from having stepped on a chunk of pointed metal. After his foot healed, he learned to walk again without much of a limp, but when he walked, you could definitely tell who was coming.

We’d rush upstairs to see if we could figure out why these distinctive noises were happening. Was it wind rushing through the house, joints expanding, squirrels loose on the roof? Nothing ever made itself evident as a cause. After we stopped looking for a cause to the noises, we simply came to accept them as a reminder that Dad was still there with us.

Cynthia Thuma, Boca Raton, Florida