My father passed away 25 years ago this August. It was 5 weeks before my 17th birthday. It was sudden, a heart attack in his sleep.
He is buried in Colma, a town just south of San Francisco. The local joke is that there are more dead people than living people in Colma.
(Colma became the town for burials after San Francisco outlawed burials within the city limits in 1900 and all bodies were exhumed by 1937. You can read a real brief history of Colma here).
My Dad and I were close, so it was only natural that on the morning of my wedding, I go up to Colma (20 minute drive) and talk to him.
Colma is one of those towns on the San Francisco Peninsula that is usually very foggy and cold. In the, at the time, nearly 15 years I had been visiting him, I usually had to dress warmly. There were a few sunny days, but that was the exception, not the norm. (On one particularly cold and foggy day, they turned on the sprinklers as I sat there.)
So, the morning of my wedding I head up to Colma, and it's a beautiful day. The sun was out, there was no fog to be seen. I sit down on the ground and talk to my Dad and meditate and do whatever. The next thing I know, there are two hummingbirds flitting about the nearby hedge. Not only in those nearly 15 years had sun been a rarity, but I never saw hummingbirds there. And I've seen no hummingbirds in the 10 years since.
That, to me, was a message from my Dad, that he was blessing my marriage. Looking back on what we've been through in the last 10 years, it's nice to know that he might be watching out for us. I get chills every time I think about that morning and probably will for the rest of my life.
