Daddy Are You There?

My husband and I were working up at Camp Cedar Falls summer camp in the mountains the week my father passed away. 

Though it was 23 years ago, there are parts of that day that I remember like it was yesterday…


It was my day off and I had promised to take a younger co-worker ‘down the hill’ for some shopping. (It was about a 20 mile trip from camp down to the nearest civilization.)


As I waited in my car outside the little cabin that served as camp headquarters, I heard my name called over the PA system, asking that I come to headquarters.


So I got out, climbed over the small retaining wall and tapped on the glass louvered window. The secretary said I had a call and handed me the phone between the louvers.


I grabbed the phone wondering what was so important they paged me to the phone. Usually they refused to page anyone and just took messages to be passed out at line call before supper.




“Hi, Liz,” a man’s deep voice said. “I was just calling to see how you are holding up…”


I didn’t recognize the voice right away and couldn’t understand for the life of me why he was asking me that. I fumbled around trying to sound like I knew what was going on and it soon became clear to him I was clueless.


“This is Gary,” said the man’s voice, as though that would help. Now I was even more confused. Why in the world would my step-sister’s ex-husband be paging me to the phone at summer camp. And how did he even know we were here? I’d not spoken to him in years.


“Um…. You don’t know, do you?” he asked, sounding suddenly very uncomfortable.


I assured him I was clueless and after sever awkward moments, he found a gentle way to tell me my father had passed away that morning. “I assumed you knew since Marilyn [my step-mother] called to tell me this morning and ask to borrow money!” he said, trying to hold back the anger in his voice.


I don’t remember any more of the conversation. I guess I was in shock. I do remember that I took the girl down the hill as promised. I had promised her lunch at Marie Callendars.


The next six weeks was horrible. It took almost a month before we could bury him because of some problem with the autopsy. They were having difficulty determining cause of death, and some speculated that my step-mother had a part in his death.


In the meantime, we were in limbo and it was awful. Then his wife, Marilyn, (my wicked step-mother) bought herself a new car and all new furniture but said she couldn’t afford to fly back to Arlington National Cemetery for his funeral…  It broke my hear all over again.


Anyway, not too many days after his death, my step-sister, Blythe, called me to say that Marilyn was just throwing all of my dad's belongings out on the curb - anything that didn't have resale value, that is. 

There were family photos, things that had belonged to my mother, etc.

"You better come up here, quick!  She's just throwing them in the gutter for the trash man to pick up.  Things are just blowing away!  I tried to go out there and save some of the things that were blowing away, but she called me back inside and told me to leave it alone..."


Distraught, I packed my two young children (then 2 yrs, and 4 months) into their car seats and drove down the long, winding mountain road to Loma Linda, and then up the Interstate 15 to the upper desert and my dad's house out beyond Victorville. It was about a 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive one way.


When I got there, I was told that since my dad had not left a will, the house was my step mothers now, and neither I, nor any of my siblings would ever be welcome in the house again.  Then the door was slammed in my face.

So all I could do was stand at the curb, my little ones still in their car seats, and box everything up that was lying in the street, and pack it into the car.


It was heart-breaking to see his things in the gutter with sand and tumbleweeds being blown across them. 

Finally, having packed it all up, I changed diapers for everyone and headed back down to the city so we could start the climb back up the winding mountain road to camp again.


All the way, I was overwhelmed with emotions. Sorrow, anger, loneliness... We stopped off for a quick bite to eat at Del Taco before we started climbing back up to the mountains.   The kids fell quickly back to sleep, and I couldn't help but be drawn back to the time when my mother died suddenly from a stroke when I was 9.


I remembered that I had hidden in her closet, just hugging her dresses and smelling her scent, torn apart and not wanting anyone to know.

You see, I had been raised Catholic, and was taught to believe that when you die, you go to heaven as angels and can look down on your loved ones and look after them. And that sometimes people had reported their loved ones coming back as angels to visit them. 

I never understood that.  I prayed and prayed for my mother to come back to at least say good-bye and to forgive me for being angry with her the morning of the day she died. But she never came. There was not so much as a tinkling of a bell to make me believe she’d passed by.


I couldn't imagine that my mother could possibly be looking down on my sorrow and not want to come back to at least say she loved me. 

So, maybe it wasn’t true. Or heaven forbid she didn’t go to heaven… 

Maybe it was because she didn't really love me... Maybe it was because I wasn't good enough or didn’t have enough faith... (You know how weird thoughts go through kids' minds....)


Well, it was thinking back to all of this that in this melancholy state, I continued up the winding mountain road, wrapped in pain and sorrow. 

I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw that both the babies were asleep.


And once I saw that, I let go. I finally began to cry, softly at first and then began to sob aloud - for my mother, dead now 18 years, and my father, newly gone. 

The weather outside quickly changed as we climbed higher and higher into the clouds.


It was suddenly very cold and foggy, causing me to slow down to an almost crawl, as visibility was down to maybe 20 feet.


I felt so alone wrapped in the cold clouds that muffled all sound. In my anguish, I cried out loud, "Daddy, why did you leave? I still need you..."

And in that moment, a cold wisp of air came from the right side of the car where all of his things were boxed. The chilly air wrapped around my shoulders and my neck. The rear window on the passenger side had just rolled down...all by itself!!! 

(That had never EVER happened before!)


The hair on my neck stood straight up. I didn't know whether to be scared or to be happy. It was true! My father came back in that cold wisp of air to let me know that he had seen my anguish and he cared! I pulled over into a turn off and my body actually began to tremble.  


I quietly said, "Daddy, if that's you, you are scaring me. I know you don't want me to be scared. I am going to roll up the window now. If it's really you, roll down the window again, just so I know that you are with me,...okay?"


I felt very foolish whispering these words into the foggy afternoon air, because I had long since been taught that once we die, we slumber, knowing nothing until the day of resurrection.

But here I was talking to my dead father. I mean the timing was unquestionably, bizarrely coincidental, wasn't it?

And with that, I pulled back onto the foggy mountain road and drove on, winding to the left, then the right, then a sharp curve to the left.


“Okay, if it’s you, please do it again, so I know.” And all of the sudden the rear passenger window rolled down a second time! Now I really got goose bumps! It had to be my dad! 

Tears ran down my face, but I still couldn't help but think that it just couldn't be...


I rolled the window up and said, if he could pleeeease just do it one more time, I would really believe. (And the doubtful disciple Thomas came to mind. Or maybe Peter denying the Lord three times…)


I pulled back onto the mountain road, winding to the right, and then the left...and the window rolled down for a third time!


This time I pulled off the road again, shaking, and looked in the rear view mirror. At least the babies were still asleep. I don't believe in ghosts, so I didn't know what to make of this.

I am a logical, intelligent person.  I have an IQ of 146.  I don't believe in ghosts.  But I also try to have an open mind because there is so much to learn in life.  So much that we do not know yet. And hadn't it been so coincidental to each request from me to my dad?  EVERY time I asked?

But at the same time, it was freaking me out.  I didn't want to roll up the window again because it was scaring me!  But that cold, foggy air swirling out among the pines was sending chills down my spine and turning my nose red.  I looked in the rear view mirror, but at least the kids were fairly warm and snug in their car seats.


I opened the car door and went around to the back and tucked a blanket around each of the babies.  Then I drove the last couple of miles to camp with the window down, shivering with the cold and the emotion of it all.

I didn't want to roll it back up, since down, it represented 
my father's love. And if I rolled it up again and it went down yet AGAIN by itself, it would be too scary.


I got back to camp and brought the sleeping kids back into the cabin and tucked them in bed and went out to start unpacking the car. I first unloaded the ones in the front passenger seat. Then I began on the boxes in the rear passenger seat.


And it was then that I realize that the boxes that I’d jammed in the small section of the back seat not taken up by car seats were squeezed up against the door. 

Every time I made a sharp turn to the left, the boxes had been shifting to the right, pushing up against the electric window gadget and rolling down the window!


I felt like an idiot. But I did have a good laugh at myself and then said, "Daddy, it's all right. I know you love me anyway..."


I guess there are many lessons we can learn from this one. 

Perhaps the most obvious is that Satan is no fool. 

He knows that the time to get us is when we are depleted in one or more aspect of our life. Whether the hole is left by the death (or other loss) of a loved one, or the void left by the lack of God’s word in our life, or even the void left by a severe lack of sleep.

Satan sees the void and spreads across the expanse, sinking in to fill the smallest crevice like the flood from a broken sewer pipe, finding the lowest spots of our doubt.




Liz Carson Rosas
13 August 2009






"And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. "
2 Corinthians 11:14
(Or in this case, as a box of old books and a chilly mountain fog. I knew better. But in my vulnerable state, I was ready to believe the lies whispered in my ear by that cold, mountain fog because I didn’t fill that void first with the power of God’s promises. )






What say the Scriptures concerning these things? David declares that man is not conscious in death.




"His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish."
Ps. 146:4




Solomon bears the same testimony:




"The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.
Their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun...



...There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."
                                                               2 ECCL. 9:5, 6, 10.





"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
                                                              1 Corinthians 15:52-54.




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