My dad and my wife never got along, but when he had an accident and fell into coma, she always accompanied me to the hospital. We would bring flowers and would spend hours talking to him, hoping he could hear us.
It wasn’t just my wife and I who visited dad. My mom, my daughter, and my brother were also there.
We prayed for his recovery because he was our rock, the most important person in our lives, and someone we could always rely on no matter how hard things got.
Weeks passed by, and just as we started losing hope that he would ever come back, he squeezed my mom’s hand.
It was a good sign and the first step towards his full recovery.
We couldn’t be prouder of the fighter he was.
Once he was able to speak, although slowly and not understandably at first, we were eager to learn what he had seen while he wasn’t awake. With a quiet voice, he said, “Your wife was here,” and looked straight at Leah, my wife.
She seemed to freeze. It was as though she wasn’t expecting my dad to reveal something like that.
“I know that dad,” I said. “She was always here with me.”
“No,” my dad barely uttered. “She was here with Jared.”
Jared was my brother, and as per my dad’s words, while was in coma my wife and my brother visited him together, and I was not aware about that.
Leah opened her mouth, but she couldn’t say anything. “I…” she said.
Jared looked like he was in pain as he touched the back of his neck. He tried making a joke in order to change the conversation, but no one laughed.
“What is going on,” I asked as I turned to Leah.
Leah said that she felt the urge to speak to my father, hoping he could hear her and Jared only helped her make things right with him following years of estrangement. She regretted all the arguments she had with my dad, and now that he was in coma, she was afraid she wouldn’t have a chance to say sorry.
Jared confirmed her story.
My dad looked at me and said, “Son, there is more to the story…”
I begged him to tell me everything, and he said Leah really tried to bond with him. She spoke to him about football and read sports magazines to him. She shared aspects of her personal life and repeated many times how sorry she was for the feuds.
My dad then said that he saw a side of Leah he never knew existed.
I was relieved.
My family was finally in the place it was always meant to be.
