by Mr JP
My dad came to me after he died.
He had been a struggling artist all of his adult life. After he and my mom divorced he lived alone in a run down house for about 20 years until he died unexpectedly from a heart attack in his bathroom. He was found the following Monday when his coworkers called me because he hadn’t shown up for work.
My father had become quite a hoarder during those years, and cleaning out his house after he died was a massive undertaking.
One afternoon a few weeks after he had passed, I was all alone at his house going through his things and cleaning up.
I walked out to the enclosed front porch where we had been putting out contractor bags full of trash to be hauled away.
There must have been 30 bags out there. I just stood out there, looking around at all of the bags when something just came over me.
That’s the only way I know to describe it.
I walked to one particular bag in the midst of all the others and opened it up.
Right there on the top was one of my father’s original watercolors he had painted many years before. Someone had accidentally put it in the trash, and I knew that was him telling me to find it before it was lost forever.
I had no reason to go open that one bag, but… I just did.
His art was his life’s passion, and for one of his pieces to get thrown away would have broken his heart, and mine.
It just could be him.