Chapter 18
by Meredith McKell Graff
I met Roland in early June 2014, when he was a speaker at the Afterlife Awareness Conference held that year in Portland, Oregon. Roland offered a small group session for seventeen during the open period on one afternoon. I felt compelled to register for this group. I wanted to get any information I could about my father, who died in 2009 following a horrific automobile accident. It wasn’t the kind of usual car accident involving two or more vehicles. Instead, my dad, a retired botany professor, had volunteered to fix all the broken sprinklers in his condominium neighborhood.
My dad Cyrus McKell was standing on the sidewalk on the corner of his street in Utah, fixing one of the broken sprinklers on the little hill at the neighborhood entrance, in front of the sign Mt. Olympus Condos when he was hit from behind by his elderly neighbor, who had lost control of his car and had driven off the road onto the sidewalk. Because of the car’s high rate of speed, my dad went into the windshield, up over the top of the car, sliding off to be dragged by the back wheels across the street, where the car drove over him as it continued down the opposite sidewalk. From the 911 transcripts, it seemed my dad may have died, but came back between the impact and shortly before the ambulance arrived. The trauma ICU doctor told me later that he had his eyes open when he came into the ER and was able to blink to tell them he had no feeling in his extremities.
I got word of the accident in Washington and arranged to fly to Utah to be with him. I had no idea how badly hurt he was. I arrived in the evening and it wasn’t until 10 p.m. that my mother and I were able to go into his room. His head was heavily bandaged, and I could see his heart monitor line leap when we walked into the room and started talking to him. He was blanketed, and we did not see his other injuries. I was able to sit with him for the next two and a half hours, until he peacefully died with me holding his left hand. I thought I could see figures at the foot of his bed. When he passed, it felt to me like I was handing him off to the figures like a baton in a relay race. I learned many months later the figures were my grandparents.
I went to a group channeling session a few weeks after I read the police report, and we did a meditation, during which I saw in my mind’s eye what my dad saw when he was hit. He was bounced out of his body and found himself in a beautiful meadow. As he was wondering how he got there and admiring all the stunning colors and plants he didn’t know, four figures walked out from trees bordering the meadow. As they got closer, I could see they were his brother, Lynn, who died at four years old but manifested as fourteen, his mother, his father, who died when my dad was eight years old, and his big brother, William, who had died only eighteen months earlier and lived to raise a wonderful family. After a huge hug (my dad, with all his Spanish-
speaking-country travels, called them abrazos), he asked them why they were there, and they told him they had come to get him. They said, “If you want to go back to say goodbye, we will come with you and wait for you.” And that is when he woke up in the gutter after being driven over by the old man’s car. I saw my grandparents at the foot of my dad’s bed before he died. They were there.
My dad and I were very close, and I hoped to receive a message from him when I went to Roland’s small group. When I was really little, I used to tell my mother I was going to marry him someday. When I started my law firm in 2003, I used to joke that he was my silent partner. My dad was my biggest teacher, mentor, and role model.
In the small group session with Roland, we only had a couple of hours for him to get information for the seventeen people who anxiously awaited messages. I was sitting on Roland’s left at the middle of a long conference table. Before he got to me, we ran out of time. Roland told me to go to dinner, the next event on the conference schedule, and then find him later for a private reading.
The first thing Roland did when we sat down together a few hours later was write on his purple pad in large letters, “I’M SORRY!” He said, “Your father wants you to know he is sorry for leaving.”
I quickly responded, “He doesn’t need to be sorry. I know it was his time. The way he died was too freaky for it to be anything but his time.”
Roland continued, “He tells me he was ready to go but realized later you weren’t ready to let him go.”
I said, “He could have lived to age 100 and I still would not have been ready to let him go. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“He waited for you,” Roland said.
“I know,” I replied.
I always knew in my heart my dad waited for me specifically. It was the kind of relationship we had. I would have waited for him too, had I been the one in the hospital bed.
After receiving information about my mother, who died almost three years after my dad, and a message from my best friend, whose ashes I put into the ocean in Hawaii after she died of lung cancer in 2010, Roland and I were wrapping up. He folded the Purple Papers on which he had written my messages, and as we talked, I noticed he had sketched a tree on the folded side. I said, “Oh my gosh, my dad is showing you the tree I planted for him last Sunday, which was the five-year anniversary of his passing.” I had my iPad with me, and I got it out to show Roland the photos of the tree with the yellow ribbons I had tied on, plus the birdhouse decorated with some of the many feathers my dad has sent to me since he died.
When I got home that night, I showed my husband the Purple Papers and the drawing of the tree on the folded side. My husband asked, “What is that writing up in the corner?” I hadn’t noticed writing when I saw Roland draw the tree. I read the words, “I am in the fields.”
My dad had a great sense of humor and he loved jokes. One year for his birthday, I found a card that said, “You are a farmer—out standing in your field.” Of course, he was outstanding in his field. My dad was the author of over three hundred books and articles and a world traveler as he consulted for Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, governments, and private entities. He was at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, six months after the student revolution in 1989 when Chinese troops fired on and killed hundreds of protesters. He made several trips to China, many to Mexico and South America, many to Israel, and many to Africa, and he even lived in Kenya for six months with my mother and little brother. We lived for nine months in Spain in 1968 while he was on a Fulbright Fellowship and University of California sabbatical leave. My dad was a PhD botanist and truly was outstanding in his field.
But that became a running joke, because my dad was a humble guy who introduced himself as “Cy” McKell, never Dr. McKell. His neighbors of twenty-six years (when he died) had no idea of his credentials or renowned status. My mother was mad when I approved an obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune that went from the top of the page to the bottom because, she said, he “never liked to toot his own horn.”
I said, “He isn’t tooting his own horn. I am tooting it, and if I can’t toot it when he is dead, then when can I toot it?” I admired him so much. It is no wonder I got a master’s in English—he used to have me edit his drafts when he was writing, whether it be a book or an article. He was a prolific writer.
My dad specialized in desert shrubs. He did a lot of fieldwork, gathering samples of rabbit brush, sage, and other desert plants for his research. Our family went on many camping trips, staying in a pop-up camper or a rented trailer in the hot Southern California desert, so he could do his research combined with a family weekend. I used to tease him that he was “just a farmer out standing in his field.” I’ll bet his fields now are prettier than the ones we camped in.
About two weeks after meeting Roland, I was on his Facebook page and I saw Purple Papers he had posted, hoping to find the recipients of the messages. One had a drawing of a red Jeep. I knew immediately it was my dad’s red Jeep. My dad loved that red Jeep; it was the only red vehicle he had ever owned. I sent an email to Roland exclaiming, “That is my dad’s red Jeep!” I called in to his radio show a few weeks later.
When I called in, Roland said, “You know what is really wild? I had that Purple Paper with me the day I met you in Oregon. Your dad didn’t mention it.”
“He wanted to have another chance to talk to me,” I offered.
Roland agreed.
At his funeral, we had to shut down the viewing a half hour after the funeral was supposed to begin (the line to get in went all the way down the hall of the church corridor and around the side of the church), so we could get the funeral done and get on the road down to the Spanish Fork Cemetery, where forty retired volunteer vets (my dad’s generation) were waiting to be his honor guard at his funeral. I know he loved his funeral. I felt him around the entire day. In fact, it was overcast, but it didn’t start raining until the end of the lunch. It was said that my dad was “controlling the weather” because he made sure it wasn’t raining at the cemetery or for most of the backyard family get-together.
I have to laugh at him because when he retired from his position as dean of science at Weber State University, he told me he was worried people would forget him. With the internet, that is not likely to happen. When I googled his name after he died, I got sixteen thousand hits. Now it is over fifty thousand. People are still quoting him in their professional papers, and his professional legacy lives on.
I am so grateful for the peace I have been given about my dad’s passing. After all this time, I still miss my dad. I talk to him every day and think of him all the time. I still find feathers, but not as often as before. He still helps me find parking places in crowded parking lots. Little things every now and then let me know he is still keeping his eye on me. I am not grieving any more. These signs helped me climb out of that deep place. Now, I just look forward to seeing him again.