The eight months after my father’s death were some of the worst months of my life. While outwardly I would portray everything is fine while adjusting to new roles and responsibilites, grief was like barbed wire around my heart. My father was and still is my best friend, and he’s still counted as one of the few people that I can really and truly relax on a car ride with.

Hunting week was especially hard on me. There wasn’t someone occupying the space he had taken for himself, he wasn’t up at 4am getting coffee ready, there wasn’t the “If you go there, I’m going there” talk. And then there is the quiet. There’s a thousand coversations you have in your head while you sit in a tree stand waiting for something to move infront of your stand and missing my father was forefront.

After the week, I was driving home and I heard Lifetime by Three Days Grace. I lost it. Bawling in the truck because it hit home big time. I get home to the wife and I’m still a little on the upset side of things, and she does her best to cheer me up. Wednesday that week, I was talking to a customer, discussing things about dealing with grief, and as I was talking to her I said I’m good, I’m at peace now. And I honestly did feel good, like there was no more pain.

Come to find out that two weeks later, even after some poking and prodding from my Aunt Molly about being pregnant, Dina actually was. Tuesday after Thanksgiving I came home to peanut butter M&Ms, the pregnancy test, and little bids for our baby. Math and me are like best friends, so Dina is telling me that she’s already 4 weeks pregnant, and my brain can’t wrap around how that works because in my head, it doesn’t make sense. Turns out “being pregnant” starts from the end of your last cycle. I call my best friend Matt and tell him because I can’t not tell him, and we swore to not tell anyone. Dina called our upstairs neighbor Lisa and told her the good news as well. I took a picture of the positive test, and sent it to my other best friend Camille, who had done similarly when she was pregnant the first time. It was exciting, and nerve racking because you hear all the bad stuff that can potentially happen before 10 weeks, and we were planning on telling our families Christmas Eve/Day even with her being about 8 weeks at that point.

The next week and a half Dina and I talked about how we could reveal to our families in a subtle way. I got a hold of a gentleman, Ruben from Onewallball.com, on my route that does screen printing, and with the suggestion of Matt, the men would get cozies while the ladies would get a T-Shirt, because in reality of it, the men would probably turn it into being a ‘work t-shirt’ and not actually get any use out of it. Cozies, you can take it to places to keep your drink cold, which Matt did for the 2023 Pocono trip. Makes sense. Ruben created T-shirts for the ladies that said Hi Grandma, Hi Aunt, or Hi Godmother, and for the men, the cozies said Hi Grandpa, Hi Uncle, and Hi Godfather. He did an excellent job. We shipped the package for Dina’s father down to his house because we weren’t going to see him for a couple of weeks still. Christmas eve comes and it starts with presenting the boys at work their cozies. Then we go to Dina’s mother’s for dinner and give them theirs, and then call Dina’s father to open his gift. After that and before dinner I call my Uncle Dan and let him know, and I can hear Molly in the background yelling I knew it! Christmas Day we gave my mother hers, and she cried hard. Then my sister came and she got her shirt and reacted similarly. Video of everyone’s reaction is on my Instagram and my Youtube.

Months go by and the pain of Dad not being there still stings, until I scroll through the Instagram reels one night, and find one that speaks to me. Its a clip from Dragon Ball Z: Brojack Unbound where Gohan is being crushed and Gohan is begging for help from his father, while Goku watches on. Goku finally has seen enough and uses his instant transmission to save him. I go and look up the clip on YouTube. The pivotal line that Goku says before he saves Gohan is, “My son needs my help.” My own father, who I am told I am a clone of him, would do anything to help me and in that movie Gohan is almost a clone of Goku. My brain saw me as Gohan and my grief was Brojack crushing Gohan. It became very clear to me that that day back in November after hunting season something happened. I’m not one to believe in the hocus pocus of things, but I had a gut feeling that my father had played some sort of role similarly as to how Goku helped his son. The grief was painful, and I could only imagine my Dad saying something along the lines that I needed him to help me.

We had a gender reveal in the middle of April and one of the people in attendance was a medium, one that the wife and her Grandmother had talked to and used in the past as well as had become great friends with. Again, not one that can believe in the hocus pocus, my brain can only believe in the tangible and logical, not spiritual. I did need to ask one question though to her, because I needed to know if that day in November was just coincidence or not.

“Did Dad have a hand in everything that is going on here?” Although vague, my meaning was simple. Did Dad bring this baby to us to help heal me.

“Yes“