As the disease progressed, we took turns sitting with him. My turn came, and I was alone with him. He was unconscious, in a coma probably. As I prepared to pray for him, I placed my hand on his chest. When I did, he snarled at me. That’s the only way I can explain it, a snarl like an angry, cornered animal. It made me jump, but I kept my hand there and prayed. His lips remained in that position even though he made no more sounds. His face did not relax until his wife walked into the room. He died shortly after.

I have no idea what this means, but it just seems weird to me.

Then several years later, it happened again when my stepfather died. He had died in an automobile accident and my mother was having a hard time. This roadrunner spoke the same message the first one had: I’m still very much alive, be happy.

And again very recently. This time I didn’t know the person had died because I was on vacation. And actually, they hadn’t died yet, they were in a coma. I saw two roadrunners on that trip and both times wondered who had died. When I returned to work after the break, the person in the coma died, and I remembered the roadrunners.

Now I won’t even begin to infer the meaning of this, but there’s something about seeing a roadrunner that has to cheer you up. And as a warning, it isn’t a very scary thing. All I can say is, when I see a roadrunner, someone has died. The roadrunner was a very comforting thing, a reassurance that life goes on.

There are no such things as accidents, only setups. Our enemy, Satan, sets us up. It takes him awhile, he can’t just outright kill us, or he already would have. So he has to wait until we get careless, preoccupied, busy. Then he lays the trap, and we step right into it because we are careless, preoccupied, busy, so much so that we don’t hear that still small voice of God. We look for the spectacular from God, when it’s the little things He uses to warn and direct our paths. It’s in the quiet time he speaks, and most of us have precious little of that.

My dad died from a fall. He was careless, preoccupied, busy, got on a roof on a very windy day taking sheets of tin off. Somehow, no one was around, he fell. The sheet of tin was wrapped around him. Several weeks before, I dreamed something, I didn’t remember the details when I awoke, but I did remember these words, “Did she fall or was she pushed?” After he died, I remembered this and wondered if the two were related. A hurricane had ripped through our part of the country and caused massive damage to his rental properties. He was frantic to get things fixed as quickly as possible. So when it happened, I wondered: Did he fall? Or was he pushed? Was it really an accident or was it a setup? Had he let his carelessness, preoccupation, busyness get him pushed by unseen forces to his death? That was two years ago, and I continued to ponder: fall or pushed? Or did he just make a stupid mistake and die for his error?

Recently I attended the funeral of a young man. He mixed alcohol and pain meds one night and never woke up. At his funeral, I added the third category – jumped. You have to wonder, why do people do this to themselves? Why do they take these chances? His parents were divorced. He spent many years estranged from his mother. Had he just had enough? Enough pain? Enough rejection? Enough of trying? Enough of looking for the answer? But he couldn’t commit suicide, that would be a sin, right? So he did the next best thing, he jumped. Jumped into the oblivion of drugs and allowed them to take their predetermined course. It didn’t take much effort at all on his part, just follow the path of least resistance, and let that river take him where many drug users end up.

And so I returned to my dad’s death and wondered: Did he fall? Was he pushed? Or did he jump? Did he jump because he didn’t want to fool with all the work that lay before him? Did he jump because he didn’t want to make some decisions that needed to be made? Like who to leave his estate to? His first family or his second? Should he leave a sizable chunk to his biological children because he neglected them to earn all this wealth? Or should he leave it to his second family because they were nice to him when we couldn’t be? No decision is a decision.

So now the battle rages over that money. And still I wonder: Did he fall? Was he pushed? Or did he jump?

Well, one night I woke up and I could have sworn he was on his knees at the foot of the bed saying, Dear God, please help me! Actually, his voice was raised, and he sounded desperate. But he wasn’t on the floor; he was in bed, so I thought I was having a dream. And maybe I was.

I was really wrestling with myself about this going nowhere relationship. My conscience was bothering me, and my self-respect begged for resolution. A sign on a local church helped me. It read: The mighty oak was once a nut that stood its ground. I realized that the only way the relationship would ever change, one way or the other, was for me to take a stand, and so I did. The next time he showed up in the middle of the night, I told him he’d have to find another place to sleep. He took it well and left quickly. I, of course, kicked myself and wondered if I’d done the right thing.

It wasn’t a week later that I got the news: he had been murdered, probably in a drug deal gone bad. He was found, are you ready? ON HIS KNEES!!! I remembered that night, the night I heard him cry in my dream and wondered: did he call out to God in his final moments?