A Surprising Picture Proves Dad Could See into the Future, Even if He Could Not Remember the Past

It’s no secret Dad did always did things a little differently.  A notorious spur of the moment guy he was not a person known for making long-term plans.

Anything more than few days into the future just wasn’t really on the table for planning purposes.  Well, I thought that was mostly true until Kathy (my sister) sent a very unusual picture of something Dad had given to her way back in 2011.

A Turnkey Memorial

Apparently Dad had a friend – John Patrick Burke – who had a memorial service so Irish that he could envision many of the same things for himself one day.

To make it easy on Kathy he merely replaced facts about himself in places where his friends name and information was.  He even went as far as noting “My Picture” in the place he wanted it on the page.

Now this is unusual and amusing in a way that only he could execute.  He was providing a Turnkey Memorial Document that we could use when he passed away.

Looking back at this document, which was buried away for years in Kathy’s drawers, it is a bit chilling.  He had predicted his date of death within 2 weeks of reality.

Dad lived for over 4,400 weeks in his lifetime and he suspected when he would leave earth with a 2 week degree of accuracy.

The Document dad provided.

The Most Ironic of Things

What makes this all the more confounding is the fact that he was able to predict the future with so much accuracy while forgetting his own date of birth by over 10 Years!

You’ll note that he indicates his date of birth as being the year 1921 when in fact he was born 10 years later in 1931!  Dad was not born in the roaring 20’s as he indicated here.

While this might be surprising for most people, its not surprising to people that knew him well.

While Dads memory of the most basic things waned to nearly nothing in his older years, his ability to comprehend things at a celestial or higher level seemed to sharpen over time.

The Little Bird

He would show up at a random restaurant where we were at, at precisely the time dinner started WITHOUT an invitation or knowledge that you would even be there.

He would mail you something cryptic and random – like the deed to his home – and it would turn out to be oddly useful in a way you have never predicted.

He would call you when something dreadful happened that no one else knew about.  He would show up somewhere when you were in trouble.  And when he got there – he might have a little trouble remembering your name.  But he was there.

Dad would call it the “Little Bird”, his constant informant of important things but we knew the little bird was nothing more than his unreal sense of intuition.

Dad always had a knack for surprising you with things he knew, that he was never told.

Wishes Fulfilled

Well even though Dad’s memorial wish was buried away in a drawer out of sight – Kathy, Elizabeth and others managed to give him almost exactly what he wanted.

As he had envisioned.

Wedding Picture as he wanted

The song he liked

Coincidence or Memory?

So was it coincidence?  Good memory?  How did Kathy and Elizabeth manage to add so many elements he had wanted without having any of this on hand?

I’d like to think it was a bit more than just that.  Maybe the blue bird at work. Maybe not. But maybe so…