Miracle: A Definition

It happened on the Pike, somewhere in Central Massachusetts on the way home from the Berkshires this weekend. Out of nowhere I started thinking about the letters I gave to my father last year: one at Father's Day, and one at his birthday in October. I felt glad that I'd said all that to him before his passing in April, and wondered about my siblings. Were there things they didn't say that they wished they had said? The next moment brought with it a feeling that has come now and then since April when I catch myself in a wave of realization that I won't see him again in this lifetime. Then unbidden came this thought: "He's been there my whole life and now he's gone." Odd perhaps, but true: it's the first time it hit me that my father's was the first death in my midst of someone who'd been there all my life. I felt loss full-on, and filled with tears.

There's no accounting for what happened next.

As if commanded, my puddled eyes glanced left just in time to see the license plate of the car that had just passed. Mind you, I was focused on the road, not on the cars or plates or such. It was just Dad---letters---grief---tears---glance. And what did the plate read, plain as day, but

SDAD

Which I immediately read as

'S DAD

or, "It's Dad." Instantly I had the feeling that something out of the ordinary had just happened. Something unexplainable and wow. It felt like it was my Dad there saying "I'm not gone; I'm right here, riding alongside you."

And I stopped crying.