The wedding seemed to lift my father's spirits and give him energy, and the chemotherapy had stabilized his condition. His doctor, Dr. Saul Millis, agreed to let him return home in the middle of May.

One day, before he returned home, I was sitting in my father's hospital room talking to him. I asked him what he did to pass the time, and he commented, matter of factly, that a lot of the time there were guardians present to watch over him.

"What do they look like?" I asked. He said they were large circles about five-and-a-half feet in diameter and they appeared on one of the long walls in his room.

My father was fighting an agonizing battle for his life, but there was nothing I could see in his behavior to suggest that his mental faculties were slipping. I realized, however, that he was at the threshold of life and death. While he was still among the living, he was getting glimpses of what lay beyond.