By Ann von Dehsen, March 28, 2019 — During each summer of my childhood, my family went to the Poconos for a few weeks [of] vacation. On the ride up, my father and I would start our weeklong game of deer spotting. Simply, if you saw a deer and called out “deer” first, you scored a point, and the one with the most points at the end of the week won. Being 5 years older than me, I guess my sophisticated sister thought the game was dumb and did not join us. My mother, being from the Bronx and never entirely comfortable in the woods, was far too busy looking out for life-threatening bears to join us. So it was just a game between the 2 of us that eventually became a tradition. Even years later when riding in the car with him in the suburbs, we’d still shout “deer” during a very rare sighting.
After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, my father spent some time at a rehab center. On a golden autumn day as I was pushing his wheelchair through the gardens, I noticed a deer in the distant woods. I decided not to yell “deer” as I was afraid it might scare and confuse him. Just [then], my father yelled “deer!” and we shared a laugh and a hug. It was also on this walk that he told me he was ready to die and for me to remember happy times together instead of being sad.
Within a few weeks, he was back in the hospital. We knew he did not have much time left, yet he continued to have some good days so my sister and I took turns being at the hospital. I had returned home for a day or two to be with my children. On the first day home, I received a phone call that the doctors did not think he would make it through the night so I immediately started the two-hour ride back to the hospital. Now, it was not uncommon to see deer on my route through N.J. Pine Barrens to the hospital. But, on this particular night as I approached the last circle on Rt. 70, three very large deer walked calmly out of the woods, stopped, and appeared to look right at me. As they slowly moved on I looked at the car’s clock and saw it was 8:10. A few minutes later, I got to the hospital and ran towards my father’s room, but was stopped by the nurse and my crying sister. “I’m sorry,” the nurse told me, “but your father died just a few minutes ago, at 8:10.”
So, it may have been a coincidence, but I believe those deer represented my father’s final, loving goodbye.