John Alexander Dowie: My Father

In the end he died alone. Tired of living in a Florida VA Nursing home for less than a year, he had some crazy idea that he could once again live by himself, and so with government assistance bought a motorized chair and moved into an apartment on the VA grounds against family advice. Independence and freedom barreled him along sidewalks to the store and back. Several months later upon returning from the grocer’s he suffered a second stroke and died on his kitchen floor. Such is the story of my father’s demise and the unraveling of his life’s storms. My father was separated from our family for twenty-five years, an act of his choosing. Although we did reunite after the first stroke, I was the last of my siblings to see him before
Dr. Dowie predicted her father, a very wealthy man, would go broke if he did not believe. He didn’t and they did and although his mother and her sister crossed the state line into Wisconsin to have their tea leaves read on a regular basis they were followers of Dr. Dowie. My father had qualities that should have made him successful but they did not. His exquisite taste turned everything he touched into a masterpiece. Ever youthful looking, he was a great conversationalist, and loved sharing his sweet tenor voice accompanied by my mother. Everyone loved my father but he did not love himself. Frequently we don’t recognize the middle of our storm or that there may be a storm within a storm. And if you don’t know there is a storm, how can you know the beginning? And once over, how do we understand and then grieve the lives lost in our storm? I have no answer except that it takes years of processing to put the stories in order, first sorting and then examining each piece, much like a jigsaw puzzle. In the end will we recognize our part in the