“There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost but what the lighthouse of the Lord can rescue. It beckons through the storm of life...It sends forth signals of light easily seen and never failing. If followed, those signals will guide you back to your Heavenly home.”- Thomas S. Monson

My dad, a Colorado Native, developed a love for lighthouses for reasons unbeknownst to me. It was not uncommon to have lighthouse paraphernalia throughout his dental office and home. One of our last father-daughter trips was driving along the Oregon coast visiting lighthouses. It was a trip that I will forever cherish.

My dad was in hospice for eight weeks dying from renal failure. With end-stage renal failure, the kidneys are no longer able to filter out toxins which end up building up in the body and causing confusion. The last ten days of his life, he experienced a significant change in his mental awareness. Despite the confusion, with his eyes closed and pointing upwards, he repeatedly asked my sister and I what those two bright lights were.

It is a common theory that right before someone dies, they perceive a bright light. Possibly it’s God, possibly the lack of blood supply to the brain, or perhaps something else. I don’t have the brain power or the emotional strength to truly explore what happens when someone dies, but I like to imagine that on March 17th, 2018 those two bright lights guided my dad safely to his resting place with his Heavenly Father.

I never understood his love for lighthouses and now I can only speculate. Maybe my dad’s love for lighthouses grew from a much deeper meaning rather than simply the architecture. Maybe he always correlated God’s guidance similar to a lighthouse guiding a mariner to safety. Maybe he knew that his life would have tribulations and uncertainties but if he kept his eyes on the light, he would weather the storm.

He never made it to the East coast to tour the lighthouses. So in his honor, we explored as many lighthouses as we could. With each lighthouse, I experienced great sadness but also an overwhelming peace that my dad was no longer suffering. He will no longer experience the dense fog, strong winds, or rough tides of life because he followed the light safely to his eternal home.