"Let me go. Let me go. I want to get off the bed. Let me go. Help me."

Dad is yelling as loud as he can. He wants to go to "his" bathroom.

The angry voice yelling at me and to no one in particular is coming from my father and yet I don’t recognize this person. It’s as if another personality has suddenly possessed his being. He seems to have become a different person, a different consciousness, a violent mean-spirited person. Curiously when I look at this new personality it looks and sounds very much like the creature Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movie.

As Dad screams to get his way, I notice how his body has become scrawny. After nine months of debilitating health, he physically looks like more bones than muscle. And, his head appears bigger than normal, as if it is out of portion with the rest of his frame.

Dad has been bedridden for most of the past four months or so. He has lost the physical ability to get off the bed and walk the few steps to the portable commode, even with assistance. He has lost the strength to stand steady even the briefest of moments. He has lost the patience to follow directions about where to step and when to sit.

I’ve learned this the hard way. There was a time Maddy had the night off and I was caring for Dad by myself. Knowing better, I gave into his pleads and helped him off the bed to the portable commode. I was holding on to him, guiding him when and where to step. I had just asked him to step back and he stepped forward. It took all my strength to catch him as he went to sit on what he thought was the commode where there was only empty space and the hard terrazzo floor beneath him. Somehow I lifted him onto the side of the bed and pulled him back to the top of the bed. My back felt instantly wrenched.

Today the sides of the hospital bed are up and the bed is raised as high off the ground at it will go to prevent Dad from falling or getting off the bed. Maddy has put pillows and towels around the bed in an effort to make it more difficult for Dad to get off the bed and at the same time protect him as he thrashes his body from side to side doing his best to get off the bed.

I feel Dad’s frustration. He is undoubtedly upset that he seems to have lost control over his body, his health, his life. I look at him lovingly. He starts yelling again. "What are you smiling at?"

As if pumped-up on adrenaline Dad has found the strength to lift his body up from a laying down position and with his hands on the hospital bed rails pulled himself down the length of the bed. One of his legs is now over the end of the bed.

Maddy and I are on either side of his bed. I’m gently talking Dad through this. He’s yelling again. "Police! Police! I’m being tortured! Lynn’s torturing me! Police! Police! Call the police!"

I reach for his hand to lift it off the bed rail. He grabs my wrist with a strength that belies his physical presence. It’s then that I ask for God’s assistance. I instantly know that in this altered consciousness, high-anxiety state, my father has the ability to break my arm.

Later I learn from the Hospice nurses that they call this state combative. They tell me it is not unique to my father. Rather it’s common in those experiencing end of life Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Finally, through the grace of God Dad lets go of my wrist. And, together Maddy and I gently coax Dad further back into his bed, closer to the head of the bed.

Suddenly he shouts: "Lynn, you never get it right."

Maddy looks at me startled. I release a little laugh and smile.

"Thank you Dad. I always wondered where that came from."

In Messages from God it says: "Deepen your awareness. Keep an open attitude and a listening ear."

My Dad angrily blurting out those words was a true blessing, a sacred gift. How often had I heard myself saying those exact words whenever something didn’t turn out as I had intended or those times when I was torn about making the right decision.

Who knows when or why my Dad first said those words to me. Surely it was when I was too young to distinguish between my Dad’s opinion and truth. After all, almost instinctively children want to be loved and accepted by their father.

I do know that that voice and those exact words had been a part of my consciousness for as long as I could remember. Unconsciously they had been undermining my self-esteem for a lifetime. And, even though I had spent years developing a quiet mind through meditation and heightened awareness to recognize and eliminate what I call mind talk, I had overlooked this reoccurring other voice.

Looking back now, I remember that curiously one of the first things I discovered when I moved back into the house of my childhood, elementary school through college, to care for my father some three years earlier was how irritated I was every time he called out my name. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was in the same room with him or down the hall, Dad seemed to yell my name loudly in a harsh tone that grated on my nerves. I’d physically feel a tightening in my chest, as if I had been stabbed. I requested that he not yell when he called my name. Of course, he never felt he was yelling. However, after many requests, Dad did his best to soften his tone when calling my name.

Now the real truth was revealed. My emotional response whenever my Dad called my name was like automatic programming from long ago. Regardless of how my father called my name, perhaps how anyone called my name, emotionally I was brought back to a moment in time when I was made wrong and felt I wasn’t good enough. I was hurt by someone I loved and wanted to love me. Perhaps I felt abandoned and my self-confidence was shattered.

I knew now how this illusion had lived on in the subconscious mind of an adult and had played out repeatedly throughout my life. It would often take me months and years to regain my self-confidence after experiencing situations that didn’t work out for whatever reason. I seemed to always take them personal as if I had been let down by someone I trusted and respected. Unknowingly I had been sabotaging myself with this thought, my thoughts. And, now, instantly and gratefully the veil was lifted. I knew the truth. Now I could catch these thoughts and replace them with the real truth: "There is no irritation. All is Love."

Then as suddenly as this altered personality had materialized it was gone. The Dad I knew emerged tired and mellow. He soon fell asleep for more than 24 hours. Upon awakening he had no recall of this altered state experience or anything that he said. The next day he asks me if he had said anything "wrong." I never shared the experience with him.

These combative experiences happened a couple of more times prior to Dad making his transition. And, each time they became less intense as I learned to call on God’s intervention and not mine.