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For the last 15 years of my father’s life, every single day, at 6:30 pm exactly, he called me.

It was part of his routine – every morning, ever since retiring from the fire department, dad would wake up at quarter of 6, go to church, swim for an hour, go shopping at the Stop & Shop, and read the Boston Globe, cover to cover. After dinner, he would clean up the kitchen, and call his only daughter.

I have talked to my dad as I climbed – one step up, two slides down, through knee-deep ash to the top of Mount Fuji, through the middle of the night. And I talked to my dad from the seat of my bicycle, dodging chickens along the dirt roads of Cambodia, as I pedaled from Saigon to Bangkok. And I talked to dad every evening, as I cruised along the Nile – with the majestic sand dunes of Africa reaching out to either side of me, and all the way across their beautiful continent. Dad wanted no part of travel or adventure, but I could hear him beaming with pride when I inevitably said something like, “Daddy, I cycled 75 miles today!” And he would laugh and say, “God love ya. Beddah you den me.”

The morning after my father passed, eight months and four days ago, I went walking into the woods, as I often do when I need to clear my head. I laid myself down in the earth alongside a little stream, and just listened to the wind through the leaves and to the birds. These sounds of nature had always been the voice of Spirit speaking to me - but, somehow, that morning, the voice of Spirit had taken on a Boston accent, and a lisp.

Later that day, I was trying to go about “normal life,” in that strange and baffling fog, when you're heartbroken inside, and everything in our external world just seems so artificial and ridiculous. I had just parked outside of a store, and saw that the clock read 6:22, so I decided to call dad a few minutes early - bring bring, bring bring – “Hello daddy, it's me.” I had always tried to call ahead of time, if I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk right at 6:30, just so he wouldn't worry. “Daddy, I miss you so much. I hope you're settling in well into heaven. I hope grandma was there to meet you, as you wished. Please give her a hug for me. I hope it's beautiful there. I love you. I'll call you tomorrow. And, Daddy, if you can hear me, please, please let me know. I miss you so much.”

I hung up the imaginary phone, got out of the car, and started to head into the store, when I realized that the store had moved. So I got back in and drove up the hill – past a dusty construction site, within view of the muddy, flooded cemetery where we wouldn’t be allowed to bury dad for another nine weeks. (Thank you, climate change.) An older gentleman was driving the car ahead of me, about seven miles an hour, so it took unusually long time to drive that 300 feet. I parked and started to head inside, when I realized I had left my real phone in the car. When I went back to retrieve it, I got the shock of my life: The phone read, “6:30” – not 6:29, and not 6:31 - but “6:30. Missed call. Daddy.”

“Oh my God – do we still get to talk??” I scrambled frantically to call him back.

But sadly, he didn't answer.

So I tried again! Thinking, “Maybe it’s like in jail, where you get one last phone call??!” (This seriously went through my head…)

Sadly, heaven still didn't answer.

So I left him a voicemail, saying all the same things I had just said - how much I missed him, and how much I loved him.

My god, how I wish I had a screenshot of that image. But as a dear friend later told me, “No. That was only for you.”

I put the phone away and headed in to the new store, baffled at what had just happened. I thought, "well, maybe one of my brothers was actually sweet enough to do that for me." And then I realized, "nah…"

When I got back to my parents’ house, a little while later, I saw that one of my brothers had dad's cell phone out on the table next to him. I asked, “did you call me?” And he said, “no,” in that annoyed way that older brothers will always respond to younger sisters, even when they’re both adults.

I asked him if he had done anything with dad's phone, he said yes, he checked the voicemails before closing out the number. What we figured out over the next few minutes was that perhaps he had accidentally hit ‘redial’ without realizing it. And perhaps – and most likely - my number had been the last one dad called.

I asked my brother, “did you know that you did that at exactly 6:30?” He said, “No.”

I asked, “did you know that was the time that daddy called me every day?” He said ... “Nooo.”

And then I asked my conservative Catholic brother, “what do you imagine are the odds that that was just coincidence?” And his response was, “astronomical.”

So my brother was the unknowing agent of a divine action.

I won’t know, until I pass from this plane, how my father orchestrated that call. All I know is that he did; it was the single clearest message he could have possibly sent.

I had always feared this moment – when I would need to find a way to carry on in this world, without my dad’s steady support.

But my dad made it exceedingly clear that he is still very much with me. And we still talk every day. No matter where in the world we both are.