The Healing House, The Gift of Dad's Final Years

In this heartfelt talk, artist and author Gwen Cheryl Lyn Sarandrea shares the deeply personal story behind her book, The Healing House: The Gift of Dad’s Final Years.

For the last four years of his life, Gwen opened her home to her 80-year-old widowed father. What began as an act of love soon became a profound journey filled with unexpected lessons, moments of joy, and the quiet beauty of shared time.

If you’ve ever walked alongside an aging parent, faced the reality of loss, or wondered what it truly means to “be there” for someone you love, Gwen’s story will resonate deeply. 

Her journey is a reminder that even in life’s hardest seasons, there is healing, connection, and grace.

📖 Read the full story in her book, The Healing House: The Gift of Dad’s Final Years
➡️ Available on Amazon: https://a.co/d/3ltMVIR
🌐 Learn more about Gwen’s work: www.gwensarandrea.net

Transcript

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The gift of dad's final years. As a nation, we have an aging senior population, and our seniors have gifts to give us if we're open to receive them. Dad's ultimate gift at the end is for you. I want to be there when he dies. When that sentence came out of my mouth, I was as shocked as my friends who were questioning my choice to invite my aging father to come and live with me. I was shocked because I had no idea I wanted to be there when he died. I hadn't thought that far ahead. But that statement began a four-year journey of living with Dad. Hi, I'm Gwen Sherlin Sarandrea. I'm the author of the Healing House, The Gift of Dad's Final Years. Book and workbook. I have a master's degree in clinical counseling psychology, and after counseling adults for 35 years, I help you come to terms with the aging and the dying of your parents and other beloved seniors and loved ones. I'd like to share the legacy Dad left me. When I called Dad and invited him to come live with me, the invitation came straight from my heart. I had no idea how I was going to make it happen. Because at 50 years old, I felt like I was used up by life. I was on two medications. I was in a one-bedroom apartment and I was in debt. But you don't have to know how something will happen. What's necessary is to make a commitment and the how will show up. You will draw on resources inside you and you will grow to meet the challenge. When Dad got off the airplane from Philadelphia, he was 80 years old and he looked like an old man. He'd been sitting in front of the TV with his brother for three years. He taught me you can start a new life at any age. He left everything he had known his whole life to start a new life in California. We bought a 1914 old house badly in need of renovation. We needed a three-bedroom, two-bath house because I needed a private office and he needed a master bedroom, bathroom. But all we could afford was two bedrooms and one bath. I saw the whole remodel in my mind before we put in the offer. There was a bedroom in the back and an old kitchen separated by a middle door, and in the front was a second bedroom that would become dad's and a large living room bathroom. If we took the kitchen out of the back and put it in the front of the house, I could then convert that to my private office and we could build a master bathroom for him later. That way, when the door was closed, he had his own apartment in the front. Three days after Dad arrived, I looked out the window and a shot of fear went through me. He was up on an old wooden ladder, rickety, that was left by the previous owners. He had a rusty old saw in his hand and he was trying to cut a dead branch off a dead tree. I calmed myself and I went outside and I said, Okay, Dad, come down, it's time for lunch. And I took the saw out of his hand, got him on the ground, and I said, You know, I am so glad you are here with me and you're in good shape. But if you fall off of an old ladder, you could break a hip and be in a wheelchair or in a lot of pain. So I want to make a rule that you just stay on the ground. We'll call the tree guy and he can climb and he can cut. And Dad went, Oh good, I didn't want to do manual labor anyway. So I learned to talk to him, find out what his priorities were. I really learned the true meaning of partnership, mutual respect, and a generous heart. Dad spent a lot of time in the yard because he loved talking to people. He was love in action. He connected with everyone in the heart. He held nothing back. He asked people about themselves. He wanted to know where they lived and what was going on. For example, every Friday the street cleaners came, and if you had your car parked, you would get a ticket. And a senior, a single mother across the creek was getting a ticket every Friday. Dad got in the habit of going over and knocking on her door and saying, It's Friday, move your car. And she would come running out just in time. In six months, Dad looked and felt 20 years younger. He felt needed and useful again. He took two walks a day. He was had a sparkle in his eye, and his step was springing. And I was able to get off the old meds so I could help him. I sent him to a seniors club one afternoon, and he came home laughing. And he said, You sent me to a women's club. It was all women, but they liked me and they told me to come back. And they invited him back every week, and he was the only man in a women's club. They finally gave him the key and he would open it up and put all the chairs and tables up and they would bake him cookies. And we also had fun. I took dad to tea dances every other Sunday because he loved to do a good foxtrot. And when he passed away, he had been dancing foxtrot for 60 years. Remodeling that house became a metaphor for the individual transformation we both went through and our relationship together. I learned that when you open your heart to someone, a whole lot more comes with it than you ever expected. Because I wanted to give dad a loving home, I received a beautiful home full of love. And when you give someone else what you what they need most, you get what you need along the way. When dad collapsed four years later from congestive heart's failure, I was helping him to the bathroom. And he said, I can't stand up. And his legs buckled under him. And I said, That's okay, I've got you. Just lower yourself to the floor, and I covered him with a blanket and put a pillow under his head. And I sat down on the floor with him. And this was just a very sweet moment between us, deciding what are we going to do next. I said, I know, I'll call the fire department and ask if they can send two strong men over and lift you up and put you back in bed. He said, That's good. No sirens. I was like, yes. So that's what they did. He said, Boy, when they picked me up and put me back in bed, I felt light as a feather. I went in and called my sister Carol in Southern California to tell her he had collapsed and that a doctor said he was dying. She was on the next plane and spent 36 hours with him before he went into a coma. We called hospice so he could die at home. They were invaluable. They set up a hospital bed in the living room. Dad had signed a living will saying he did not want to be kept alive artificially. Carol took over his care. She gave him his medications and massaged him. Two o'clock in the morning, after receiving his medication, he was moaning so loud that she called hospice, the nurse, and put the phone to Dad's mouth so the nurse could hear how loud the moans were. And the nurse immediately sent morphine over in the middle of the night to the house to ease his suffering. After more than a week, Dad was skin and bones. I had no idea how he was still alive. I went into meditation and said, What is he learning? And the answer came, he was learning to receive all the love he had given. He had taken care of his aging and dying parents, and his mom was 92 when she passed. He also took care of our mother, who was in a wheelchair for three years after her stroke. I waited until my three-hour shift. When Carol would be sleeping because she'd get up with him in the middle of the night. I began to work with his energy field, seeing it and moving it with my hands. And I talked to him the whole time. I told him, the greatest accomplishment of your life is that everyone loved you. And you are afraid to leave this body because you think that's all there is. Your parents were farmers. You believed everything your five senses told you. But your eyes are closed now. See what I see. And I put my forehead to his forehead, and I saw this beautiful tunnel of light filled with radiant angels, wings outspread, and they were singing. And I said to him, You can never die. You are a spirit of light. All you have to do is drop this old frail body like a worn-out suit of clothes and cross over into the light. The angels are here to take you home. I finished healing his energy and I went to bed at 12:30. In the morning he was gone. They removed the body, hospice took their equipment away, and then the greatest gift happened after his death. Later that day I went into meditation and I saw this vision of dad alive and glorious in his spirit body. He was grinning, he was full of love. He had two golden beings on either side of him. Tears just streamed down my face. I felt exalted at the privilege of witnessing this vision. Joy came in and stayed with me for two whole weeks before I finally began to mourn my loss. The fact that we are spirits who never die, living in bodies that do, is so central to an understanding of who we really are. You are a spirit of light that can never die. If you really take that in, how will that change your life? Who will you become? And what will you do differently? I keep sharing this story with people coming to terms with death because I know from my experience that the physical body dies, but life continues. I've seen the vision and I'll never forget it. If you would like ongoing support with the aging and dying of your loved ones, look for the Healing House, the gift of dad's final years, on Amazon.com. Thank you.