It’s been more than 20 years since Jason Ritter’s father, John Ritter, died unexpectedly, but he still finds ways to feel close to him. Sometimes this involves making a conscious effort to reach for his dad and seek advice from him. Other times, he sees signs that his father’s presence is still with him somehow.
John died after suffering an aortic dissection when he was only 54 years old. This was in 2003, when Jason was only 23. Now, at age 46, Jason still finds himself turning to his father for guidance.
Jason started noticing signs shortly after his father died.
Suddenly, the sunsets he observed felt “personal” — especially because one of them was completely purple, and his late father loved that color. This happened one day just after his father’s death.
“For some reason, the whole sky was purple, and that was one of his favorite colors,” Jason said on a recent episode of Hoda Kotb’s Joy 101 podcast. Of course, a purple sunset is a beautiful occurrence. But it was even more meaningful for Jason, who felt more connected to his dad because of it.
“He even painted his car this purple…” Jason recalled. “Before I had gotten over my embarrassment as a teenager where I was like, ‘Why does my dad have a purple car?’… But he loved purple, and the whole sky was purple on that day.”
He acknowledged that some people might see it as a coincidence.
But he chooses to look at it differently because of the comfort and joy it brought him. “There are things like that where I absolutely understand that I have the choice to go, ‘That’s just a coincidence. The world is random, and it’s all chaos,'” he explained. “And then it just gives me more joy and more happiness to choose the other option, which is that there are things at work I don’t understand.”
He continued to feel his father’s presence when he noticed awe-inspiring sunsets. “It felt like when someone passes, they get to have a paintbrush for like a couple months and paint a couple sunsets or something like that,” he said.
At other times, he’s made an effort to feel his father’s presence.
There are times when he just feels like he needs his dad. “I go, ‘I need you in this corner right here, dad,’ and I just sort of sit him down and talk to him,” he explained on the podcast. “There’s so much about this world that’s such a mystery, and whether he’s out there somewhere, or I know him so well that he’s within me somewhere, it doesn’t matter.”
Sometimes, this means reflecting on what his father would’ve done based on what he knew about him. “There are times where I can ask him a question that I don’t necessarily know the answer to, and I filter it through what I knew about him as a father and as a person and I can kind of guess what he would say,” he added.
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