Since everything with Wolfie has happened I've had two life experiences that play themselves over and over again in my mind. It's fair to say that my mind is nearly obsessed on them... re-playing them time and time again when the rest of the world is quiet. One is this fresh and vivid clip of Wolfie's birth. The other is an older clip... but yet somehow still preserved... of my father's death.
My dad, after battling like a warrior for years with Parkinson's disease and early onset Alzheimer's, went to be in heaven on April 9th of 2005. He was only 69 when he died and I was only 24. I'd only even been a real believer in God for a year before he passed.
My dad, until he got really sick, was a chubby, kind-of jolly and half-serious fellow. Always whistling and singing like a songbird. He enjoyed being in the sun and his leathery, mole-covered, usually red hide bore the proof of that. His hair had been gray-ish from the day that I could ever remember, and the hairs around his neck curled up and out like cherub's locks. His beard was almost always salt and pepper - mostly white. After he came inside to cool down from being in the hot sun, spooning leaves out of our pool on a warm summer afternoon, he'd sit in his special spot on our sectional sofa (this was Dad's spot, nobody else could sit there). And when I was three I'd climb onto his lap, breathing in the scent of Banana Boat tanning oil, as if he'd taken a bath in it. I'd lay on his arm and investigate his chest hairs. They were white and gray... he called them his "dogwood trees".
It's a long story (isn't it always?) but I'd had a particularly rocky teenage life...the kind that kept me, sadly enough, mostly somewhat "emotionally estranged" from my parents. That's the best way I can put it. Emotionally estranged. Such that when his diagnosis came while I was in college, I didn't find it urgent enough to visit my parents back home as often as I *really* should have. After all, as much as I was concerned, my family didn't hug much. We weren't big on kissing and touching. I just didn't feel as "connected" to them as I do now... now that I know from Jesus what love really is...and now that I know from life what loss really is.
When he passed I was at his bedside in the hospice along with my family. Once the moment of his transition had come and gone, I hung my head and tried to pray. But my mind was blank. I couldn't muster up the mental words. Nothing came.
Then it began, first slow like a creeping in on my body and mind and then rushing over me like a strong current... were thoughts of childhood and moments I'd long since forgotten of my father and I.
The time he surprised me and picked me up from school, in his polyester slacks waiting for me and leaning against his beige towncar parked right in front of the school buses I hated to ride. The time I left my Barbie horse in the backyard on the ground and he stepped on it. I cried and he scolded me for leaving it there but I knew he was right. The feel of his sweaty neck as I clung to it riding piggy-back somewhere. The sight of him floating in waterspace through my foggy snorkeling goggles, pointing at a sanddollar in 4 feet of crystal clear Florida ocean water. The stinging smell of his cologne and the excitement that filled the air as I waited for a babysitter to arrive, mom and dad going out to do something fancy by themselves.
All of these and more, many many more, flooded my mind. Like when someone says "My life flashed before my eyes." Yes, that's what it felt like. Only it felt like something being pulled through me. Something combing right through the strings of my heart... something that wasn't from within me.
As soon as it stopped I felt peaceful. I realized I'd been given a gift. God had sent me back all the good times all at once for me to hold tight to. The warm arms of all those memories wrapped me generously. I didn't cry then for my father's death. It would be months later before I would cry.
I think about Wolfie and Ben. I know what kind of father Ben is. He's the kind of father that would create a lifetime of those good memories. The kind of memories that wrap you in comforting arms when you need them like I had with my dad. It's besides the point that he didn't get the chance to create those with Wolfie. It doesn't disturb the fact that he is that kind of father...the best kind.
I'll be celebrating Father's Day a little differently than most of you. But the sentiment is the same. Love on your father, and show him love. Tell him you love him. Spend some time with him and enjoy the memories.
Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your words.
My dad died Jan. 31st. 2005.
I had been by his bedside during his two week hospital stay (before he died) and then went home for ONE night and he died the next morning. I was So angry that I wasn't there with him.
I cried the first couple of days after he died, but then this invisible shield grew around my heart that said "don't feel, don't feel, don't feel - it hurts too bad."
My mom died unexpectedly four months later.
God has been teaching me for the past six years - FEEL THE PAIN. It is in the suffering that we commune with Him. We can not be whole until we allow the pain to come.
Mother's Days and Father's Days and birthdays and death anniversary days are still days of remmebering for me...rememberinga all they were and all that isn't now.
And although I do not know the grief of having lost a child, I do know a different type of grief. One of desiring a family and not being able to have one.
And God has been teaching me to feel that pain and surrender the whole matter into HIs arms.
To surrender my ENTIRE life into HIs arms. That is where my true peace lies.
Thanks for the snipets of your relationship with your dad - precious.
Candace