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| 1986 |
"Well we are waiting..." She left what we were all thinking about unsaid.
"Is he having trouble breathing?" I asked as his breathing was loudly coming over the phone line and my heart was thumping inside me, anticipating the separation that i knew to be closer than I cared to believe.
"He's breathing loudly, he's not really struggling...but he's not doing well..." I already knew the answer before she said anything. I knew it was probably the day we would lose him. I wished I could be sitting in the room with them and I was thankful I wasn't sitting there with them!
"I love you...." I spoke listening more to the room noises than to our conversation. "Can I speak to him?" I asked tentatively. Not sure it would be wise to put the phone up close to his face, but rationally remembering he was heavily medicated and would most likely have no clue I had even spoken with him on that day minutes before he left our world for the next.
"Oh yeah, sure!" I heard my sister stand and take the phone closer to my father's place in the bed acrss the room. I heard the breathing become louder and more ragged. I heard the life inside of him fighting to continue and also fighting to let go.
"Dad? I love you." the words catch in my throat. "I love you, dad."
And I don't know what else to say, I know I have said all there is to say.
I still wish for a change in this situation, that my father, who really wasn't much of a parent, would have made better choices in his life, would have been able to have loved others more than himself. I wished he had followed the savior. I wished he had been able to yeild.
All I can remember is the resignation in his voice as he spoke to me 6 days prior, our last real conversation. The tears in his voice as I begged him to follow Jesus. The desire to follow was there.....but then I could hear him audibly changing his mind, he had lived too long for himself "he could not change that." The self service could not be altered at that late date and my own heart broke within me. How could I change anything? I could only speak truth.....
"Hey." My sister said to me as she moved the phone away from his face.
"Hey." We both sound so familiar with this thing called death, used to the thought of it, ready for the reality of it. Like a shroud we hate wearing, but have had over us so long we become accustomed to it. "I love you girls..." I say softly. "wish I could be there to help you both."
"We know, it's okay." She assures me, softer than I ever remember her. "I'm being the big sister and taking care of things." I laugh because I know my little sister is probably doing a whole lot of things no one sees....she just likes to be the most responsible.
'Yeah!" I laugh too, we both know how we girls are. "call me immediately...."
"We know....we will." She is softer now, whispering. I hear the silence and the labored breathing again.
"Love you," I say after the pause.
"We love you too." and we hang the phones up. I open my car door and step onto the garage floor. It feels sureal now, this thing "death" alien, unknowable. I am afraid for him, fearful of our Holy God.
I walk into the kitchen and quietly fix lunch while the kids play and Will tries to talk to me. I feel more shell shocked than anything. Like a part of me is disappearing. Like a wound that has never healed will always be carried with me...until my reconing comes. They don't have classes on what to do when your estranged father dies, just like they don't have classes on how to be a wife, or how to be a mom.
Twenty minutes passes quickly and the phone rings. Will and I both look quickly at one another, knowing that this is probably the moment but unable and unwilling to stop reality. I pick up the phone...
"Hello?" I know already know it's my sister.
"He's gone." I honestly don't remember the words very well, my sisters were upset and they had been witness to the product of our sin...death. "Jenn and I were just talking and he started laboring for breath more. He took a deap rattling breath looked up at the ceiling and then was still." I knew he had passed from this life to the next. "He looked afraid at the end. Scared."
"Okay," I answer with tears flowing down my cheeks. "Okay"
"I love you both! Tell Jenny, tell her I love her and tell mom too!" I quickly add.
"okay, we'll talk later."
"Okay" and that was the end. The end of a life I hardly knew and am forever connected and bound to. The end of a relationship. The end of a family legacy. My youngest daughter will never see him or meet him. The only reference my other kids have of him is two visits for three of the four and one visit with my youngest son. They don't remember him, they only remember picture.
He is the greatest topic of conversation in our home because he is the only one missing from their little worlds. They know death happens to us all, but they have never seen it and they don't understand how a life they never saw or experienced could still be connected to them so completely.
He was 61 in 2010 when he died. He wasn't alone. He is alone now.
My heart still aches for him and his life and his death.
His choices.
His pride.
His selfishness.
The music he enjoyed.
What his voice sounded like when he sang.
Words he spoke to me.
Things left undone.
Broken things.
Memories of so many little things......
It hasn't become easier to think of losing a parent but death has become more real. I still imagine that he couldn't really be dead, but that's not real. The loss is real. The grief is real. The break is real. Life is real. And death is real.
I cannot change the past. I cannot fix this wound inside me, but luckily I don't have to. He has fixed my wounds....I only wish my Dad had understood how He fixes things that are broken and damaged. I wish my dad had been able to trust in Him.
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