Daddy's Home

I am on my way to Livermore, KY, to bury my daddy.  I had the privilege of being with him as he slipped the bonds of this earth.  My brother, my step-sister, and I waited with baited breath to see if he took his.   There were 3, then one last gasp.  I felt the warmth drain slowly from his face after that.  I think I was desperate to feel his departure.  I searched for a physical feeling of him as he left this world.  I think, too, I desperately want to feel the presence of the One who was taking him home.

It never happened.

In fact, it was all very normal.  It was more like watching Daddy go to sleep than it was a spiritual moment.  I don't know if maybe he was really already gone and his body just hadn't figured it out, or if I was just to out of touch to notice it.  I WANTED to feel it.  I'm truly disillusioned by the fact that I didn't.  Everyone left the room to get the nurse.  I hugged him.  It wasn't to say goodbye.  It was to try to feel his presence before it was gone.

All my life has been focused on my guilt for the past or the hope for the future.  Someday things will be better with no more pain or sorrow.  I have never been able to grasp that, since the very nature of no pain or sorrow means having everything you want.  But we aren't promised everything we want.  It brings me to the conclusion that there will also be no desire.  To not desire means contentment and therefore, happiness...an absence of sorrow.  Being human, that was hard to wrap my head around.  It is our nature to be discontent.  Sure we have times of contentment, but the desire for more, for better, is always there.  The idea of being free from such a curse is intoxicating!  So from the day I realized this, I have lived solely for that day.

But maybe it's not real.  

I make a choice daily to believe, but, oh God forgive me, I have wasted a lifetime of hoping for it...of waiting for it, feeling guilt for it, shrugging off the weight of the present for it!  My Daddy's passing, while I am extremely grateful to have been there, has shaken me to the core.  

Other events seem to have primed me for a faith shaking.  I have always believed that the things that happen to us have purpose.  But many things over the last few years have happened with seemingly no purpose.  It's like I have cried out "Why?" into space and my voice keeps traveling without finding a receiver.  It expanded in the vastness and disappeared. 

Then for all the hope of a resolution of past hurts with Daddy leaving us...!  He never acknowledged his part.  He always blamed Mama.  He never acknowledged the pain he left us kids with. It's been long forgiven, and tears were shed each time we said goodbye, but the words were never said.  The last time I saw him, I lingered and cried myself, somehow knowing it was the last time.

In spite of the growing fear of potentially losing faith in what is supposed to be the most powerful being in the universe, I feel vey calm about Daddy leaving.  It really did seem that as we talked and visited in the room with him, he relaxed.  His breathing slowed.  We had just noted that.  Then amidst the laughter and memories, he saw that all was well and that he could go.  So he released that last tenuous hold on this realm, and left.  I still want to think of him...being young again, clad in nothing but denim overalls, and running carefree through green Kentucky fields...as being home.