A minister from our church who I've known since 6th grade told me the night dad died unexpectedly: this is going to be a roller coaster for a while. You'll have high highs, and low lows, and the time in the middle will get longer and longer.
He was right. I've had high highs. I've had moments of clarity, I've had dreams that were so real I woke up feeling as if I'd really just spent some time with my dad, and I've been surrounded by hope and love and happy people.
The low lows have been pretty rotten. I've cried on my way to work for no reason lately. Sunset and baseball weather last week left me pulled over on a side street in my neighborhood, gasping for air, wiping away the tears streaming down my face. I've had nightmares. Thinking of my mom without my dad breaks my heart, so much it physically hurts. Thinking about my children, unable to ever meet my dad... it's unfathomable. I miss him, I don't understand, and it's overwhelming.
Gratitude is something I've experienced in infinitely more ways than I did before September 8. Through all my questions and our misery, I've thankfully been brought back to peace again and again and again. This foundation of faith and community of strong, amazing people: our family has been in good hands. We have been loved. I am so thankful, and so aware of our many, many blessings. I appreciate people in ways I never have before. (And yet, I find myself intolerant of behaviors and personalities. Some days I am far too weary of the world, and the worldly, and I must unharden my hurting heart.)
God is good, I know that. When I was living in D.C. and Jay Chenoweth had recently passed away, I was wandering Barnes & Noble in Georgetown and found a book about unexpected death. It was written by a game warden in Maine, an occupation I did not know much about, but the book was so comforting and so very relatable.
My parents read it that fall, too, and it stayed in my dad's nightstand until his own death, four years after his friend Jay. I opened it up one night in September, and found that Dad had dog-eared a few pages. I am not sure why, or if it was this specific passage my dad intended to mark, but I immediately found this. And with tears on my cheeks I prayed a prayer of thanks, that God dropped this book in our laps and provided such comfort through a stranger's words and her own grief.
"My children asked me, "Why did Dad die?"
I told them, it was an accident. There are small accidents, like knocking over your milk at the dining room table. And there are large accidents, like the one your dad was in. No one meant it to happen. It just happened. And his body was too badly damaged in the accident for his soul to stay in it anymore, and so he died.
God does not spill milk. God did not bash the truck into your father's car. Nowhere in scripture does it say, "God is car accident" or "God is death." God is justice and kindness, mercy and always - always, always, - love. So if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."
-Here if You Need Me, Kate Braestrup
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It has been four years since my father died, and I still cry in my car on the way to work whenever I see a sports care he used to drive. Every night since he died I go outside (weather permitting) and look for the brightest star and I wave to him.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your blog.