I can hear my sister's voice ringing in my ears today...
"I think he's gone..."
She was there in the room with our father when he breathed his last just two weeks ago.
I was packed and ready to leave when I first spoke to her that morning.
She said he was not doing well at all.
When I saw him two months ago he resembled a melted candle version of himself.
So thin, so frail, so ravaged by the disease process that would ultimately end his life.
I was virtually holding my breath all these hundreds of miles away as she left work down in the Portland area and made her way to check in on him.
Her first call on arrival was to tell me to get down there now...
Then, just minutes later, he was in Heaven.
I breathed then.
Sharp painful inhales.
Almost like labor breathing.
Then I walked to our bathroom, closed the door, and howled like a toddler.
It's what always comes when I think of my Dad.
I was so very small when things changed and he was no longer in our home.
My mother says I howled and called for him each night for months after he left.
She would rock me in her lap until I was calm enough to sleep.
I don't remember those times.
But I do remember the feeling.
It's embedded deep into who I am.
This longing for my Dad.
When I was able to stand up and stop the howling after hearing he was gone, I came out of our bathroom and into the presence of my precious husband who was waiting just on the other side of the door.
He comforts me in ways I can't describe.
He bought me 3 old fashioned pink and cream roses that day.
I kept them alive in their tiny vase for 10 days.
Each night as I lay down in my sister's spare room after days of sorting through details, emotions, memories, and Dad's belongings I would look at them standing so tall and beautiful. Enduring their severed state with such grace.
They spoke volumes to me.
They traveled hundreds of miles north and south and north again with me...
And a few days ago, long after the sun went down, I went to a bridge over a river nearby that holds precious memories for my husband with his father and grandfather...
and I let them go.
I said words that I would have loved to have said if I could have been there with him at the end.
I let each petal float down along with those words and land on the slowly moving water below.
"I think he's gone..."
She was there in the room with our father when he breathed his last just two weeks ago.
I was packed and ready to leave when I first spoke to her that morning.
She said he was not doing well at all.
When I saw him two months ago he resembled a melted candle version of himself.
So thin, so frail, so ravaged by the disease process that would ultimately end his life.
I was virtually holding my breath all these hundreds of miles away as she left work down in the Portland area and made her way to check in on him.
Her first call on arrival was to tell me to get down there now...
Then, just minutes later, he was in Heaven.
I breathed then.
Sharp painful inhales.
Almost like labor breathing.
Then I walked to our bathroom, closed the door, and howled like a toddler.
It's what always comes when I think of my Dad.
I was so very small when things changed and he was no longer in our home.
My mother says I howled and called for him each night for months after he left.
She would rock me in her lap until I was calm enough to sleep.
I don't remember those times.
But I do remember the feeling.
It's embedded deep into who I am.
This longing for my Dad.
When I was able to stand up and stop the howling after hearing he was gone, I came out of our bathroom and into the presence of my precious husband who was waiting just on the other side of the door.
He comforts me in ways I can't describe.
He bought me 3 old fashioned pink and cream roses that day.
I kept them alive in their tiny vase for 10 days.
Each night as I lay down in my sister's spare room after days of sorting through details, emotions, memories, and Dad's belongings I would look at them standing so tall and beautiful. Enduring their severed state with such grace.
They spoke volumes to me.
They traveled hundreds of miles north and south and north again with me...
And a few days ago, long after the sun went down, I went to a bridge over a river nearby that holds precious memories for my husband with his father and grandfather...
and I let them go.
I said words that I would have loved to have said if I could have been there with him at the end.
I let each petal float down along with those words and land on the slowly moving water below.
I couldn't see through the dark to watch their path, to know if they were caught in the bank, or sucked below by a fish or frog, or continuing on freely to some distant destination to be transformed into something even more beautiful than before.
I trust that they will arrive exactly where they were meant to be.
The deepest part of the ache stopped that night and I have been able to hold onto the precious and the admirable in my memories of Dad.
We turn on his old Joan Baez albums, or bluegrass, or Nat King Cole... and sing, and dance, and let the tears come if they want to.
What a sacred ache.
See you soon Dad...
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