From the moment I stood in the room alone with my dad’s
spiritless body, the cadence of time accelerated with a rapidity that
compressed days into hours, and hours into moments that just allowed me to grab
the sustenance I needed to greet the cascade of mourners and well-wishers. In a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, I was fatherless and the son of a widow. For the first time in my
life, the epistemology of son ship had to be revisited. Existentially, I am still the son of my
father but the veil of death has given me pause; a new permanent tense to
address fatherhood-he was.
The seven days, the 168 hours, the confluence of planning,
meeting, calling, cancelling, notifying, buying, untying, discarding, undoing
gives you an illusion of subduing the stillness. All of the accoutrements that are tagged to
my father are now on static display, frozen in time, never to be held, directed,
worn or guided by his savvy, insight and wisdom. Death, the stranger that we will all be
introduced to has interjected a dissonance that is disruptive and cohesive. My
siblings and I have marshaled our time and resources to protect our mother for
her gradation of pain would be the most intense of the three of us. At times I
would see the erudite, seasoned world traveler morph into the fragile,
devastated teenager mourning the loss of her first love, her heartbeat, her
Boaz.
No one told me that the little boy in me would grieve the
loss of the first real-life superhero he ever knew and emotions would vacillate
between the present father, son, and husband to the lost little boy who does
not know how to mourn the immortal.
Psalm 91:1, 2 became my solace.
It states, “He that dwells in the secret place of the most High, shall
abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord He is my refuge and
my fortress, my God in Him will I trust.”
We are given the feast of kings for consecutive days and
invite all those that provide to also partake. Mi familia is now more than ever
the body of Christ manifest through kindness; the aroma of the fruit of the
spirit effervesces throughout my parents’ home.
The staccato of the phone punctuates the robust conversations filling
every room in the foyer, den and kitchen. Day becomes evening, evening becomes
night and mornings roll out like the baker’s bread. Alas, the close of this
eternity where we will see for the first time since I prayed over my father’s
body, him lying in repose, the last of the things he occupied on static
display.
The unfettered presence of God is beyond the reason,
understanding and comprehension of our finite minds yet a part of you wants the
spirit of your loved one to repopulate the body they left behind and give you
one more moment in time. But the magnificence articulated in scripture makes it
clear that even the compounded love of everyone in this chapel has no order of
magnitude to compare with the love of God that my father experienced the moment
he transitioned. So, we anguish and
celebrate simultaneously. He looks peaceful, without pain, discomfort or anguish.
My father has ascended into the bosom of Jesus, the one he ultimately lived
for.
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