Remembering

The mornings are what is hardest now. Emerging from the dreamy unconsciousness where Time and Space have no restrictions, where people and places are realities rather than memories. Awakening to birds singing their hearts out, to light creeping in past the window shades, to the sun demanding me to open my eyes. Foggy with sleep, I acquiesce and return to consciousness and live another day. And then like an unexpected slap harsh against the cheek, I remember the pain. The dull ache of sorrow and loss is terribly real and while I want to resist, it cannot be thwarted.

For years I have dreaded being jolted awake in the middle of the night by a ringing phone, knowing that any news delivered in the darkness could certainly not be good. At 5:43 am, Thursday, March 24th, the phone rang. Groping for glasses, clothes, shoes, keys, and a coat, and shell shocked with exhaustion, I fled into the darkness away from my warm house, cozy with sleeping children and climbed into our cold, unwelcoming car. At the same moment, miles away in Indianapolis, our dear friend and Lucia's godfather was standing at his family's icon corner for morning prayers, supplications of mercy being offered for my father. As I was racing out the door, driving half-blinded by the myriad of car headlights of people beginning their day and Nick was interceding for my father, the man on both our minds took his final breaths with my mother, his wife of 57 years, and his eldest daughter at his side. When I arrived at my parents' home, my mother quietly related, "He's gone." Already the hands I held every day for the past two weeks were growing cold. Gently I placed my hand behind his white t-shirted back still warm with departing life and prayed.

My father is gone. Realization of it stabs me fresh in my heart while taking out the garbage, washing dishes, picking clothes up off the floor. More pain, more ache, more tears. Gone. Really gone. A body vacant of spirit waiting to return to the earth from which the first flesh was formed by his Creator. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Gone. No longer at home in his favorite blue chair. No longer in the hospital. No longer in the rehabilitation facility. Dead. Oh God, how I miss him. But in midst of this pain, I also find joy and peace, deep peace, the peace which passes all understanding, for in the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, we do not "sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so will God bring with Him those also who sleep in Jesus." (O Lord, I believe. Please help me in my unbelief.)

May your memory be eternal beloved husband of Charlene; father of Rebecca and Beth; grandfather to Joseph, Alexandra, Thomas, Russell, Elliot, and Lucia; and friend to many. May you find rest in the place where all the blessed Saints repose and where the light of God's countenance shines.