21 Years

“A lifetime is a long time to see you again” - Tenielle Neda

“And I know we’ll meet again/And I know we’ll speak again/But a lifetime is a long time/To see you again.” - Tenielle Neda

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I’m sitting in the quiet tonight, looking out the window. Listening to the rain, the faint chirp of birds, the soft evening breeze rustling. The wrought iron lamp on our front lawn senses the coming darkness and begins to flicker.

I sit, and I remember. Remembering a night like this twenty-one long years ago. It’s the evening of May 4th. The last evening I went to sleep innocent and whole. The last night I was a child.

I did not know what would come as I went to sleep that night, though perhaps I had a feeling. I knew my dad had been growing weaker and weaker since his cancer diagnosis six months earlier. I knew he had become a shadow of himself as the disease consumed him. I had seen him fall down the concrete church stairs that morning, and I had seen a friend help him up. He had just finished preaching, from a chair, to his congregation for the last time, and I think in my heart I knew. Even as I begged and bargained with God to please let him live, I knew.

But you never really know until it happens.

The morning of May 5th, I awakened to the news that my daddy was dying. This was the end. I should go and say goodbye. How I got from my bed on the top bunk to the back bedroom where my dad lay is a blur in my memory. But I do remember walking into the room. Seeing him weak and gasping for breath in the bed. I fought back tears, trying not to cry because I thought it might make him sad.

I hugged him, kissed him. He told me he loved me. That he was sorry to leave. I nodded and whispered that I loved him too, the knot in the back of my throat too large and painful for me to speak. My other siblings came through the room, saying their goodbyes. My oldest brother sat by the window, staying with my dad. I sat next to him, wanting desperately to stay. Wanting my dad to know how much I loved him, that I would stay with him to the end.

But I couldn’t.

As my dad lay and gasped for breath, asking God to please take him and relieve him of his pain, I could not stay. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I ran from the room. The sounds of death - the rattle in his lungs - followed me, and they follow me to this day. They haunt me in quiet moments. I ran as far away as my small legs could carry me, to a quiet place where no one could hear my sobs. Where my grief wouldn’t make anyone else sad. I couldn’t stay away for long, my dad needed me. I made my way back to the house, wiping my cheeks, trying to breathe. But it was too late.

He was gone. I felt as if I had failed him. I still do.

The rest of that day is a haze to me. I watched as my daddy left our home for the last time. Strangers took him away. The next and last time I would see him, he would be in a casket. My mom was on the phone the rest of the day, letting people know my dad was gone, making funeral arrangements. People were in and out of our house all day bringing casseroles and condolences.

At some point, I escaped the chaos of the house and sat on the swing, until I heard a neighbor tell his kids that my dad had just died and they should go play with me. I appreciated my friends’ kindness, but I didn’t really feel like playing.

That day began the rest of my life. My life since then has been broken into two segments - the time before my dad died and the time since then. I didn’t fully understand as that little eight-year-old girl what the days and years following losing my dad would look like. But I think in my heart I knew.

All the losses that come out of one loss.

The loss I felt looking on as a friend sat on her dad’s shoulders - watching fireworks while hugging his head - knowing I would never again get to touch my dad’s bald head or feel the tickle of his beard on my face. The loss of growing up without his strength and wisdom. The loss of his comfort as I’ve battled crippling fear and anxiety. The loss of him as I walked, alone, down the aisle to the husband my dad had never met. The loss of seeing my husband’s parents be the very best grandparents to our foster kids and knowing my dad would have been too. These, and a thousand more losses.

Grief is a strange thing. It comes in waves, but it never really goes away. I used to hope that by burying it, ignoring it, that it wouldn’t hurt so much. That didn’t help. This last year though, I’ve been trying to accept the reality of grief a little more. Embrace it. Purposefully remember my dad through the things he loved - coffee, and books, and fresh bread with butter. This year, I had a portrait made from my favorite photo of him. It hangs on the wall beside me as I write. It’s from his senior year of high-school. His blonde, wavy hair flowing around his face in a very Beatleseque hairdo (my Grandma was so mad when he cut it). A soft smile curving his lips.

Looking down at me from the wall like maybe he does from Heaven.

Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and I’ll go to church and worship the God he loved and taught me to love. Because I’ve realized that I’ll never be whole again, no matter how many years pass without him. But even in the brokenness, I know I’ll see him again, and that gives me hope. That hope is like the rain that patters outside my window - covering a broken soul with quietness and peace.

As I go through life, eventually I’ve realized that, often, things don’t come with happy endings. But that makes me long for the day when all will end in the presence of God and there will be no more death or crying. No more pain. No more lonely nights and fearful diagnoses. Maybe, as C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

So I look forward to the world I was made for, even as I try to live the life God wants for me in this one.