There are times, usually late at night, when the phone rings and you find yourself cursing Graham Bell’s invention. But it’s your father, so you pick the phone up anyway.
You know the light, bubbly ring in a person’s voice when something good has just come their way? That’s how my father sounded which, in his old and decaying body, was rare in those days.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, I found myself saying, “Dad, it’s late here, and I’ve had a really long day. Would you mind if I called you back tomorrow, and we can have a good talk then?”
“Honey, you get a good night’s sleep and call me tomorrow,” he replied.
And we both hung up.
THE MOMENT
There are some moments, however, that you can never take back, and this was one of them. Tomorrow would find my father with a tube down his throat from which he would never fully recover.
And seven weeks later he would be dead.
It was a hard lesson that I learned too late. When your father or mother calls and they miss you and want to talk, forget about everything else and talk to them like you would if it were God calling.
My father would never telephone me again.
A Shakespearean scholar well-versed in the trickery of the heart, he could spot an insincere person a mile away. And he understood my singular troubles in life like no other; my father was my wisest counsel and my strongest ally.
His loss was no small measure.
They put a tube down his throat which caused him to have a stroke.
No one mentioned that that was a possibility before they inserted it. I was always diligent about asking the pros and cons to any procedure or medication, but this time I wasn’t. I was on the other side of the country, and one of my siblings had to make some quick decisions. My father had been bleeding internally, and time was not on his side.
After they intubated him, he could no longer speak well, and he couldn’t hold a pen. My father was a writer, and he was almost finished with a book that represented the last 40 years of his life’s work.
“Let me die in peace,” became his unspoken words.
THE JOURNEY
I flew cross country and stayed by his side for seven long and agonizing weeks. I wanted them to end, but I never wanted them to end. One day I went out to run an errand, and he died.
Just like that.
Everyone knew his departure was due any moment except for me. Did anyone realize that I couldn’t see the obvious? His soul was about to betray his body. How I missed something so clear and so final, I will never understand.
I was stunned as I listened to the roaring from an ocean of grief flooding the hallways.
My ocean.
I can still vividly recall the look of the newborn babe in his eyes as I said goodbye to him for the last time that late afternoon in spring.
This irrational thought kept creeping into my mind, “How could he leave without saying goodbye?” But for seven weeks he had been saying goodbye.
There are moments now when I’ll be standing at my kitchen sink washing dishes, and I’ll look out my window and imagine my father walking through the courtyard and up to my front door.
And then I remember that he’ll never reach that door again.
THE FINALITY
The greatest irony in life is our inability to fully appreciate something until we’ve lost it. Our health we take for granted until we’re faced with the possibility of disease, our youth we squander on foolish pursuits, and our parents we forsake for the busyness of our lives.
In the West, we fail to comprehend the depth of the parent/child bond. They still understand it in the East, but in the West we have lost that most precious knowledge.
There’s something sacred about a parent. A parent’s love is unconditional, and unconditional love is divine in nature. Historically children have always been taught to honor their parents, but in the West, to our own demise, we neither teach nor expect this of our children anymore.
I was familiar with the Eastern teaching and had tried to model it. I thought I had succeeded. But when my father died, I realized that I hadn’t really understood the magnitude of our bond. But I understood it then, and then was too late.
Modern science can’t prove what I’m about to say, but I know it’s true. You see, the natural bond between a parent and child is a divine bond, and it’s unbreakable because love comes from God. If not, then from where does it come?
THE REALITY
What I want to say to you is this: in the hearts of our parents, He has added a bit of His own, and a bit of our own, so honor your parents well while they are here.
Because then will be too late.
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