Conversations with Dad

The inner stirrings of new life woke me in the night and in a fog I thought I was pregnant. I still remembered the feeling of being pregnant with my son Charlie, 33 years before, as I made my way down the hall of my dad’s condo in the dark. It was Eastertide, a time of wonder and hope, but I knew this was the flu. Dad was sick and now so was I. After some time, I made it back to bed and curled up in the shaky chills running through me. That night I came to the understanding that losing a parent is as painful as childbirth—it's just a different kind of pain. I began to see how birth and death are woven together in the great tapestry of life. It's through struggle and exhaustion that new life is born. The gray cast skies and chill of Good Friday had passed—that dark night of day, the noon to three o’clock hour that is so hard to look back on. When Saturday morning arrived, there was a ray of light working its way through the blinds, hinting at the hope of a resurrection to come. I lay awake in the room that was once my mom’s office. In the room next door, I listened for Dad’s noisy breath, a snore, his cough. In the quiet, I imagined my reaction if it didn’t come. Was my faith strong enough this time to be strong?—I wondered. Would I be able to, along with Dad, discover new life within me as I moved into the next stage of life without a parent? Would I find peace in the understanding that Dad had arrived at last to the home his whole life had been leading him to—reunited with Mom and my brother Ed—and finally united with his Lord Jesus? I got up to layer on a hoodie and socks, feeling the heaviness of my heart. Dad and I had had an argument that day. (We don’t have many.) Neither of us is good at conflict and as feisty as I can be, the thought occurs every time we’re together that it could be our last. Angry and stubborn, he quietly fumed. I tried to hold back my tears but then I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I cried. I left the condo mid-breakfast, to take a walk, leaving Dad to put his groceries away and finish making breakfast. The picture of him working alone in his kitchen calmed me, but I needed space. I walked up and down the familiar streets of downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin—the wind was harsh off the Lake—a force against me like my fears of death and losing Dad. We’d had three great years of going to church on Sundays, taking trips to Washington Island, and spending holidays together since Mom had died. He’d shared his stories and I’d written them down as a way to hold on to them both. Let go, let go, I told myself. Mom had told me she barely cried when her own mother died. "It was just her time," she had said. I made my way back to the condo, Dad and I talked, pushing through our unspoken fears together. How do you stay strong and patient when all you feel is fear? Fear takes fight. It doesn’t leave on its own. The battle ensues and it’s the fight itself that brings strength. Peace follows. I want to do all I can to protect Dad from suffering as he lives out his glory days on earth, but then I realize once again that I have no control over it. As I lay in my bed recovering at home a day later, I realized I may have been right. The pain that woke me that night was an awakening of new life—it was time to release what I’d been holding onto so Dad and I could both be free to move on. I wondered if, like the nine months of pregnancy, there were nine stages to releasing a parent into eternal life. I wondered which stage we were at as I texted Dad to remind him to pick up some mashed potatoes and gravy from the hot bar at Metro Market to have with his leftover meatloaf that night.