Parting Words

It might not have been evident at face value, but my dad was a sensitive man. Not everyone got the privilege of seeing that side of him, but beneath his quiet and reserved exterior was a tender soul full to overflowing with emotion, well acquainted with sadness and regret but also great joy and love. I’m thankful now that my main example of masculinity was a man who could cry watching The Notebook and also knew how to replace a car radiator. He taught me time and again there was no weakness in compassion and in doing so broke another of many generational curses in my family. People keep telling me how much I remind them of him. The most I can say is that I’m trying. 

As I write this I am 33 years old, my wife Gabby and I just celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary, and in a matter of days we’re going to be bringing a baby into the world. Somehow right in the middle of all of this, my dad has died. To have this kind of tragedy coincide with so much good has overwhelmed me, and I feel there’s two halves of my spirit in conflict. Grief and joy, anger and gratitude pull at me like a tug-of-war and I often don’t know which way to go.

I’ve seen so much evidence of God’s faithfulness at work even while having many reasons to doubt and to despair. How can I go on the rest of my life without dad here? How can I explain to my daughter who her one and only grandfather was and how much he meant to all of us? I don’t know how to live my life without him in it. 

I knew this day would come, as it eventually will for everyone. As dad often liked to say, life is short, shorter than you think. But I had hoped there’d be so much more for him in this life, and I can’t help but be so deeply disappointed. So much was stolen from dad. His ability to sing and play music, to walk, to breathe on his own. That he would suffer for so long and still be taken from us so soon. That our baby girl never got the chance to meet him. He didn’t deserve to have his story end this way. There is a cruelty and injustice to it that I cannot understand.

There have been countless desperate and tearfilled prayers spoken over dad in the four years of his illness. Some of those prayers were answered, some were not. Dad sometimes wondered if God were punishing him for past sins and we would have to remind him he was loved and forgiven and that Jesus had already paid it all. As anyone who knew him could attest, my dad was a righteous man who loved and served the Lord and his family. Though he might’ve had a good excuse to abandon his faith altogether, like Job in the Old Testament dad’s dialogue with God only intensified.

I can only imagine how difficult his day-to-day life became, but I saw firsthand how he leaned even more on all the relationships he was so blessed to have received. He knew with greater clarity that whether in this life or the next there was no ultimate hope apart from Christ and the promise of his resurrection. Of all the lessons he taught me that was the foundation. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. All of us are living on borrowed time and we have less control over our lives than we’d like to believe.

Sometimes the glass we see through is so dark, but where there is anger and disappointment and grief there also is gratitude, and as time goes on that has strengthened. There were so many instances when dad could have gone but was spared instead. So many small miracles we were given, so much extra time for him to see me get married and know I would be a father. I cherish them deeply, just as I cherish the final moments we had with him. We were given the gift of a goodbye (for now), as he was given the gift of being able to make the choice to pass on his own terms, in his own time. 

The truth is there are so many things to be grateful for, so many blessings even in the midst of loss, and to accept them is to be able to carry on. So I can keep the belief that sickness and tragedy and death do not have ultimate authority, though they seem to in this world. I can hope one day to join dad in the place prepared ahead by the Father in heaven and introduce him to my little girl. I can find the strength to go on living my life and the wisdom to try and live it with integrity. I can still pray, in spite of my doubt. I can love generously, I can cry, I can open my heart and allow others to hold it. And I can do all of these things because of the gift from God that was my dad, the best man I have ever known.


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