It snowed in Cincinnati today for no reason. If you weren’t here, you may not know what I mean, but really there was no reason for it. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, and there was no snow in the forecast, but early in the morning there they were: Big fat dumb lush gorgeous snowflakes that had no business being here but decided to show up and make everything look magical anyway. The ground and the trees and every twig on every branch were covered with a thick heavy snow that would all be gone by noon. Which it was. Gone. It’s sunny now and nearly 50 degrees.
When I was 13 my parents split up and my dad moved from Southern California to the seacoast area of New Hampshire. Aside from the obvious trauma of divorce and relocation and all that, I could not fathom why my dad would move somewhere like New Actual Hampshire. And I asked him what were you thinking. And he said, and reader, I kid you not, he said with utter sincerity that when he was a child he read about places with big trees and old houses and church steeples that poked through the treeline and where it would snow in the winter and make everything look magical – and now he had a chance to live somewhere like that so he decided he would. This was a grown man talking like this. 46 years old and talking wide-eyed to his teenaged son about living in a storybook and I thought he was mad. “Well, is it what you had hoped?” I asked him.
“So far!” he said. So far. Three years later I moved back to New Hampshire to live with him and I saw that he never stopped romanticizing any of it.
My dad died 20 years ago today. I am not the kind of person who believes he sent me those snowflakes this morning. I am much more reasonable than all that. And also all I could think as I gazed out at the falling snow was “Thank you, Papa.”
I talk about him a lot. Sometimes I wonder if it’s too much. But then again, I don’t know what the right amount is. Maybe this is what it’s like for non-Christians listening to Christians talk about Jesus: Y’all he’s been gone for so long why are you still talking about him? Move on. But then, we talk about the people who are in our lives, and he has never stopped being in my life.
Speaking of Jesus, we talk about what we would do if he showed back up today: What would he think of us and what would we think of him. Have we been honoring him the way we hope we have? What are we getting wrong and what are we getting right? On the 20th anniversary of my father’s death, I find myself thinking similar things about him: What if my dad showed up today? Once I got past the shock of his mere presence, and confirmed he was not a zombie, would I be surprised by what I saw? That is to say, have I been remembering him correctly all this time? Or have I made some things up in the intervening couple decades? Do the stories I tell sound like him or like the version of him that I want to remember?
When I was preparing some words to speak at his funeral, my mom implored me not to get too idealistic about him: “Your dad was just as human as anyone else,” she said, then added, “Maybe moreso.” They had been happily divorced for many years at that point. Dad had come out of the closet, mom had remarried, they lived 3000 miles apart and had gotten the distance from one another they needed to be able to love each other in some way. I still think about her admonition. Just as human as anyone else. Maybe moreso. God, grant us the courage not to idealize the people we love in their death.
So I go back to the day he died. I was 26. He was 59. I had moved back to California recently. He was living in Maine now and was in California for a visit. Whenever he came back he would stay with my grandma – his ex-mother-in-law. She once said it took her so long to start loving him that she wasn’t going to stop just because of some divorce. My dad had been battling cancer. It was in remission, but his body was much worse for the wear, and he was actually sick when his plane touched down. Unusually for him, he needed a wheelchair to get off the plane. Shortly after getting to Grandma’s house, he got into bed, where he would mostly stay until he died three days later.
I was sleeping in the room next door to his in order to keep an eye on things and take care of him to the degree he would let me. We argued because he wanted me to get him booze and I wouldn’t. He was an unrepentant alcoholic in denial going through withdrawals and I would not bring him vodka in bed because I was a tired, stubborn, idealistic adult child of an unrepentant alcoholic and I had no interest in enabling this ridiculous man I loved so much.
The last night of his life he pretended to have an appetite and we sat next to each other in his bed and ate In-n-Out Burgers and watched boring British television – his favorite. I said can’t we just go to the hospital you’re not getting better and I’m worried about you. He said let me try one more night of sleep and if I’m not better tomorrow we can go. He barely slept that night and so neither did I. And I was not understanding and I was not sweet and kind. I was annoyed like a child is annoyed with a parent because we don’t actually believe they could ever just die.
So the next morning, I barked at him, “Papa, this is dumb: Get up and get dressed. We’re going to the hospital.” He didn’t fight this time. He said, let me go to the bathroom and then we can go. I went downstairs to tell my grandma we were leaving and I heard my dad call out to me from upstairs but I didn’t know what he said. “What?” I yelled back. He did not respond. I went upstairs to see what he wanted. He was in the bathroom, collapsed forward against the sink, his breathing a strange rattling gurgle. When I pulled him back, he fell into my arms unconscious and I laid him down on the floor. I shouted at my grandmother to call 9-1-1. I tried to wake him up. He made sounds I’d never heard before. I now know they were his last breaths.
Later that day I was on the phone with Claude. A French-Canadian man who met my dad on the beach in Maine one day, Claude was something like my dad’s partner though they lived in different countries. Claude has a thick accent and a gentle demeanor. He’s family. He said he had heard I was with Gary when he died. Yes, I said, I was holding him. He was in my arms. I guess I romanticize things too. He sighed a big sigh and said, “That is exactly how he wanted to go.”
I have nothing new to say about grief. Grief is nothing new. It’s not a process or a stage – it’s a daily part of any life honestly lived.
Years ago I was working at a different church and had enacted a change that was somewhat controversial. One parishioner who was in church governance invited me over, made me a cheese plate, and told me she agreed with the change and supported my decision. Then she asked me if I was aware that all change brings loss. I was not aware of this, and confessed as much.
Well all change brings loss, she said: Even good change. Any time we change something, we lose something. I immediately knew she was right. I didn’t realize until much later that all loss brings grief. So all change brings loss and all loss brings grief – and change is happening every single day. You can do the math. Grief, then, sits alongside joy and hope and sorrow and fear and worry and wonder in the body of anyone who loves. My life has been much more peaceful since I stopped being offended when grief showed up – as if it didn’t belong, as if it wasn’t as natural as yawning.
Claude said that is exactly how my dad wanted to go. And that’s beautiful. But what’s more beautiful is that I believed him – because my father never made it a secret how much he loved me – how much he loved his sons. I cannot count the number of times after his death that friends of his said to me, “He was so proud of you boys.” And I was blessed to be able to say to them, “I know.” Because I did. Because he told us. He told me. I never had to guess.
Moses said honor your father and your mother. I think we honor them not by being what they want us to be but by being ourselves. Of course it’s easy for me to say that because that’s all my dad ever wanted me to be: Myself. Maybe if I have to distill the gift he gave me down to one thing – which of course I don’t have to do ever – but maybe if I do it would be that he gave me the gift of believing that me being myself was something worthwhile, something worth being, something worth living for.
It’s been 20 years without him, and also I’ve never been without him one second. And not just in my memories or dreams or hopes. I do believe in the resurrection of the dead. I believe the love we share is in the present tense.
Papa, I don’t need you to be more than human. I don’t need you to have been perfect. I love you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being proud of me. It means the world. Maybe moreso.
