A Beautiful Undoing

My Dad gave me a invaluable gift, just before he died.

Those were gentle, difficult days.  Long hours in his room, quietly, just me and him after Mom had gone to bed.  Him mostly sleeping or resting or getting ready or all of the above; whatever it is the dying do in the days before.

But he wasn't talking.

Except in this one lucid moment.  He stirred and opened his eyes.  I came to stand where he could see me, and he lifted his head and opened his mouth slightly and held up his hand for me to take it.  His grip was surprisingly strong.

"Thank you," he strained, "For all your care for me.  And for your Mom.  Everything."  He stopped to gather strength again, but kept his eyes locked on mine, "God bless you.... faithful daughter..... faithful."  It was all he could muster and he closed his eyes again.  But we still held hands. And then he opened his eyes again, and he smiled at me.

He never spoke to me again.  Two days later with my hand on his chest, I felt his last breath.  He was Home.

And that was his gift.  Calling me his 'faithful daughter'.  Leaving me with words of blessing.

We'd been through a lot together, not the least of which had been the past eleven years since a stroke left him left hemiplegic and suddenly dependent on others for his every need.  But before that, long before that, in the growing up years.  There weren't many words of blessing then.

Not back when the stresses of his work life collided with his natural human faults to bring about expressions of anger and an overkill on control that he later confided he wished he could undo, unsay.  Words were harsh often enough.  Critical.  Wondering, for example, what happened to the other three percent when I brought home a 97 is grade nine science.

The wonder of those eleven stroke-ridden years, though, was in the beauty of the undoing of all of that, manifest in the lavish praise that poured out from his heart now that his brain was bruised enough to bring down the walls of tradition or conditioning or dysfunction or whatever it was that kept him from expressing his love before.

And while it was indeed a gift that Dad's last words to me were of blessing and gratitude, they were, in fact, just a summary of all the volumes that I had been able to collect in the last decade we had together.  

I love how redemptively my Dad Story ends.  Makes me mindful of my own words, or lack thereof.  Dad's gift inspires me, motivates me, energizes me.

Thank you Dad.