When Earth Looses Pleasure for Us ... Good-Bye Dad

I know this blog is inside me somewhere.  It longs to escape my heart - tho my heart somehow thinks that if I let it out I can’t stuff it back in again.  I also worry I can not capture in words what I’m experiencing.

My dad passed away three days ago.  He had been taking a long time to go - making his way out in the same slow methodical way he lived life.  He had a small stroke about two years ago and that set him on a slow decline.   I had wondered if he was trying to leave at that time and changed his mind…  As I look at the big picture, two years ago my brother and I moved my mom and dad to an Assisted Living Facility near my brother in Denver.  My mom began to create a community there these last two years.  All of this is making it easier for her to feel supported now that he is gone.   Perhaps, perhaps he planned it all.  I wouldn’t put it past him.  

My Dad has been hanging around me these last few days.  He danced with me the night before he died.  I flew around the room wondering why am I not tired?… why am I not sad?… why is everything so beautiful?… and why is my heart so filled with joy?

For me heaven is a certainty, not the heaven as some portray but the heaven of love, beauty and grace... the place that we left to come down here to earth to take this journey, the place we so long to remember.  

My Dad was a mathematician in life, advanced abstract mathematics.  I’ve often wondered how a daughter of two mathematicians (my mom is a mathematician as well) ended up on such a “spiritual” journey.  But now I realize that my dad was on a similar journey, just through mathematics.   Plato said “the highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.”   I believe there is an aspect of the divine represented in mathematics. 

When earth looses pleasure for us -

When we can no longer eat our favorite foods nor do our favorite things we eventually turn inward and ponder what is next.  This had happened for him in these last two years.  Recently, his journey and mine intertwined.  I felt guided to started working with death about five months ago.  I feel we were doing it together.  As I was coming to peace about the transition of death, so was he.  He became sick a couple weeks ago and might have  hung on for a long time if he wanted, but he didn’t.   He stuck around long enough for me to visit one last time. Two days after I left, he quietly passed away in his bed.      

My dad was such a “big kid” in many ways.  

He had such a love for food (not always in a healthy way.;))  He was always overweight.  But how he loved his pizzas, his ice cream, and his McDonald’s breakfast biscuits.  He would show up at my house In Minneapolis after a two hour drive bringing a greasy breakfast biscuit for my son, Mark - and a couple for himself shrugging - “since I was there.”  Late night ice cream runs were common place for him. When he would arrive at our house, magically cartons of ice cream would appear in the freezer as well.   Long after a meal, my Dad would steal into the kitchen and make himself a huge bowl of ice cream.

He was a baker of sorts.  He loved to bake cookies, pies and pizza.  He would bake a dozen pizzas from scratch for my friends when I wanted to have pizza party in grade school.  He fell in love with jalapeños when I was 14 years old and never ate a pizza without them after that.  Sweat would pour off his bald head as he ate the pizza slices heaped with jalapeños one after another.   He even grew jalapeños in his garden - I’m guessing to get them hotter.  

He had a lot of love for me, this I know, although he couldn’t show it outwardly very well.    

I remember one day when I broke my arm running in the backyard with three puppies.  I tripped over this seedling tree and landed on my arm in just the wrong way.  It was a bad break and it was the first time I remember seeing my dad afraid.  He took me to the hospital and I do not remember much except the burdensome cast I had to wear for three months.  Later, my mom mentioned that dad had gone out and cut down that seedling tree - as if to say “so there!”  I was surprised at this aggression from such a quiet man who sat silently sweating eating his fire hot pizza.   It was a glimpse of his love for me.   

When I think of my dad I always think of the one story he loved to tell of me.   He just found it hysterical.   I was only seven at the time and my memory, while sketchy, borders on frightening.  We had gone to South Africa for 6 months when I was in second grade.  We were visiting a rain forest, my parents, my younger brother and I.  I had skipped off ahead out of sight rounding a bend in the trail where the tall grass on either side hid me from their view.  As my dad told the story, they had lost sight of me when suddenly little “Lor Lor” (so he called me) came running full tilt back down the trail towards them “as fast as my little legs could carry me”  Running behind me was this warthog with it’s little tail straight up in the air like an antenna.   (This made my dad laugh - the bit about the tail)  My dad says the warthog took one look at the bigger humans and decided it wasn’t worth the effort and ran back into the tall grass.   I, on the other hand, unaware of the warthogs change of mind still ran terrified to my parents.  My dad just thought that was the funniest thing.   My memory of this HUGE warthog was probably slightly exaggerated and my memory of it only a few feet behind me was also probably not true.  He had this odd sense of humor - and gosh darn it - I have it too.  Maybe that’s why I love telling this tale as much as he did and laugh just as much as he did telling it.           

I woke the morning after his passing, a couple days ago, with the intense feeling of being loved.  I know it was him visiting me.   I see his love everywhere right now.   I see it reflected in everything he said and did - even if it didn’t always land as love when it happened.   

I also know I have a lot of him inside of me.   I have his gentle heart.   I also have his incurable romantic nature.   I have his desire to wander.  In fact in these last few days, I’ve realized that my love of long walks comes from him.  He gave me part of the strength I needed to create a new life for myself when I turned 50.  He gave me my love for simplicity.  He also created fertile ground for my own spiritual journey.

I’m not going to explain exactly how, but I saw him yesterday.  It was a meeting of our souls without the baggage of our earthly life.  I can’t even find the words to describe what I felt inside upon seeing him.  Awe... wonder ... gratitude ... joy … relief … peace - perhaps peace - knowing that his indecisive mind had finally found peace.   I thought if I connected with him after death that there would be amends to make or forgiveness to give and receive.  But there wasn’t.  Nothing needed to be said.  There was only the simplicity of love.  Love washes away everything else.  Nothing else matters when the love shines at it’s full magnitude.   

We do loose part of them when they pass away.  But we do not loose the love.   This I know is true.   The love they felt for us and the love we felt for them is always there.   Death has the ability to strip us of the earthly story and leave us with just what mattered, the love.   

So thanks, Dad.  For loving me.   For being my Dad.  For all the gifts you gave me.  For crawling around on the ground with my kids when they were young and rocking them to sleep.  For your annoyingly silly jokes - and never ever giving me a straight answer!   For your pies and pizza.   For your insatiable longing.   and your love.

For just being you.   

I hope you can feel my love, cause I feel yours.

My Dad and me (I’m a two month old baby).

I love this photo - my Dad and my daughter Erin - you can tell she’s sizing him up - probably saying “What am I going to do with this silly man?”

So this is my Dad, on the floor crawling to the next room with Brenna, my daughter, following him.