Thank you to all those who have shown my family and me so much compassion this last week. I just thought I would take a little bit of time to post some thoughts I have had. Mainly, I just wanted to be honest with how I have been feeling. My dad loved poetry, so I will use two poems to illustrate the daily (sometimes hourly) highs and lows.
As I said before, I am so grateful for the help and we have received. By sharing this poem, I do not mean to sound ungrateful at all. But at times, usually at the very early beginning or very late end of each day there is a moment when everything is fresh again. My guard is down and I find myself feeling like this:
What People Give You, by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno
Long-faced irises. Mums.
Pink roses and white roses
and giant sunflowers,
and hundreds of daisies.
Fruit baskets with muscular pears,
and water crackers and tiny jams
and the steady march of casseroles.
And money,
people give money these days.
Cards, of course:
the Madonna, wise
and sad just for you,
Chinese cherry blossoms,
sunsets and moonscapes,
and dragonflies for transcendence.
People stand by your sink
and offer up their pain:
Did you know I lost a baby once,
or My eldest son was killed,
or My mother died two months ago.
People are good.
They file into your cartoon house until it bows at the seams;
they give you every
blessed
thing,
everything,
except your [father] back.
But I love the moments when I feel like I could burst with the awe I feel knowing more fully of God's love. I just want to grab everyone I pass by the shoulders and shake them and say "It is all going to be okay!! Can you believe that?!!" I had one of those moments yesterday. I went back to my father's grave site by myself after the funeral luncheon. He was already in the earth and it was just me, some flowers, and broken sod. I pressed my hands on his ground for a moment. I brushed the dirt off my palms and knew that he was happy. Those are the moments that I feel like this:
i thank you God, by e. e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Yesterday was a beautiful day. It was wonderful to meet my dad's friends and co-workers and hear their happy memories and stories. Two people came who loved my dad very much and felt like he was their good friend. They worked at the Maverick station down the street from where my dad worked. Every morning, very early, he would stop by and pick up a copy of the newspaper. He would go in and talk with them for a moment. He took the time to honestly see how they were doing, and always left them feeling uplifted.
Rather than just pick up his paper, my dad would take a few minutes to talk with perfect strangers. He was so consistent in his acts of kindness that they said they will always remember him as a very dear friend.
What an amazing man.
