My Dad has been on my mind this past week. Maybe some recent time spent in Amsterdam rekindled a few memories. Maybe it’s that I’m finally realizing how much I miss him. Some small part of me is still expecting him to be there at an undefined point in the future. When he was well I would only see him about once a month or so, and in a way I’ve reverted back to that time, or the years when I was in college and saw him even less. It’s easier to think of him being away for some indeterminable length of time rather than gone from this earth forever; my head makes sense of it, but my heart holds out.
On a recent lunch break, I walked up the hill to the church I used to sit in during his last days here. It offered a small bit of solace in that sad summer, but on this visit, as on my last, the doors remained locked. The day was splendid, though – one of the first sunny and warm ones we’ve had this year – so I made the most of my time outside. Later, after I’d arrived home, I sat down to my meditation and invited Dad to join me there. (Not out loud – I haven’t gone that crazy yet.) It is a comfort to think of him sitting silently beside me – it’s something that would never have happened quite in this way in real life (my father was not the meditative type) but there were many times when I would find him at a gathering or dinner, alone in the family room watching television, or sitting off to the side at a wedding, and I’d stop to sit next to him. We didn’t talk much, simply sat there together in the unease of a crowd, or the welcome semi-solitude of his favored family room. In that shared silence, we understood one another in a way that no one else could.
The next morning I felt that familiar emptiness which has been part of our lives since last summer – duller and less pointed now, but still there – and as I looked out the front window I saw a quartet of cardinals going about their daily business – a few of their chirps cutting through the glass as they flitted away. It was the happy sound of spring on the way, the sound of hope, and maybe the sound of a lost loved one reminding me that he was still near.
