Dad's funeral was three years ago today (July 11, 2020). It was immediate family only, no "funeral home gingerbread", just the casket I had built for him (which he approved of) with my Dad in it, attended by some of his kids, grand kids and great grand kids.
It was my first time back in the church since I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2019 and COVID had still locked down the world and the churches. I forgot how to put my cassock on, with the buttons and all.
Immediately after the funeral, we loaded him in the casket packed with some dry ice in a van and my wife and several of the kids drove him to New Mexico to be buried at St. Michael’s Monastery. I could not travel because I was still in the middle of surgeries, chemo, and cancer recovery. That, and my Mom was still alive and needed 24/7 care giving so someone had to stay home with her. I wrote the following piece later that evening on Facebook.
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I thought the funeral would be more emotional for me. I thought perhaps I'd get a sense of "closure" or maybe a deep sadness I had not yet felt. But, no. I sit tonight, as I did before his casket, knowing he is gone "forever", but with a sense of guilt that I still feel more relief than grief.
The past five years have been a long, brutal, constant assault on my spirit and on my wife's spirit. He has slowly, inexorably died before our eyes for years. His passing before my eyes at his bedside was not a shock, but a fulfilled anticipation, an ending I knew was immanent when I bathed him and changed his diapers for the last days of his life. We have been grieving for years in stages.
The last two weeks of his life were a bright sorrow. He was facing his mortality, wrestling fiercely with letting go, and finally came to a place of peace with death. He died embracing a peace with the entirety of his life, with the certainty of his death, and the hope of a peace in the resurrection.
Since his departure we have noted (and so have my Mom's caregivers) how peaceful it is in the house. There's no longer constant criticisms, directives, anger, tension and eggshells to navigate. It was hard on everyone and hard on our marriage. At no time were either of us willing to sacrifice our marriage for my parents, and I thank God my wife did not demand me to make that choice even in her darkest times, and she offered me hope and support during mine. We endured and survived, at times with gallows humor at other times with sheer will to "do the right thing". It helped that we both knew that he was a good man with a good heart to be sure, and we were always able to see and balance his goodness and his mis-directed good intentions with his flaws and offenses.
Tonight I am grateful to God that "we" outlasted my Dad. He, and we, are in a better place. I commend him to God. I pray he is before the throne and commending us to God even though God knows what our secret thoughts have been.
Death is truly the "blessed curse". Perhaps some day I will feel the cursedness of it, but for now I feel the blessing. And I don't know if I should feel guilty for that.
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The third anniversary of my Dad’s death was four days ago. I tried to write something, but everything I thought of seemed obligatory, manufactured and honestly, fake. But I didn’t know why. So I didn’t.
The Facebook post above showed up in my “Memories” tonight and I think I know now why I could not write about his death: I still feel the blessing and not the curse, and I still feel guilty for feeling that. My “some day” to feel the curse of death has not yet come. But it seems to me that I SHOULD be a better person than that. I should let go of whatever is blocking my sense of loss of my father. I should forgive his offenses. I should get over the havoc care giving wreaked on my life and family. I should be grateful for the spiritual and life lessons I learned. I should be proud of having done the right thing. I should honor all the good and good intentions in him that I know existed and I’m actually grateful for.
But, I’m not “there” yet.
Yet. Because grief and recovery and forgiveness and healing do not follow a schedule in the human heart. But it runs deeper than that: Just the notion of “yet” is about guilt and expectation and self-condemnation. I am not “there”. Period. Because of who he was to me and who I am. I was to him “not yet there”, never quite up to expectations (even when I exceeded them). He could tell other people he didn’t know what he would have done without us, that he was grateful for what we were doing, but he could never say that to me. I should be over that kind of stuff. But 68 years of being a son dies hard. Harder than watching your Dad die.
So. I guess it is still complicated. Yeah, I’ve softened up a bit. Maybe a lot. But not “enough” to feel more sadness for the loss than relief and gladness.
Grief is a bitch.
Well, that's healing happening in your life and sometimes it takes a long time. Both of my parents died by the time I was 20. I was 15 when my father died and my chief regret with him is that was unable to know him as an adult. My mother killed herself when I was 20 and and I was the one who found her. That emotional scar took about 40 years to heal. To this day, I still can't attend funerals. Anyone's funeral. It's just too much. So I can understand when you say you're not "there" yet. Blessings.
there are no manuals for babies when they arrive and there are no roadmaps for grandpas when they die. you just have to figure it out as you go along.