I want to believe I am among "the children in whom the Father (whom by any other name would smell just as sweet) is well pleased." My earthly father departed his being leaving me knowing he was.
The last day he spent in I.C.U., before hospice nurses brought him home, I spent one of the most difficult days of my life curled around him in his hospital bed. I laid my head on his chest and cried wet, silent tears as he pet my head. I can't say how long I was there.
We'd spent years knowing this day would come and trying to just live in the moment with one another. He was my daddy and I was his girl and we never said goodbye, just see ya later, that's the way it would always be, forever and ever, Amen. However, we had an acute awareness that we knew not how many grains of sand would fall through the hourglass. We'd co-signed an unspoken, yet understood, agreement to make time spent, words exchanged, stories told, moments shared, count.
I memorized how his voice sounded in my ear. I cataloged his scent and traced the webs of time lines on the backs of his hands. By the time this day came we both knew there was nothing left to say.
I'd held his gaze and dammed my liquid love long enough to get out, "I don't want to cry dad. I'm just going to miss you so much." On this day, as I laid there listening to his heart beat I gave thanks to the powers that be that I knew, all the way through my being that he was proud of me. The daughter, sister, wife, mother and woman I had become. What blessed girl I am to know that.
It is with a painful awareness I know not all girls, who are just as deserving and many who are far more, don't know this about themselves now and many, too many, never will. The powerful by-product of this knowledge is my soulful hope that if he can see me now...that he's still proud.
Vern had a good sense of humor, a forgiving heart, a tendency to root for the underdog and a mischievous streak a mile wide (see, it's hereditary) so at worst I imagine he'd shake his head and say, "She said she was a work in progress."
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