The First Father's Day Alone

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort

of feeling safe with a person, having neither to 

weigh thoughts or measure words, but pouring

them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together,

certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, 

keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of

kindness blow the rest away."

Dinah Craik

Tomorrow is Father's Day, my love, the first without you.  Our children, though now grown, will need some words of comfort I fear, and I have so little to give them.  Like me, I believe they felt safest with you.  How many people have someone in their lives that would die for them as you would have for each of us had the need ever arisen?  I still miss you so much that at times I fear I will go crazy.  But there are the memories you left me, always the memories, and sometimes I feel that death freed you so that you are now everywhere with me, just in a different form.  

You are in the wind that kisses my cheek on a windy ride, the sun that scalds my skin and warms my bones so that the aches of old age recede.  You are in the trees that shade the roads I pass along, the hawk that flies overhead.  You are in the rain that greens the grass and the fields and the deer that quickly crosses the road in front of me melting ghostlike into the forest. And sometimes I think it makes sense if we join God, become part of God, when we die, that you are in all of those things and it is not just some weird trick of my imagination.  But it is still not the same.  I miss the physical you that laughed and joked and talked and held me.  I miss the smell of you and the feeling of safety you brought into my life.

The first pregnancy was so thrilling, wonderful, and scary.....so miraculous as my body changed and shifted making way for new life. The first flutter of life that soon gave way to small feet and hands moving across my stomach in the age old pattern of growth and being. I remember the morning sickness, so bad that they were going to put me in the hospital for dehydration, that finally eased. I remember how you scolded me for turning cartwheels on the way to the mailbox fearing it would cause me to miscarry.  You never criticized or questioned my desire for children, never made me feel guilty for wanting the family we eventually birthed together.  

I remember my labor, mostly in my back because she was turned the wrong way, and the hours  you spent rubbing and calming as I strained to bring our daughter, her sex yet unknown at the time, into the world.  I suppose my only regret is that you did not come with me into the delivery room, but yet I understood when you told me your fear that it would make you unable to ever touch me again.  Pain fell away, forgotten, meaning little, when I laid my eyes on her, this miracle that we created with our love. 

And then came the second child, this time a boy.  That time they tried to send us home from the hospital but I refused, insisting on staying.  The doctor barely made it on time.   Had we left, there would have been no choice:  not only would you have been in the delivery room, but you would have been the deliverer, probably on the highway before we reached home.  

So on this Father's Day, despite your absence, I thank you, love, for those children that you gave me.  They both have been blessings in so many, many ways.  How I wish you were still here to continue sharing them with me.