REPOSTED BY REQUEST

I posted this at the old site back in May on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. Bryan suggested I repost it here, since this site is more reliable than the last one, and this Sunday is Father’s Day and all. Not only that, but this coming Sunday would have been my father’s 59th birthday. We’re leaving for Iowa right after church on Sunday morning, because I don’t want to be away from home one minute longer.

Anyway, the repost:

Dear Dad,

The significance of this day is not lost on me. One year ago today, about this very minute, in fact, I got the word that you’d been killed in an accident, struck broadside by a person who couldn’t be bothered to read a road sign, even if it was bright red and said ‘STOP.’ I wish I could tell you more about what happened next, but those ensuing couple of weeks are still a fog to me. All I remember (apart from the efforts one person who sincerely tried to help but would have been better off doing nothing) is that I remember being lost amongst a much larger group of lost people, everybody who ever knew and loved you.

When somebody you love dies, especially in the way you did, all you want is for the world to stop and take notice of how you’ve been wronged. And maybe for a moment, it does. (They tell me you even made the TV news. I wouldn’t know; I didn’t see it. In fact, it was a couple weeks before any of us really felt like turning on the TV at all.) But what’s far more important is to see how the people close to you drew closer to us, joined together in the swirling vortex of icy blue grief. We often say to each other at funerals, “It’s nice to see you again; I just wish it was under different circumstances.” What a damnable lie that is. If somebody’s important to you, then it’s especially nice to see them under the circumstances of heartbreak.

I don’t want to bore you with details of how we’ve been dealing with the aftermath. First of all, we’re hardly done dealing with it; secondly, you never gave a rat’s bonkus about that sort of stuff anyway. Suffice it to say our quest for justice continues, at about the pace I expected. I may never get what I want most–to look that person right in the eyes and let her know exactly who she took out of the world, and exactly what I think of her for it, and exactly why just saying “I’m sorry” isn’t going to hold much water with me. But if I can’t get what I want, I’ll take what the law provides me.

There’s no way I can adequately explain what life has been like for me in the past year. It’s been sort of like it always has, except the highs on the graphic equalizer are turned off, and the lows are on overdrive. It’s not like every day has been miserable. (What an insult to your memory that would be.) I’ve laughed, I’ve had good times, I’ve gone on road trips, and so on. It just hasn’t been as much fun. I’ll have a good day, maybe even a short string of them, but then something will set me off and I’ll be glum for a few days, like I just drank a tall, cool glass of Novacaine.

You don’t know how hard that is when you’re a pastor like me. You don’t know how hard any of this is. If I had a dollar for everyone who seemed to assume that, just because I’m a pastor, and just because I have great faith in God, I should just be instantly OK with my father dying a senseless death, I’d have my student loans paid off and that Audi that Grandpa always wanted but never got, the one you said you were going to buy, and the one I fully intend to buy someday. I wish even the atheists knew how much I loathe the rah-rah happy-clappy Jesus pushers and their faith that’s shallower than a McDonald’s ashtray. Don’t tell me that I should cheer up because someday I’ll see you again; I bloody well know that. I mean, if I didn’t, I’d be in a pretty strange line of work, wouldn’t I? But don’t try to comfort me by telling me that my problem will be solved someday in some spectacular cosmic fashion. Tell me what I want to know–that God is with me now. I looked real, real hard for somebody to tell me that God wasn’t just up in his heaven watching over me and longing for my blissful reunion with him and you (unless I screwed up and threw away my salvation by stealing or coveting or voting Democrat or eating my salad with my dessert fork or whatever else passes for sin in the eyes of some of these folks); rather, I wanted to know that he was by my side, helping me bail out the backed-up septic tank that my life had become because you were gone. That’s when I learned the truth–every true Christian is tested by fire, and the only ones really worth having around you in a time of trouble are the ones who still smell like smoke.

I just wish I hadn’t had to lose you to learn that lesson.

You never knew me as a married man, never knew me as a parent, and of all the things I regret, that’s probably what I regret the most. I sure could use your advice sometimes. Being married and being a father (especially of the step-variety, as I am) is much, much harder than I expected. Not that I’m not loving the heck out of it, because I am, I really am; just that it’s challenging, and I don’t get to ask you for your perspective any more. Just one more thing the thief in the night took from me, I guess. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be counting the losses for years.

Anyway, I’d say I hope things are alright with you, but if you’re where I know you are, that’s the ultimate in silly questions. Things here are not alright, as you can tell. I’ve often told people in situations similar to mine that, yes, one day things will get back to normal; it’s just that “normal” will mean something different than it used to. (I don’t have the heart to tell them the truth: that “normal” will always mean something worse than it used to. They’ll find that out soon enough, though.) I don’t know how long that takes, Dad, but I know this: It sure as hell takes longer than a year.

Say hi to the boss for me.

Love,

Mark