Reflections

This has been a week of great reflection for me with bittersweet moments as I have watched my dad's health fail. He is still struggling, but I fear this is a battle he will not win.

Reflections on the fact that maybe, just maybe I should have interrupted his writing more often to get some daddy time. Reflections on the years as a young woman when I resented my dad for the manner in which he chose to discipline us and what I, in my "youthful wisdom" considered his lack of parenting skills.

Mark Twain once said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." So it has been in my life.

I have realized as I have aged that all parents, mine included do the best they can - whether right or wrong, we all learn by example .... watching how our parents raised us. Parenting skills are not in an instruction manual we take home with the new baby, it is on-the-job training and falling back in our memories to what we learned at the foot of our parents.

This week has given me the opportunity to see the little boy inside my dad who is reaching out for love and reassurance as all children do. This little boy ... one of 12 children was severely disciplined as a child for wrong doings and learned that he must fight for everything in his life. His father didn't have time to reason over bad behaviour .... dad told me of many broken noses and teeth when grandpa would in dad's words - "haul off and belt one of the us - no questions asked".

As this opportunity presented itself this week, I reached out to that little boy and held him in my arms and heart to give him the love and reassurance he needed and that I wanted to give him.

The very painful part of losing a loved one is the knowledge that once gone, you will never see them again ... never have that chance to let them know how very much you loved them.

Seeing the futility in my moms face this week as she nurses my dad ... doing everything in her power to prevent the inevitable outcome of his health crisis has been almost more than I can bear and then to ponder the fact that all this pain she feels right now will not subside but will explode into depths of grief when the time comes.

They have been together 59 years .... a lifetime.

But then through all the tears .... a beautiful door opened to me as I spent each day with my mom and dad. Talking with dad about his death which he is prepared and waiting for. Dad has a very deep faith in Jesus Christ and looks forward to the freeing of his soul from his body which is wracked with pain and then being re-united in heaven with his Saviour.

Writer Charles Spurgeon, known as the "Prince of Preachers" in reformed Baptist circles and whose work my father cherishes, once said that "death is but the birth pains to a new life".

Yesterday as we shared .... he likened his life's energy to the falling autumn leaves on a tree. We spoke of love and life and death .... we shared our love for each other .... I fed him this week .... held his hand and just sat with him quietly when no words were necessary. All past wounds are healed, forgotten, forgiven ....

So as I reflect on these past few days, when the time comes that he will leave his earthly bonds, I will be comforted by the fact that my Father loved me and oh how I loved him.

The beautiful words of this hymn so beautifully portray my Father's deep abiding belief in his eternity:

And then one day I'll cross the river
I'll fight life's final war with pain
And then as death gives way to victory
I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know he lives

A side note: Today my father made the decision to stay home - he does not want to go into the hospital so I have initiated the process of in-home care to assist my mom and ease my dad's final days.