Bereavement

Today my Pop is gone from us a year. In some ways it seems like the year has flown by, and in others it feels like it's been forever since I heard his voice or laugh. There have been bright moments, of course, but I have constantly felt during the course of the year, and I still do, that someone has painted gray paint over my life...leaving it drab in comparison. Loss of my Pop is the main reason for this dreariness, but I thinking being reminded of mortality and the finality of death and the loneliness of the journey that waits for all of us is also a big part of it. Most of you wouldn't know this tidbit about me, but when I was working my way through undergraduate school I worked for a time as a clinical associate in a hospital. While I did "glamorous" things like EKGs and blood draws, I mainly helped patients eat, get cleaned up and back and forth. And, sometimes I was there when they passed. The experience came in handy last year when we brought my father home to pass away, and it will come in handy again while my mother recuperates from her hip surgery...but the experience made me see things differently from before I worked there, and the passing of my father has built on that even more so. Life is fragile and precious. And our experiences and losses make their mark on us as much, if not more than, our successes and happiness.

There's a beautiful movie I love called, "Memoirs of a Geisha," and a line by the narrator goes like this: At the temple, there is a poem called loss carved into the stone, it has three words, but the poet has scratched them out...you cannot read loss, only feel it...

I've often thought how wise that statement is, but while flipping through a catalog I ran across two poems by Judith Bulock Morse that caught my eye.

Dad

How well do I remember, the special times we had

The times and seasons of my life

With a very special dad

How well do I remember

The day God called you home

You slipped into his loving arms, and I felt so all alone

Now my heart will carry memories

Of the love you gave to me

Until we meet again in heaven

Where the best is yet to be.

And.....

You Will Be Remembered

You will be remembered when the flowers bloom in spring

And in the summertime remembered

In the fun that summer brings

You will be remembered

When fall brings leaves of gold

In the wintertime remembered in the stories told

And you will be remembered, each day right from the start

For the memories that we once shared

Forever live within my heart

Thinking of you today, tomorrow and always Pop

Love Wobbie