We were
back in Kentucky. We were here to bury my father. Tears welled again,
uncontrolled, and rolled down my face. I glanced over at my mother, sitting
next to me in the back seat of our rental car. Her own tears spilled down her
cheeks. She, too, was lost in her own grief laden thoughts. It was even more
heartbreaking for me to imagine her loss.
My head pounded like a thundering drum inside my skull and I squeezed my
eyes closed and tried to shut the pain off. I couldn’t. I opened my eyes again
and looked out the window trying to make sense of it all.
A snow
storm had arrived at the same time our plane landed in Louisville. After a 3:00
a.m. start to a long day of airport lines, snafus, plane changes and a cross
country flight, we were finally in the car on our way to my cousin’s home.
Snow was
blowing around us and frosting the world outside. We had an hour drive to go
from Louisville to Lexington and my husband (a native Californian) had stepped
up to the challenge of driving this leg of our journey. My brother rode shotgun
next to him. They were a good team. Their
conversation consisted of road directions and traffic and I welcomed the
distraction from my grief.
I'd been
back to Kentucky for a visit with extended family when we made a trip to
Nashville, three years earlier, but it had been a very long time since I'd
visited Lexington with any snow on the ground.
I was in
the 7th grade and we'd come to visit my grandparents for Christmas. All of the
rest of our annual trips were during the summer, since Dad was a teacher and had all of his summers
off.
Dad.
This time we’re here for you. This would be his last trip. I tried not to think about leaving
him here. About having him so far away
from me.
It felt
surreal to be making this trip for the purpose of laying my dad to rest next to
his parents. How did this happen so fast? I was just talking to him, he was being funny, teasing us.
I remember
feeling confident that he'd be fine, probably weak and not feeling like coming
to our house for our traditional family Christmas Eve dinner, but I was certain that the New Year
would arrive with him out of the hospital and with us again.
I was
right.
He was no
longer in the hospital. He was home. His soul was home with his Heavenly Father
and his body was home in KY. And now, January 2, 2014 we were home with him,
too.
At that moment, I wished we
could have been anywhere else. I wished that all of this was just one of my
disturbing nightmares and I would wake up from it, with my heart beating fast and
my day thrown off, but grateful that it was just a bad dream.
But, it was
not a bad dream this time. It was real. It
was a sharp piece of truth that had spun the world I knew, upside down and left me disoriented.
I continued
to look out the window but my vision was blurred by swirling snow outside and
the veil of tears. I blinked, took a deep breath and prepared myself for what would end
up being the hardest day I’d lived, in a very long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment