Pages

21 February 2023

not even close

A million hours in the van later, and we got home tonight at 7.

It feels like we've been gone for weeks. 

And for the first road trip of my life, as we reached each next destination, there was no one to text that we'd safely arrived. I have called and texted dad at each major point of each major trip in each city and country my whole life. And we are back home safely. And dad would be waiting up to hear. 

So I am telling you.

I have a lot of thoughts (what else is new), but to summarize tonight, I was dreading the funeral more than anything in the world, worried that every person there, sheerly by facing them, would be an announcement of dad being gone...dead...finished.

"He is gone" I expected their presence to say, and I couldn't hardly face it. 

I was not even close...I was surprised again and again to find different graces in different people that said otherwise.

Not anything that anyone even said.

The Millers were there before I was born. Prayed for me in my mom's belly...as a little girl in church...throughout school...when mom died...when I got married...when I moved to Haiti...when I had my babies...when we moved to Mississippi...when Dad got sick.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Sarah and Bonnie and Chris and Kevin and Carl and Mary would be there...Maybe even Meghan and Colin. I didn't ask them ahead. I knew they would be, no matter what. I knew they would already have loving tears in their eyes before I saw them. And when we walked in and I didn't see them, I knew they were there. I knew they were crying with me. I knew they were praying.

The sheer stability of the confidence of the prayers and presence of a family who has prayed for and loved us for my entire lifetime...brought me the deepest and unexpected groundedness and peace. They weren't pointing to Dad being dead. They were pointing to loving him and us.

Rick and Carol, Greg and Cathie who took me in in Port-au-Prince when Mom died, Don and Brenda, Micheline and Benito...my first friend in Haiti who helped us raise Lily, Sofie and Nora, our Haiti family...they were there. It was crazy they were there. But seeing them was far better than I ever would have thought...it was so sweet to have genuine family in them, still. Our kids call them family...They have all been like grandparents. They came at great expense. They were massive parts of the massive part of Haiti in our lives...just like dad was....I felt so hemmed in.

Elisa, Molly...they've been two of my best friends forever. I KNEW they would be there and knew that they know-know. All the behind the scenes. All the good, bad, ugly. That my dad loved them in season like daughters and cared for them like he cared for me. And that they would be there, and will be, that they cradle meaningful memories of dad like I do...I felt so at peace when I saw them.

My first grade teacher and third grade, my mom's principal, my band instructor who sang at mom's funeral, my dad's co-workers from Mahan, my dad's very best friends....my dad's sister and step-sister, my cousins I haven't seen in 10 years....my friends from college who saw dad almost as much as we did...my sister's good friends. Some people shared precious stories and sentiments. Some people couldn't say anything at all. All of it blessed me, because they were there...there with me.

I thought seeing everyone would remind me dad was gone. But seeing them instead reminded me that Dad was loved...and that he loved me.  That he was truly known...that who I know he was, he was...that the stories I have are 10 in a hundred. That what I knew he did, he did more. 

I thought seeing everyone would remind me I was alone...toeing around the idea of orphaned in my mind and heart.  But seeing this crowd of people who loved Dad, instead, reminded me that I never will or could be...He has richly filled my life with too much family to ever throw around an idea like that, of being alone.  We have too much family to be orphaned, not even close.

I fell asleep that night feeling so unexpectedly grateful and rich and exhausted. I woke up the next dreary morning feeling nothing but the deep and heavy and empty and crippling loss. 

It is something in the middle. It is both. The deep loss, and the richness of His steadfast love and His precious people. 

I'll always hold dad's funeral in my heart as a testimony of God's people and how badly we need one another to point us to Him and to hope....and even to carry us there, sometimes. 

I wish I had pictures of each person, to remember. This is all I've got, lunch after.

But I'll remember all the same.



1 comment: