The trip was to take a few days, eight hours south to go to my parent’s home in Arkansas. My father focused on getting to his eightieth birthday in August and we hope he makes it. His body isn’t cooperating. The journey begins as we gather things to travel. The travelers stepping aside their daily schedules to be together to face this thing, to be together in person and in privilege of each other’s emotions as we try to adjust to the idea of Pappa not being with us on earth. It is a concept we cannot grasp.
Sometimes the losing is not as hard as realizing the dreams you had are not coming true this lifetime. He will not be at her wedding, or see his first great grandchild, still a few years away. We were fortunate, my father shared his life, good, bad, and ugly. He is an intense learner still, The Great Courses line his shelves in his office. His mind and desire for learning strong and ever seeking.
The roads we travelled took us through the true South. Delta farmlands, pine forests, along the Mississippi, restaurants with unlimited buffets of foods my Yankee friends couldn’t imagine were served in a single meal. Most of it cornmeal coated or hog jowl flavored, fare that delights the senses of my childhood memories. The stories are the best when traveling home for me, folks are private unless they hear your story too. As I shared we were going to see my father who is doing poorly, they shared their stories of love and loss too. Precious moments, privileged to hear their stories, I am forever changed each time we drive without hurrying to hear these lives that so rarely exist in this modern world.
My children were raised near my father, and the version a grandchild receives of a child’s father is different than the child knew. I was fortunate, the only girl, and the baby, I had more of my father’s time. My brothers are precious to him, so alike him in many ways in their tenacity and brilliance. As it should be, children are indeed a gift. Our baby turns 17 next week, and had driven her car down to Pappa’s home to show him she could drive. A picture had to suffice, for he was too ill to go outside to see it. Enough it was, for his eyes shone bright that she had driven down.
Goodbyes are hard, as one realizes that soon a time is coming where a call, or email, or message will say there will be only one more trip home to make soon. Losing my father is a hard thing. My mother has been gone for eight years. We are close and yet far in the same moments of life. My hero and my humbler…aren’t Daddys that way? I studied the house this trip, for it most likely will not be ours to visit another day. A place so many memories have been made in that antebellum home. As I walked through the house I kept thinking “this belongs here” and wondered where it would be if it were not there…but lives end and others begin and things change. Conversations held and the world echoed in my mind “At least you get to live…” for rarely does one welcome death. In our minds we are forever young, forever with more opportunities to go again, but in my father’s case, his mind is youthful, his body has aged. It is a difficult truth.
We pulled out of the drive, dismissed as usual to go about our own lives, control is precious when you have little left. The Colonel smiled at the concept that we’d return the next day….”no, I believe not” and we knew that what we had witnessed was indeed a good bit show, for he put forth so much energy to be with us. Exhausted, he loved us well, but it was time to go.
Driving home took 3 days, day one we were reminded that a number of years ago we had received another call, that a sixteen year old had collapsed in Texas. Our brother’s oldest child, and in an instant life changed. Knowing Pappa is soon to join Will, the day was much harder. We drove where the fields are blooming and growing green with fresh food. Where last year’s cotton crop has turned under and been renewed with a different crop now almost ready to harvest. We were reminded that there is a season for us all too, that our time is now and though it is hard to let go of those who have come before us, it is time to be who we have grown to be.
The season is ours now, it’s time to harvest life.
