My Favorite Person
Dad has grown increasingly frail and weak. After he had several falls getting into bed that resulted in visits from EMS, I have started helping him at night to make sure he gets through his bedtime routine and into bed safely. Last week, as I was tucking him in, I placed my hand on his shoulder and said, “Dad, it seems like everything is pretty hard for you these days.”
He exhaled and replied, “It really is.”
I said, “That must be really annoying to you.”
“It’s more than annoying. It’s infuriating.”
I smiled and sat down on the side of the bed. “Dad, do you remember what you told me to remind you of one day? When you were getting toward the end of your life, what you wanted me to tell you?”
“No. What did I say?”
“You told me that one day I was going to need to remind you that it was okay to put down the sword and stop fighting.”
He raised his sleepy eyelids and looked at me directly. After a moment or two he said, “I’m not quite ready. Almost, but not quite. I still want to be here.”
I said, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
I sit still. I practice breathing deeply. Tears slide down my cheeks. “Well, I love you.” More silence. Then softly, “You know, you have always been one of my very favorite people on the planet.”
He put his hand on my arm and squeezed saying, “And you are mine. I love you very much.”
“Okay, Dad, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here,” he says, which his usual response to good-bye.
“And, if you are not, I hope you have a good trip to the other side.”
He chuckled and said, “I’ll get to be with your mom, you know.”
I said, “Yeah, she’s probably waiting to give you shit about what took you so long.”
“Probably so, Christina. Probably so.”
***
Thanksgiving 2023
I’ve always loved stories about Love that triumphs in hopeless situations. Give me an underdog, a hero who has hope beyond all reason, and a few synchronicities of Grace that open the door of unseen possibilities, and I will read your book, watch your movie, and/or listen to your podcast. But hope inside the situation with my Dad is a different thing. This isn’t the hope that he will regain his mobility or the hope that he will suddenly care less than he does about booze. This is not hope that his emotional range will expand beyond frustration and impatience to include the kind of laughter we shared so often when we were both younger. I am not hopeful that he is not going to get better in those ways.
I don’t have hope that I will always feel loving and patient with him. I do not have hope that the many small and large things I am setting into motion for his care will result in recognizable “improvement.” I have no hope that I’ll do any better in my role because I set an intention, establish a new habit, or otherwise improve myself.
Instead, I have a hope in the process of loving, in the value of growing into my capacity to show up for him with tenderness. I have hope in Love’s power to redeem my hardened heart so that I can lay down my own sword of childish resentment and refrain from endlessly litigating my case against him for his shortcomings and the ways they hurt me over the years. I have hope in the power of my whole-hearted engagement to uplift, to redeem, and to restore wholeness—both mine and his. I have hope in the power of prayer to bolster and support me. I have hope in the ways that ordinary encounters prove to me again and again that God does not live in the sky, but instead comes to life in and through people and reality just as it is. I have hope in the power of practice and the ongoing return to Love that I believe sincere practice over time promises. I have hope in the premise that no act of Love is ever wasted.
So like that.
More soon-ish, depending on well, you know, the Everything.
Sometime shortly after May 7, 1969
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