Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
It is a platitude that you don't appreciate what you have until you have lost it. Then again, as my brother pointed out, platitudes get to be platitudes because they're true. (That's why my brother is the smart one). I miss my Dad. I miss his voice, a lot, because he had a beautiful voice, and I miss there being someone on this Earth that really gets me. On the other hand, it just may be that I miss him less now than I have for the last 43 years, because I feel his presence with me. I can't see him, I can't hear him, but I can feel him, and I know he's happy. He loves my farm, he loves the music I chose for his visitation, he loves me, more than I ever knew. He loves being free again.
My dad has always loved the absurd. He used to tell my brother and me about how Vaudeville performers, when deemed unsatisfactory by the audience, used to get "the hook," which was sort of a giant sheep's hook that suddenly emerged from backstage and pulled the performer off the stage by main force. And whenever my father witnessed a particularly dismal performance, of any kind, he used to comment, "give 'em the hook!"
Well, Dad got the hook. Not him, so much, as his body. The failures, the betrayals, the generalized debilitation, the whole human comedy playing out on my dad's battered frame, just wasn't funny anymore. But Dad was a trouper. The show must go on, and he fought as hard as anybody can fight to make the show go on.
I don't know how the Invisible Life Forces managed to convince my dad to go already. Dad had the quintessential Taurean disinclination towards prodding and an almost superhuman capacity to resist it. I have a strong suspicion that Saint Peter, out of sheer desperation, may have come down and whacked him with a tire iron when nobody was looking. In ICU, Dad complained of a bright light (with the adjective "damn" implied) that was irritating him enormously. Since all the lights were off and the shades were drawn, I prayed that God might try music instead, and maybe He did.
Or maybe, while floating around above his hospital bed looking in vain for some sunglasses, Dad just said, with a decisive chomp on a pipestem, "Give him the hook, boys!"
My dad has a new body now, and a new life, and he's not, strictly speaking, my dad anymore, because he's back to being just who he is without earthly roles and obligations. And I have to learn to relate to him on that level, just as a fellow soul, and yes, a Republican soul, because, let's get real, Dad might have a spirit body and a different name and he might exist in another plane but he's still a conservative.
I mean, death is birth. You leave the baggage and keep the essential. My dad's music, his sense of humor, his integrity, and his conservativism are part of his soul's true nature, and you wouldn't have it any other way. The pain, the fear, the worries, the misunderstandings, all got the hook, along with the body.
Have fun, Dad. You deserve it.
