That Final Flight!

 It's interesting to me how the soft underbelly of those we love comes forth most profoundly in their birth & then in their passing.

Another chapter in a whole lifetime seemed crammed in to that last month my dad & I had together. At home he rustled the pages of his last presentation paper for his 'Wranglers' group about the brain, while asking me if flowers had a memory because they repeated the life cycle. I told him, no, that was simply genetic coding & so we went round & round as usual & then I went home & actually tried to find out on the internet if flowers DO have tiny brains. 

I stood by my father's hospital bed after our last real meal together of salmon, baked potato & fruit crisp, which he had gobbled down with gusto. On my way out, he motioned for me to lean down closer & closer until he could peck me on the cheek with that sly smile & then I kissed him on his head & he thanked me, as he had thanked Moe, the big guy who had turned him & the nurses who shifted his pillows or brought him ice. Chivalry until the end.

A week later, for all intents & purposes, my dad mostly laid in twilight between two worlds. I was wishing he didn't have to experience the shutting down of time & space & organs & thought somehow a head on collision would be more humane. I was dreading the drive over again to witness his disappearance, although at the same time I wished I was there holding his hand so he was not braving this journey alone.

I took solace that his soul was slowly arching away from the constraints of an earthly plane. How strange though it seemed that one so wearily encased could rally for that final flight!

Those days are so precious to me; perhaps more so then all the years we had leading up to them. The aching wait, the man child, the long rest into the sweet sleep of peace.

I believe you are truly in your element now.  God Speed, Daddy Dear xo