I feel eyes upon me.
Some percent of you have been following these stories from way back, and others joined recently, and almost all of you who will read this story have followed the recent stories, where I walked my father from cancer diagnosis to cemetery.
Some of you are ahead of me. You lost your parents long ago. Others are behind me, with aging parents, but no obituary yet. What either of you gets…I don’t know…but you follow, because because because….
And then there’s me. One day at time, sweet Jesus, one day at a time…
_____ _____ _____
I’ve been honest through this thing. I didn’t mention my father’s flaws, but I hold where I’ve presented, that this man was uncommonly solid. I’ve not gone into fits of sorrow in these Bedtime Stories because – as of now – I don’t feel a great sorrow. His ending was deep, it was spiritual, but it wasn’t tragic. My father lived clean, had a tight map, was wiser than most, was steadier than most, sowed where he should, reaped a righteous ending, and I feel peace about his place.
And now here I am, waiting for my what-now.
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
I’m pushing sixty. I call that a serious number.
I was going and going and going and it could have gone on and on and on, which is what a lot of my life is like, but my going got interrupted by my father’s end-of-life.
His end was church without the building, sermons without the pastor. Not Spurgeon, not Billy Graham, not even the Apostles…nobody could’ve delivered what the long hours of watching my silent father descend towards death preached to me.
This was not a historical figure, this wasn’t an anecdote, this was my father, who I knew-so-well, and having watched all those decades, here he goes, here he goes, there he went…
…and on deck is me…
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
This is a pause place. This is a measuring place.
I have lived an imperfect life. I have gone where warned not to go, stayed where my conscience said to flee, broken most of the Big Ten in thought or deed. On any honest day I can say that my father is my superior.
My father never knew how low I got or how far I strayed, but he stayed after God in prayerful conversation, holding the Big G to His promise, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
I cannot redeem the lost decades. I cannot take back all the digging of holes and the climbing of ladders leading to nowhere.
All I have is this patched up version of me-now.
So here I am, at the intersection, and I can go forward, or take a right or left, or stop, or reverse.
I don’t have announcements. I just don’t want to punch the gas pedal and run the yellow light like I’d have done in my younger days. Slow, I tell myself. Obey. Patience. Sometimes the best speed is no speed.
I’ve got this one life. That it ends is not theoretical anymore.
_____ _____ _____
Going through the boxes…
My sister found the pictures. There was a girl before me. There was a boy after me. Neither survived their birth. In between them was me, and the why-me. My father almost backed up over me with his car. I was almost killed on a bicycle on Hwy 26, on a motorcycle near Mittie, and in a truck on I-12, a few miles east of Slidell.
I am here, despite myself. What is it, that I am here to do? Call this sentence a prayer; You know best…lead me to the life You had in mind for me…don’t let me squander this thing…
I’m just about old enough to really mean it, when I say, “Jesus take the wheel.”
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where doing right is always better than going fast…
Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories are posted three times a week on Eighty-one’s Facebook page, Sunday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, about pillow time. Uncle P can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com.
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