As some of you know from Facebook, as some of you may have guessed through my recent silence, my dad passed away last week. On Thursday, March 7. In a hospice room at St. Francis hospital in Wichita. With the sun shining and the Hallelujah Chorus playing on my brother’s ipad. Facing his bride of 42 years. (They celebrated their anniversary in the hospital on February 27); holding the hands of his granddaughters; being touched and loved into the next world by his son, his daughter, his son-in-law, his daughter-in-law.
We found out just last Tuesday that he had aggressive natural killer cell leukemia/lymphoma. (In case you can’t tell by the name, you do not want to get this disease.) As a former hospice chaplain, my dad weighed his treatment options (horrifying and ultimately unsuccessful) with the care he knew he would receive on the hospice floor. He could not wait to get up to his hospice room.
If he had been 98 instead of 68, I would say it was a perfect death. Peaceful. Mercifully quick. Full of love. Infused with the holy.
But he wasn’t 98, he was 68. And he wasn’t done being a grandpa–or a dad–or a husband. And so his death wasn’t perfect. It was, and is, agonizing.
It’s too soon for me to draw out profound insights on life and death and God as related to Dad’s death. I just want you to know about this bit of my life.
And I want to share with you the poem I wrote for Dad’s funeral. (When your dad asks you, on his deathbed, to write a poem for his funeral, the answer is “yes.”) My dad was so peace-filled throughout his entire hospitalization (11 days), I couldn’t help but think of the contrast with the sentiment in Dylan Thomas’ poem for his dying father,”Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.” Ultimately, I needed a strict form like the villanelle to help me start the poem–and to help me stop. The cycling, the repetition of this form echoes the swimming timelessness of these past two weeks.
Villanelle for Dad
You died the way you lived, with love and grace,
The Hallelujah chorus in the air,
Our gazes fixed intently on your face.
Disease so sudden we could scarcely brace,
Yet you accepted, took the load to bear.
You died the way you lived, with love and grace.
Unhinged we cried and questioned, wept and paced;
Sustained somehow by holy words and prayer,
Our gazes fixed intently on your face.
They say that slow and steady wins the race.
We wish you’d gone more slowly toward death’s glare.
You died the way you lived, with love and grace.
A pastor to the end, you made your case:
You said, “If you’re in God, know I am there.”
Our gazes fixed intently on your face.
And you, my dad, whose sacred life I trace,
I thank you for this final gift you share:
You died the way you lived, with love and grace,
Our gazes fixed intently on your face.
