Surely, This Cannot Be

March 3, 2018

Dear God,

I don’t believe in bargaining—theologically, that is.  I don’t believe that you would be so unjust as to favor a few children with a whim of a miracle based on their pious pleading, while allowing others to suffer in a mercurial world.  I don’t believe it, but I want it.  I want to beg, “please God, don’t let this cancer take him.   Of all those who have humbly served you, surely his kind and generous heart has called out and caught your notice.  You have to have seen his pure soul.  I know it shines.  Please, let him stay a while longer…..he’s my dad.”

What random act could I do to cosmically parallel his lifetime of meaningful acts and somehow strike a magic chord, a chord that would cure this rare cancer that has so far left no survivors?  How can I make that kind of music?

Maybe it would sound like “Finlandia.”  I remember stretching out on our long couch together on Sunday afternoons and starting out a nap listening to Sibelius on the LP.  That music is magic and always will be to me.

Maybe it would sound like his voice booming through a bad connection from half-way around the world asking his grown daughter “How’s my princess?” hundreds of times in hundreds of phone calls.  A ritual, almost rhythmic in its consistency, reminding me that, rather improbably, I am and always have been unconditionally adored.

Maybe it would sound like the rapid ticking of shuffling cards, the beginning of our family ritual of game playing together.  He’s not a poor sport, but by golly he likes to win, and we all love him for this incongruous bit of self interest.

Maybe it would sound like a pounding hammer, or a shovel striking, or the roll of a garbage can wheel as he looked for odd jobs to do when he comes to visit me.  “You don’t need to do that, dad!”  “I have to help out my little girl.”  It doesn’t matter that my hair is graying.

Maybe it would sound like the wind whispering through the pine trees in Yellowstone on one of our many vacations there, or his patient voice assenting to my suggestion to “drive just a couple more miles dad!  Please!  I think we’ll see a bear if we keep going”…and one year we did.

Maybe it would sound like the excitement in his voice, as he planned a lunch or dinner out.  His desire for bread with gluten in it always tempered by the care of making sure that everyone’s allergies and wants were taken into account.

Maybe it would sound like the peace as we sat and watched whales playing in the water right outside the front window of our vacation rental in Oregon a couple years ago…each of us periodically breaking the silence to say “this is amazing!  I can’t believe it!”

Maybe it would sound like my dad laughing and asking his Norwegian born mother “Hey mom, say ‘Willy Warbles Wiggles When he Walks’” and she would answer, laughing “Villy Varbles Viggles Vhen he Valks!  You boys, always teasing!”

Maybe it would sound like a soft cooing of “hey there, big fella!” his chosen words of affection for first my nephew and now my foster son….the adjective “foster” having no appreciable effect on my dad’s love.  The visual evidence for this being a photo my mom snapped of my dad a couple months ago with the baby on his lap as they carefully and seriously counted baby’s toes together.

Maybe it will sound something like the tears sliding down my face as I contemplate how the sun will possibly ever shine as brightly when this awful ordeal is over in the only way it can apparently end.

So, dear Heavenly Father….you sent me to this man…and I am who I am because of it.  How can he go?  Surely, this cannot be.

Karen