So, God Gave Me This Cold

So, God Gave Me This Cold

I’m writing through blurry eyes, a headache and a stuffy nose. I’m writing through gratitude and a deeper understanding and acceptance of the way of Mystery. Isn’t that always what happens? We trudge through difficulties, angry at the stories we’ve woven into something that makes sense with the pieces we’ve been given.  We carry the thing, like a big, hairy quilt, heavy and burdened, struggling with its clumsiness and insistence we be together with it. Then, something magical happens. It’s a deeper understanding. It’s an unburdening. It’s a revelation that the story we wove, the sense we made, wasn’t the story at all. Maybe, being at peace with the mystery was the entire point.

My father is dying.

Oh, he was a force, that man. He was a stubborn, selfish bully. He was loud. He was formidable. Not once do I remember crawling into his lap for comfort. I remember my sister doing that after she forgave him for some undoubted punishment he doled out. I would not crawl. I would not forgive. My deeply seated sense of justice and keen awareness of things not being right wouldn’t condone his poor behaviour.

And I kept this in my heart for many decades. My hairy quilt of ragged pieces, the knowing of what I knew.

There’s a lot of ground to cover in the last decade of our time together. How he whisked my sweet mother off to the South and swore they’d never come home. In 2021  they did come home. I moved them. They didn’t have any idea of how to do it, what it entailed, where to resettle…it was a monumental task. I did it largely alone, moving 2 elderly, drama-addicted parents to a place they didn’t recognize. I endured the drama, and drama there was. It’s been a wild ride, upending my peaceful, functional life. I’m exhausted. Resentful.

As Dad entered hospice my mother, who is struggling with dementia, got more and more agitated by watching the process. Last weekend, I undertook the heart-breaking task of moving her to a different facility, because they were no longer safe together. Several eldercare experts supported this effort and assured me it would be best for them both. I drove her to look at the place she would be staying, “temporarily.” I didn’t give her a ride back.

Then, God gave me this raging cold. The Big Coach sidelined me. Clearly, it was no longer my game. It never really was, you know? Until my cold is gone I can’t see my mother and must rely on a wonderful friend  to take her to visit her husband. But, I did sneak in to see my dad yesterday, because I don’t think a cold will kill him. Through moments of clarity he smiled a little and said a few words. Mostly, I held his hand, gave him a sip of water and told him I loved him. I prayed over him. I told God a rascal was coming and I hoped He was ready for him.

Last night I woke up, because who can sleep with raging rhinitis? I had a weird realization that it didn’t matter. The way my father was on this earth didn’t matter. Sure, it shaped his children’s lives and choices, but it didn’t even seem the point. The fear, the grief, the anger…it didn’t matter. Why? After carrying that burden , the quilt threaded with resentment my entire life,  it not mattering didn’t make sense. That was when the Lord told me it was because I had forgiven my father. I had forgiven him the way He would also forgive him. Now, both of us are free.