If ever I could be thankful for information withheld from me, somehow I am. Allow me to explain.
I cried out that evening: Avi met, "My father has died!", and immediately began to make phone calls, first to those who needed to know and those who knew only me and not my father but who journey alongside me day-to-day here in Columbus. Uttering only a few words to each person on the other line, Avi met is all I could say, and most friends on the other end of the line were speechless. I can't blame them; life was so normal one hour prior to my phone call, for me and for them.
I think the normalcy of the hours prior to those hours of hell, the suddenness of it all, made for the shock to settle in immediately. And so it did, and I believed immediately that I could "get through this."
Several people did share that information with me in the first days, although not in its fullness.
Honestly, I didn't understand what they were talking about, these words about life getting harder when we'd return home to Columbus. I figured it had to be the truth, but couldn't grasp how "difficult" would take on a whole new meaning; how even a dramatic word like "devastating" can't depict how awful death really is.
I find myself there now, three months later, camped out and searching for words to share about the rawness of grief. I'm a writer, you see, and I should have eloquent words! But there are none, and Hallmark-ing death doesn't feel good anyway.
The walls are falling down now.
Yet somehow I'm safe in the arms of Jesus, even as I throw my arms in the air and honestly believe that God has abandoned me.
And so as I bolt past Father's Day cards this week and recycle the weekly flyers advertising "the best gifts for the best dad", I'm thankful that on March 14, I couldn't handle this pain, but was given grace for each moment...and kept walking.
This week, I will keep walking, simply believing that God loves me and cares. On March 13 those words would have seemed simple and trite; now I must cling to them.
