A Desolate Place: My season of grief just before springtime

On March 9, 2012 my father passed away while lying on a mobile hospital bed that sat in the basement of what used to be my parents’ house for his final few days. He wanted to die at his home, and within a year everything else was cleared out of it to make room for someone else to buy it and make it their home. In his last hours my Dad was mostly unresponsive. His voice became quite scarce. I think he heard our voices, though. The last time I saw him react to us was when we played some of his own singing through a boombox by his bed. Although he was a towering man with hands like baseball mitts, he could sing high, much higher than me. And he liked to sing, even if doing it in front of others always made him nervous.
These past two years I’ve learned how to live without a father, which I’m sure would’ve been much tougher as a kid. But it’s still no light journey for this grown-up. Sometimes I feel a desolate place inside of my heart because a part of me that used to exist was taken away. Even though I’ve had some 24 months to deal with it, I still feel lost.
Grief never fully goes away, nor should it. At least I don’t want grief over my father to dissipate. I’m no sadist, but were it not for grief I am not sure how much I would have thought about my Dad these past two years. I have had family members pass along text messages and voicemails from him. I deleted mine long ago without thinking about it much. I have pictures and videos of him that I do not look at often, but I still cherish having them.
What I do not have and wish I did is the ability to make new memories with my Dad. He would’ve loved visiting the Black Hills and Wyoming with us. Maybe he would have made me those fancy bookshelves he had been talking about for a good decade before he died. My kids might get to feel again what it is like to be hugged by a vicegrip. Okay, I want to feel that again too. The last time I really saw him in December before any of us knew he was dying he hugged me tighter and longer than I can ever recall. I wonder what he knew back then, but did not let on to the rest of us. I sometimes wonder if he would have even liked our cat, probably not.
Of course one of the best parts of making new memories is how unexpected and delightful they are, and death has a way of hindering one’s imagination. Sometimes I feel like my Dad is a dream from which I suddenly woke up from a couple years ago all disoriented and sleepy. That is part of the deep pain of grief, when embodied loved ones turn into memories. In these cases each memory seems much too distant and unsatisfying.
I suppose early March is a fitting time for me to be in grief while living on the northern plains of the Dakotas. The trees, the smart ones among us, are all still in their hibernation. Snow and ice prevail everywhere. Even the sun has stayed away several days. It seems the world is grieving with me right now.
But spring is on its way.
And with it a bright and beautiful reminder of Resurrection!