In the dream, Dad is pulling up his shirt to show me a bandage that is only half covering a bloody hole where his rib is broken. The bone is visible poking out of his chest. I am horrified. My mind is racing around how did this happen. I wake up.
Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Twenty-four ribs organized in twelve pairs. God anesthetized Adam and took out a rib. When Adam woke up he looked at the woman and he saw the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh in perfect companion. Twenty-three and me.
Four days before their 58th wedding anniversary, my Dad died. Three weeks before he died, Dad tumbled on the driveway while they were moving into their new house, scraping up his knees and elbows.
There is a balm to heal. The wounds are clean and not infected. Edges crust and scab. Underneath new skin grows. In the hospital, I comment on how well the places had healed and it feels like the joke in the movie, Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s just a metaphor. And it goes over my head.
Dad had in his wallet a little piece of paper with 49 prostate-specific antigen or PSA scores. He had started in 1997 noting the date and the PSA number. Recording the information as he received it for almost 20 years. There had been two biopsies.
My imagination reels through the what ifs. I think of how it is my fault for not asking the right questions and being too easily comforted. Dad said it was a statistical anomaly.
The family gathered and we circled the wagons. We said goodbye. We waited by his side. At the end of the last day, I was tired and resting in a chair. On the other side of the bed, my Mom and brother spoke quietly. I could not keep my eyes open but I had decided to spend the night.
My brother was telling my Mom a story of how he had gone to pick up his daughter at her college and going to her class had caught a glimpse of her finishing a tough engineering exam. He had been moved seeing her there. This is the granddaughter that my Dad had often taken to McDonalds in his new truck when she was a preschooler. My brother spoke lovingly of his daughter and my sweet niece. The room filled with Love itself. And in that perfect moment of rest and grace, my Dad stopped breathing.
So, it was, when I was not looking or paying attention, that my Dad slipped the surly bonds. No more crying. No more pain. My father gently passed away leaving us to mourn and grieve such a loss. May it be well with our souls and I believe there is a balm in Gilead.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelations 21:4 King James Bible