"What are you looking at, Dad? What do you see?"
No answer. No movement.
"I wish I could put something on the ceiling for you to look at. What would be good to look at up there?"
Nothing.
"What are you thinking, Dad? Are you thinking about Mom? About heaven?"
At this point, I began to weep. We–my two sons, my husband, a daughter-in-law, my sister, and three grandchildren–had been in the room a couple of hours earlier. We had gotten some response from Dad, including his trying to mouth words that seemed to echo our "I love you"s. But now it was just me in the room. I knew I wanted to tell him ... what?
"I love you, Dad" as I stroked his cheek. I'm told that even those in comas can sometimes hear when all other input or expressions are void. So I tried again. "Dad, you know I love you. But Jesus loves you more. You know that, right?"
I couldn't stem the tears. Because, no, I wasn't at all sure that Dad knew that Jesus loved him more than a human being ever could. Even after decades of being a minister and chaplain by vocation, his brand of Christianity was to take care of the poor (a good thing to do), and to not judge lifestyles (you'd be hard pressed to find that theology in the Bible, but I digress.).
This was Sunday, April 21, 2018. And my last words were: "I'll be back to see you on Friday, Dad, okay?"
But it wasn't okay. Dad never made it to Friday.
Wednesday morning I awoke to a voicemail from Diane, my sister who has done the heavy lifting of caring for our parents in their final years. Hi, Rhonda. They just called me and said that Dad passed this morning. Just wanted to let you know I'm gonna be taking my three days off and ... um ... making arrangements. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Short. To the point.
So now all the unwinding of 63 years of living "with Dad" in some fashion had begun. How to process all of it. Not the estate, whatever that might be. Easy come, easy go. No, I mean the processing of what it meant to be Dale Sawyer's family. All the dichotomies. All the ironies. All the half-truths and omissions.
I've learned to look up. I will lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121, NIV)
And that alone is a miracle.
