Five years ago this morning, at 8:00, my dad, of joy and love and warmth and wonder, lifted off from this world to join my mother, as it would have been her 90th birthday. It could not have been a more perfectly aligned act for him, to give himself to her as a birthday present! When I left his hospital bedside the night before, we discussed, though he could not speak, that this would be a good plan and so when I arrived ten minutes after 8:00, his hands still warm and his cheeks slightly rosy, I could only be happy for him through my tears.
As I held his hand, (remembering being twelve and walking, holding hands beside Kodai Lake and up through the jungly woods in South India, being grateful that the sacred bulls, whose patch of grass we were going through, would surely keep their distance as he was with me), I thanked him for choosing me to be at his side for these last 105 days in ICU. He needed to create the breaking down of his physical body so that he could join his love and partner of sixty-seven years, who had been stroked mightily for the last time nine months earlier. He, a spunky, healthy 91-year-old, had knelt by Mom’s bedside for their final farewell on this earth, and said “My darling Janie, I cannot live without you and I will be following you very soon”. His mission was set and he held true. Mom had always said that had he lived in the age of Camelot, he would surely have been a knight of the round table.
Together my parents cliff jumped for sixty-seven years! Dad was a lawyer and Mom a professor in Des Moines; then Dad was a minister and Mom was a writer in Chicago; then they became a humanitarian team in India and Sri Lanka, working with hospitals and universities and orphanages and famine and war; then they became film makers; then Dad became involved in local politics and Mom became an editor in suburbia New York; then they both became environmentalists in northern Michigan; then Dad created a retirement community and Mom designed the apartments; and then they left this planet and got to work in heaven. I have no doubt that I will have many tales to catch up on when I join them. The word is that they’re very busy.
Happy Birthday, Mom! Happy Mom’s Birthday, Dad!
I love you.
Beyond knowing.