Half A Life Ago

21 years ago today my Dad, Harvey Neal Weeda, passed away.

Remembering backwards gets more difficult each passing year.  Never-the-less, there are moments I recall from those last living days…

Dad loved the mountains.  He grew up near the base of Sumas Mountain, an earth bump that sleeps in the morning shadow of Mt. Baker in northern Washington State.  He spent a whole day hiking around that hilly terrain with a walking stick I had fashioned from a madrona tree branch I’d thieved away from Washington Park.

 

I’d had spaghetti at a friend’s house and brought the recipe home to try out.  I made big simmering pot and shared some with my Dad.  He ate a full couple servings and remarked that it was so good he felt he could live forever if he kept eating. 

Often enough Dad would sit motionless for long hours at the far end of the sofa near the window.  His Bible was always open and his eye were always closed, both drenched in peering sunlight. 

I remember, for a season, it felt to me like he had given up on living; on fighting back the cancerous bastard that came at him with relentless blows to the gut.  I couldn’t tell you what changed my mind about that, but finally I realized he was not giving up on living.  Rather he was kneeling in submission to real life.

I suppose we have only so much fight in us.  I suppose, whether by painful press or willful volition, we all do finally realized this bright breath of life we enjoy on earth is merely a shadow of a full winded life more abundant and eternal than ever before noticed.  And I suppose there is where my Dad came upon.

               Maybe while trouncing about the forested hills of his own mountain?

                              Maybe while feasting on another plate of spaghetti?

                                             Maybe while resting peacefully on the sun bleached end of the sofa?

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21 years ago today my Dad died.

I’m 42 years old as of a month and a half back. 

Here, this day, marks half my life lived without a Daddy to…

                   …see me called into ministry.

                   …meet the woman I’ll live the rest of this life with.

                   …watch me graduate with my Bachelor degree, and then further, with my Master of Divinity.

                   …hold my first, second, and third born children.

                   …celebrate my first real job.

                   …counsel me through questions and concerns of being a husband and dad.

                   …listen to me preach the Word of God.

                   …hear me say “I love you” over and over to make up for all the times in the first 21 years I didn’t.

I’m not going to lie to you.  I’m really sad about it, still.

You know the way we married folks fall more and more in love with our spouse daily to where we come upon each anniversary and marvel at the fact we never thought we could love them more than we did on our wedding day?  It seems it goes the other way too, emotionally that is. 

I miss my Dad more today than I ever thought I would 21 years ago.  Right now I’m kind of a mess, and there is little consolation in the coming of tomorrow’s dawn, because I suppose I’ll miss him even more then. 

But there is consolation.  For me I have consolation in at least two realities:

My own eternal hope in Jesus; to one day be in the presence of Him whom also my Dad is in the presence of even now.

And

My own kids’ faces; none of whom ever met my Dad, but all of whom bear the markings of my Dad in some unique manner.