Sixty years ago today, Dad suddenly died.
Sixty years dims and erases many a memory, as if a shade
were drawn over it.
But not this one.
What happened that day, Nov. 10, 1955, will always be an indelible
part of my being.
That morning Dad had done the early morning chores as usual.
The dawn had come promising a crisp but beautiful November
day.
According to Greta who had helped with the milking, Heit had
been in a good mood, maybe more talkative than usual.
Could it be that, after seven years of very hard immigrant
labor, he especially enjoyed the sweet taste that morning of finally being on
his own place and improving the quality of his own livestock?
The pain must’ve hit him suddenly when he was in the
silo. And it was excruciating. Somehow
he managed to climb down, to leave the barn, to make it to the house.
Did he sense even then that it would be the last time?
I was still recovering from TB and exempt from farm work.
The ominous sounds downstairs woke me up that morning –
agitated voices, rushing footsteps from one room to another, and the
frightening moans of someone in great pain.
When I came down, my mom and sister’s faces told me that
something very serious was going on.
Heit was in the bedroom now, his moaning growing in
intensity. Mem hurried back to tend to
her husband. I stayed in the kitchen,
afraid to go to the bedroom, afraid of facing a father in agony.
But when Mem came back to tell me that Heit wanted me to
come to him, I had no choice.
Still I hesitated.
Feelings between fathers and sons are often complex,
confused, even strained, especially in those uneasy years when sons grow
uncertainly toward adulthood and express their insecurity through a sharp-edged
critical faculty.
I had hardly been a rebel, but maybe a self-righteous
idealist is worse.
We had sometimes been hard on each other, more often through
silence than through words.
So I hesitated. I was
not prepared.
When I entered the bedroom, my insides told me that I was about
to step into a new dimension of being.
I saw Heit, stretched out on the bed, his face contorted
with the terrible pain that was wracking his body.
His eyes turned to me.
Those light-blue eyes spoke of intense pain, but it wasn’t the pain that
struck me. It was a tenderness, a
gentleness I had never seen before that reached my soul.
He beckoned for me to come closer.
He took my hand; he stroked it gently.
This was not the Heit I thought I had known, but my heart
told me now that I had always wanted, I had always needed his tenderness, his
gentleness, his love.
Then he pulled me closer to him.
In between spasms of pain he tried to say something: “You
are such a dear boy.”
He pulled me closer still, put his arms around my neck, and
tried to speak again: “I’ve sometimes done you wrong, will you forgive me?”
Too choked to speak, I could only nod.
Then he kissed me.
When I stumbled out of that room, I knew that I had been on sacred
ground.
My father’s faith became real to me that day.
Heit died later that night, hours after surgery for a bowel
obstruction.
The next day I hid in the barn, among the bales of hay, and
wept.
I wept with grief for the years in the past when Heit and I
could have been tender and gentle with each other, and weren’t.
I wept with grief for the years to come when our love for
each other would not be a part of life.
But I wept too with gratitude for the heavenly gift of grace
that had hallowed those last minutes with my dad.
Grace that had softened a sometimes stern, proud spirit into
a loving father who asked his son’s forgiveness.
That was the Father’s gift when Heit died sixty years ago.
And that gift became my lifelong blessing.
For on that day my Dad’s faith became real to me.
