Last Words

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.