precious

I have a heavy heart today. For once. It has nothing what so ever to do with Madison or motherhood. hhmm...
A very close friend of the family has been in Hospice for a while now. I wont say what he was dying from because I am confident I will get it wrong.
I dragged my feet about visiting. I did not want to go. With as many children as I have it is not difficult to have good reasons not to go. BUT Friday I finally took a deep breath and made the trip.
Stepping into Mort's room instantly took me back 15 years 9 months and 17 days to the day my Daddy died. (I was a daddy's girl and always called him by that name.) The sights...sounds...smells...of that room transported me back in time to my daddy's bedside.
I quickly walked through to the sitting area away from the bed and focused on visiting with the family. Then I saw a most precious site. I could not force my eyes to focus on anything else.
Susan, one of his daughters came quietly into the room. Approached the side of his bed. Leaned over gently kissing his forehead. Whispering love over his ear. She took a warm wet cloth and and slowly stroked his face. All the while quietly whispering love over his ear. None of us could hear her words....at least not with our ears. But I could hear them echoing through the hallway of my heart. They were the same words of love I whispered over my Daddy's ear nearly 16 years ago. I watched as she so lovingly attended to her father. Tears gently rolling across her cheeks spilling onto the bed sheet. I haven't been able to get the sight out of my heart. The love that flowed from her heart through her hands and mouth into his heart moved me.
It was in those tender moments that I realized something. The gifts she was pouring over her father yesterday are the very gifts I poured over mine. There has never been anything quite like that feeling duplicated in my life since. Unless you have lived moments like this you would never know. It is difficult to see the tender moments while you are living in the midst of the immense grief. Even years later it is difficult to see those special moments.
But yesterday, even in the midst of their grief I was the one who was given a gift. A sweet and precious gift. I was able to see myself in someone else. In a way that I have never seen myself before. I recognized every touch, every whisper, every tear, and every ounce of love that poured out of her as my own. And for the first time since June 10, 1993 I remember the tender moments of the last days of my Daddy's life.
It is so crazy. I remember begging God to stop his suffering daily. But then when the end arrived. I climbed onto his bed, cradled him in my arms and BEGGED God to change his mind. I screamed, I cried. I was not ready to let go. We needed more time. I could not see how I could possibly complete the journey of my life without my Daddy. The depths of grief that gripped my heart in those desperate minutes before I realized it was over and there was nothing I could do but let him go, was so deep and so fierce. I have never felt so completely alone and lost as I did while holding him.
I am grateful that I found the courage yesterday to visit Mort and his family. I found a precious treasure in the midst of their loss.
Mort passed away this evening. I pray it does not take his family nearly 16 years to find the treasures of his life and death. Those tender moments, the whispers of love. I pray they remember those moments even tonight.