Father's Day retrospective

It was Father's Day, this Sunday past. While Dad is not here with my family to celebrate the day, I know he is celebrating with us in spirit. I used to think that death is the end of the road, a parting of ways. No longer. My relationship with my father is alive and well. He lives on in my memory, and in my DNA. Who I am, how I live my life, decisions I make each day - he is present in my every thought and action.

I like to think that his human failings died along with his physical body and he left behind his spirit. His true self. What is uniquely him - his great charm and intelligence, his passion for justice and equality, his compassion for the weak and disdvantaged, his incredible drive and pursuit of excellence, his unending generosity, his uncompromising integrity, his deep love for family and friends, and his simple faith in God.

When I attended a talk last month by Fr. Laurence Freeman on how dying is an art, I found myself thinking of Dad when Fr. Laurence said that there is a grace given by those who are dying, and that the grace continues to impact those left behind, after the person has departed. It's so true! How my father submitted the lung cancer and its attendant attacks on his body to the Lord's will convicted me.

At the time, the concept of redemptive suffering was alien to me, but I saw my father transfigured by his suffering, through his faith in Jesus. As a caregiver, it was a time of horror and sadness, yet, one filled with many healing graces, and incredibly beautiful to experience.

My earthly father brought me back to Abba, my heavenly Father. It's a priceless legacy, beyond the riches of this world, that segues directly into the priceless legacy Jesus left us in Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which coincidentally falls on the same day.

As I reflect on Jesus' gift of Himself, His body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist, I thank Dad, and my heavenly Father, for giving me this faith, by virtue of my birth, and my father's act of dying well. And I am filled with gratitude. I thank you, Lord, for Dad, the consummate perfectionist, right to the very end.

TRIBUTE
Unresolved feelings
Of molten anger,
Shards of hurt,
Irrepressible regret,
Deep, bittersweet love.

Now you are gone, I can never express,
All that is tucked within my heart's recess.

But healing begins_
Amniotic warm,
Firefly bright,
An ineffable caress,
The spirit afresh.

You will always be the best part of me,
By His grace and will, thus it's meant to be.

by Jackie Pau, Oct 9, 2004