Job 17:7 Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all
my members are as a shadow.
A Reason
As you can imagine in the depth of my grief, I search
endlessly for reasons why things are the way they are. My dad was in the
hospital for three weeks when he finally succumbed to COPD in the same hospital
room that my grandmother had passed.
I’ve gone over the WHY’S:
Why did he die?
Why was I not there?
Why am I here (in Nebraska)?
Why didn’t I make it to the funeral?
Why didn’t my poem reach his ears?
Why, why, why?
Then I went over the reasons behind all the WHY’S. I wasn’t
torturing myself I was more like self-analyzing all the reasons there are for
the way things happened the way they did.
Let’s go in order:
Why did he die?
Well, he didn’t just die. For twenty years since his
first heart surgery my father had sought out God. He had become closer to God
in his final years, not saying he attended church or anything but in his own
way he embraced his religion, what it meant to him and where he’d go in the
final chapter of his existence, heaven.
My father suffered for many years with heart problems and
the last few years it had gotten worse. He was a survivor of throat cancer and
watched his sister succumb just this year to the deadly colon cancer (among
other cancers she was hit with), and he’d watch from afar his brother-in-law
fight with lung cancer.
Over this past year my dad would need more and more oxygen.
It got to the point he barely made it to the car with the heavy tanks he had to
carry with him. He struggled to breathe on a daily basis. Something we too
often take for granted, he was relinquished to begging for more.
Why did he die? Because his heart and lungs couldn’t take it
anymore. There was not enough oxygen on this planet to fill his lungs so he had
to go to the place where he could breathe easy without any struggles, heaven.
Why was I not there?
It just wasn’t meant to be. I carry a smidgen of guilt but
am relieved when I go over the reality of not being there. Reality,
something no one wants to hear, they just want to play the
point-the-finger-at-the-lousy-daughter game. Yeah, my brothers are back there
in Baltimore pointing fingers and wondering what kind of daughter doesn’t make
it to her own fathers funeral. I’ll tell you what kind, the kind that lives in
the REAL world!
Had I had $3,000 dollars hanging out of my pocket I surely
would’ve hightailed it back to Baltimore disability and all. The reality of the
matter is, I don’t have $3.00 hanging out of my pocket. I have a roof over my
head, I have food on my plate, the house is heated and I have a wonderful
husband! Can anyone say they really want more? Then you my friend are a
prisoner of a false reality. I don’t live for WANT, I live for NEED and am
provided for my needs daily! I WANTED to
be back home but apparently I wasn’t NEEDED.
Let me let you in on another reality. I have two brothers
that could’ve very well paid my way back there with no skin off their nose! Did
I WANT them to? No! They have their cable bills, their new cars and trucks to
pay for, their season tickets to football/baseball games, goodness, where would
they EVER find spare cash to help their sister?
My one brother from Tennessee drove eight hours back home
but allowed my mother to pay for his hotel for three nights? I forgive him for
that since he is the one who paid my mother’s $150 a month garage fees to park
their car for the past five or six years. My other brother is a drugee, and my
sister has a rental place with her three kids living there.
Why was I not there?
For the plain and simple reason, MONEY.
Sad but true. The reality of life is, that EVERYTHING boils down to money,
remember that.
Why am I here in Nebraska?
Because a man saw a wounded soul
1400 miles away from him and just like a puppy in the middle of the road, he
saw to it to rescue me from death.
Why didn’t I make it to the funeral?
For the reasons above
of why I wasn’t there in Baltimore. If you read into the picture I painted of
my family, they are who they are and I am no longer a part of them; that
bothers them to no measure. I’m happy with nothing (but everything) and they
are miserable with everything and more.
They didn’t want me back there because they love me, they
wanted me back there to relieve their conscience and so they’d have something
and someone to talk about.
Why didn’t my poem reach his ears?
My sister had my last words to my dad on her phone and she
was ‘going’ to read it to him but didn’t find the time. Did she read it at his
funeral? No. Why? Because she was taking care of other matters that were more
important than my last wish to my father.
It wasn’t meant to be. My poem finally made it to my mother
via snail-mail and her words were somewhat hurtful, “I’m glad your father
didn’t hear this before he died, because it was SAD!”
I’ll tuck that one under my belt.
So again I’ll ask, why am I here in Nebraska?
Because the Lord saw me worthy to be loved! To know what
love IS! To feel HIM wrapped around my heart and to bless ME!
While my mother and father were the only two that truly
loved me (back home), my siblings claimed to love me but I say to you, to KNOW
love is to SHOW love, and in thirteen years I have not been shown love by any
of my siblings.
Granted, if they read this, they’d spew that I don’t know
what I’m talking about, and * I* never SHOWED THEM love. It’s a tit-for-tat
game with them, a game I quit many years ago, out of LOVE for my self and my
sanity.
Also granted, that if they knew I was writer, they’d read my
words. They love me so well. (Yes I gave them a link to my writing but they
lost it somewhere over the years.) Remember, if I’m not making MONEY, then I’m
not a writer.
All my WHY’S and REASONS have been answered and now I search
for PEACE in the midst of my grief. I go with faith in my hand and God in my
heart and I move on to the next phase of my life. I feel the wind beneath my
wings…
God bless you all!
Pss. 38: 8 I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared
by reason of the disquietness of my heart.
