It’s a tough thing to do – commemorate my father’s death in an authentic way. My father was an atheist by nature. His only possible belief in God had us all as a great social experiment being conducted by aliens. He thought the aliens probably disapproved of how the experiment was going. I also suspect that he felt the aliens shared his dark sense of humor, and were probably laughing their asses off at us.
That was my dad.
They say prayer is for the prayer.
Even so, the idea of praying for him (as the Jews do during Kaddish) makes me think of him laughing from beyond - he’d have heartily disapproved. Most of the poems for the dead are mushy, sentimental stuff – I don’t ever expect to see my father in the starlight or in the glint of sun off of snow. And that’s OK. It really is. It actually makes me smile when I think of it that way - my dad and I share that dark sense of humor. It’s enough for me that I remember this date every year. It’s enough that I check in with my journal and see how the healing of our broken relationship has progressed. And if I find myself a little weepy today, well, as another friend said of her father “he was my dad and I loved him.” I’ll share the poem that I read on the day we interred his ashes: |
You go home this night to your home of Winter,
To your home of Autumn, of Spring, of Summer;
You go home this night to your lasting home,
To your eternal bed, to your sound sleeping.
Sleep now, sleep, and so fade sorrow,
Sleep now, sleep, and so fade sorrow,
Sleep now, sleep, and so fade sorrow,
Sleep, my beloved, in the rock of the fold.
The sleep of seven lights upon you, my dear,
The sleep of seven joys upon you, my dear,
The sleep of seven slumbers upon you, my dear.
Sleep, oh sleep in the quiet of quietness,
Sleep, oh sleep in the way of guidance,
Sleep, oh sleep in the love of all loving.