In Honor of Roger

I was 21 when the news came that my 62-year-old godly father had slipped into the presence of the Lord. Sitting quietly in the old Morris chair, his hand symbolically resting on the book Lord, Change Me, a butterfly pictured on the cover, the Lord gently called him home. My mother believes he must have briefly cried out when he saw Jesus, for she could not explain why, instead of waiting for Daddy to bring her morning coffee in bed, an established ritual designed to help her start the day civilly, she suddenly awoke and was compelled to go into the living room. There Daddy sat, still warm, at perfect peace.

I was not acquainted much with death. My grandfathers had died before I started puberty, the one I barely knew, the other precious to me, but other than summers, not a daily part of my life. So when Daddy died, my world came crashing in. A month before college graduation, God carried me through the days and weeks to come, and I became my mother’s companion. We spent ten months together, grieving together, my mother going on with speaking engagements valiantly. I went through a period of intense anger which I took out on Mother. Funny—I never saw her angry, and the memory of her love for me in those horrible months still brings fresh tears. My mother and father shared a study, and because my mother now had to take over Daddy’s tasks, she began sitting at his desk. It was strange to see my mother in his place, her place empty, and part of my anger was resentment that God took my very capable father, forcing my mother and me to limp along, doing what he had always done for us, paying bills, shoveling snow, servicing the car. My mother couldn’t be Mother and Daddy both, and weirdly, I had to forgive her this failing. Bringing in wood for our stove one day, I found it was easier to be angry with her than with God. When I blasted her with resentment over this task, she gently said, “Yes, darling, I miss him too.” I finally made the connection that grief made me unreasonable and impossible. She knew, and had long forgiven me. That moment, standing on the stairs, arms still full of wood shavings, my anger dissolved, and I was deeply grateful for her godliness and love that gave her wisdom even as she grieved.

People talk about the “firsts” in grief: the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first wedding, the first… One day I walked into Mother and Daddy’s empty study. My mother was out, and there was Daddy’s empty desk, just as he had always left it, his favorite red Parker pen lying on top of a piece of paper as if he had just left the room. I stood dumbstruck. That pen was a first, bringing back waves of memory of my father, sitting at his desk. I suddenly saw him turn his head slowly and look at me full in the face. “Yes, Sweetheart?” he asked quietly. I could feel myself come and put my arms around him, interrupting his train of thought for a brief kiss and a hug. Years later, reading his books, I realized that this was God’s grace in his life. An introvert, deep in thoughts of the wonder of God and seeking to order those thoughts on paper, he did not cherish interruptions. I never knew this. But the pen—the pen, yes,…the pen. A first. He was not there. He did not look at me; he did not embrace me. He would not embrace me again. I would not hear his voice, directed at me. I would not see that look in his eyes. I was not to know that the gift of a dream could bring that back, as though it had actually happened, and that 30 years later, I would still see that look, and that a hug from our German friend Heinz or my brother Rick would “feel” like Daddy.

My grief was put on hold when, eleven months after Daddy’s death, I boarded a plane for Japan. Life went on for my family. They finished grieving; they had many more “firsts.” Two years later, my mother even had a boyfriend, a dear friend of Daddy’s whose wife Julia had also died, and who hoped for my blessing on their renewed friendship. I gave it, gladly, although coming home, I felt grief crash in on me again. I was in love myself, marrying Tim, and where was Daddy?

I moved with my husband to Grand Rapids, where I began studying for my Master’s degree. I had waived and tested out of all of the English requirements in college, so to become an English teacher, I had to make up all of the literature requirements. I had hated poetry as a teenager, but now I found comfort in the words penned by authors I was just discovering. Emily Dickinson reached out over a hundred years, and embraced me:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

My mother remarried and found comfort in being able to talk naturally about my father with her new husband, his friend. I visited her in her new home, and noticed the picture of Julia, framed on his dresser, the picture of the two of them framed in their living room. My mother found it too difficult initially to have a picture of my father on her dresser; she was glad, however, to have these memories of Julia around. I realized that love made room for another, but that loving another man or woman did not diminish the years of love my parents or Amos and Julia had shared. Mother and Amos’ love for one another and shared grief taught me by example. They took me out for lunch, and sitting there, Mother shared something about my father; I don’t remember what. I told her of my studies, and mentioned that I had come across a poem that had meant much to me Quietly, sitting across from Mother and Amos, I quoted Emily Dickinson:


The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth.

The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

A sharp intake of breath--my mother was caught off guard and I saw her tears. I remember Amos taking her hand, gently, looking first lovingly at mother and then at me, as I, too, wiped away unbidden and unexpected tears. He understood, and we all sat silently until the grief gradually subsided.

And so it is, the day after the memorial service of one of my dearest friends, that I lay in bed, unable to sleep, and praying. I thought again of how, one by one, Karen’s 60 odd family members must go back to their jobs, their lives. I thought back on these memories as I lay there alone, my own husband gone ahead of me to America. My memories are made real and poignant by my own grief for Roger. Death has kindly stopped for Roger. For a time, his family and dear friends all entered the carriage, but then, first the friends, then the family, and last of all, Karen got out, and the carriage went on, carrying Roger to Jesus, alone. They have celebrated his life, and now will come the firsts. I picture Karen, coming into the dining room and seeing Roger’s place on the couch—empty. I picture her finding a scrap of paper with some odd bit of a list, and holding it in her hand, hardly bearing to throw away this little bit of Roger. I picture her, sweeping up the pieces of her life with Roger, little by little, one by one, grieving. And over the miles, here in Berlin, I pray that God will comfort her and hold her dear. I pray for Roger’s children, who will have their own Parker pens, their own road of grief, their crises of faith when their mother cannot be mother and father both or when they miss him so deeply that their ache is gut-wrenching, and they have to take in that sharp breath of air, tears springing fresh in their eyes. I pray for Roger’s mother, as I picture her remembering how this son held her when her own husband died. And then I pray again for Karen, whose loss I can only begin to imagine, and I remember another poem that comforted me, and that I hope will comfort my dear friend and her family, as I grieve with them here in Berlin. John Donne writes, full of faith:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.