I keep thinking about Pedro’s little boy. He must be around seven-years old by now. Father’s Day is next Sunday, and as quiet as that day is at my house, I wonder what it’s like for a boy who never knew his dad.
It has become my non-holiday, Father’s Day. A day to visit Grandma, hit a bike trail and work in the yard…
The stillness doesn’t chafe so much anymore. I minded my dad dying on Election Day in 2000 a lot more than I’m bothered by a quiet Sunday in June. But it’s usually a day of long silences… I don’t have a dad here anymore, and I’m not married to one. It’s a “family day” absent the family since my kids appropriately, spend that special day with their dad.
Pedro lay in an ICU bed two doors down from my grandpa in 2002. Brain cancer. Just like grandpa. Dad had already died as had Mom, less than five months apart and within the previous year. My sisters and I were now focused on walking our grandparents down a grim and unexpected path.
Hospital waiting rooms are a unique social environment. Faces are bare. No one hides. There is a numb respect for those who huddle in the other seats. You learn their details without meaning to. And you hope for them. Pray for them. When the tears come, they are often shared because while you don’t know the one they have lost, you know the shocking explosion of loss itself. Their pain is achingly real because it bumps against your own.
Pedro’s son was a welcome diversion as we fidgeted through another weekend at Florida Hospital. He was just learning to crawl and probably driving his grief-stricken mother to distraction. I don’t remember that now. But I remember Pedro’s mom, the one losing her 26-year old son to a nasty, callous disease. I snapped photos of her beaming grandson as he inched across worn carpeting, so obviously pleased at his expanding world and blessedly unaware of his pending loss. The grandma and I exchanged letters for a short time. She thanked me profusely for the photos I mailed allowing bed-bound Pedro to see his son’s latest milestone. My grandpa had at least witnessed the birth of great-grandchildren before his death that spring. Pedro would not see his own son crawl but in those hospital photos. Capturing those minutes seemed a small but necessary thing.
I wonder about many of the people who have brushed against my life, the brief encounters that fully fill a moment and linger as a lesson learned. So many blessings grew from my dad’s unconditional love. When I think of Pedro’s boy, growing up now without Pedro, I remember words that laid faint hope beneath my great grief at Dad’s passing, “God did not allow your dad to leave you without first preparing the path you will walk without him.”
And every Father’s Day I hope for Pedro’s little son, that he’s walking with strength and finding many unexpected joys along the way…