Yesterday I got all wigged out about a bunch of things that were overwhelming me. None of them are especially significant (the secret Santa gift for a coworker, the rest of the Christmas shopping, the dishes, a coworker asking me to drive them to the airport tomorrow after our Christmas lunch [as if I am the benevolent pregnant taxi driver who loves to drive all the way to Frisco for lunch and then drive back down to sort of near my home but in the wrong direction for a while instead of say a normal taxi driver who would charge this person (who, by the way, makes loads of cash) about forty dollars for this same trip], having said person in my car meant I needed a car wash and to clean the inside up a bit, inviting my neighbors over for dinner sometime before next Thursday to a soup themed supper (only now it has turned to 80 degrees outside and soup seems like a ridiculous choice), the fact that I am growing a human being inside of me who frequently makes my back, head and bowels ache). You know the things that seem very significant when you are so incredibly focused on yourself; the things that seem to get bigger and Bigger and BIGGER in your mind until there is no more space for anything else and you need to scream or throw things? That kind of overwhelmed.
Around 9 pm, while Jud was out trying to release the pressure valve in my head by making a trip out to try to wash my car (which, apparently, cannot be done in our neighborhood after dark as the car washes shut down for fear of the leprechauns, but seriously, World’s Greatest Husband for the late night run to make my car pretty (in spite of the fact that it could not be done) and then getting up early today to actually wash the car. Who does that? Yes, the Greatest Husband in the World), he called me and told me that my parents had just called him to say that a friend’s father had died.
He’d been slowly going for a while, but had a fall that hastened it. It’s bittersweet, as so many times death is. You’re glad for them, for the release of a body that had stopped cooperating and the acceptance of eternal life that has led him into an eternity of incredible joy. And still there are those here that will miss him. He was still living with his wife of so many years, independently in some ways and dependently in many others. I wondered about her night last night and if she’ll want to keep clinging to independence the way my grandmother does, alone in a house, without the ability to drive herself anywhere, but unwilling to admit that the days of coping on her own are gone. I wondered about his daughter, her husband and his grandchildren and all of the memories they have of days gone by. Would the older days when things were much easier be blotted out by these last ones? Would they remember his great mind and his warm smile? Most of them will. Some may be too young. Not that long ago Jud checked out his thesis from the Sem’s library. It was a good paper. Good rationality and good writing (I don’t want to use hyperbole here. It was still a theological paper and for all its accuracy and clarity it wouldn’t exactly make the bestseller list), it was a reminder of the mind that is now restored to him, all of the intelligence with the ability to express it. It’s over now, but it’s also just begun.
Perspective.
