Happy Thanksgiving?

One year ago, on Thanksgiving Day in fact, my father had carotid surgery which led to a stroke. For him it was the last straw. He spent the next year in and out of the hospital, rehabilitation, and finally home with hospice care, where he slowly succumbed to the congestive heart failure that took his life.

This past Monday was my father’s birthday. He would have been 89. Because his birthday normally falls so close to Thanksgiving, our family has always celebrated the two together. The crowning event of the feast is when Dad has his birthday mincemeat pie. I’ve written about this before.

This Thanksgiving we won’t have our father with us at the table, not in person anyway, and I’ve been struggling not to feel sad about it. After all, this is a day specially set aside for counting our blessings.

Well, there is one thing that I’m especially thankful for this year…

…and it’s what my father taught me before he left this life. Of all the lessons I took from him while he was alive, the most important one was how to die.

As I watched him these past eleven months trudging painfully on his solitary way to his personal Golgotha—we all travel it alone, save for one Companion who never leaves our side—I saw a man who was alternately afraid, ready to battle, and finally, peacefully, even joyfully resigned to what was coming.

When the final decline came, strangely on a Friday, he began a fast of all food and water. Like Christ in the desert, he pushed his bodily appetites aside so as to give full reign to his spiritual powers, allowing himself to commune more fully with his Savoir.

Of course, he didn’t do this consciously. One of the mercies God grants us as we begin to die, is that the body naturally becomes anorexic. The desire for food goes away, allowing our spirits to rise.

As we kept the death-watch over the next few days, Dad was mostly unconscious. The day before he died, while I was sitting with him, I watched the expressions on his face. I could sense he was working something out. He was on the cross with Jesus. Just after midnight, when the end came, it was mercifully quick and peaceful. The expression on his face was calm. He was home.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read this verse without really thinking what it means. Now it’s seared into my heart:

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

~ Phil 3:10-11 NIV

Thank you Dad…and Happy Birthday!