Two things jumped out at me this week. My deceased father’s birthday is approaching, and the number of Covid deaths in the US is now estimated at 1 million. Dad died when we hit the 200,000 mark. I still haven’t completely processed his passing. I know my father loved me, but we weren’t especially close. If I were to map our relationship as a Venn diagram you would see a decreasing overlap overtime. And yet, he left a huge crater in my life when he passed on.
How do I cope?
After the tsunami hit Japan a few years ago, I remember seeing a news story about a man who had a telephone booth in his front garden. People would go into the phone booth and make a call to the afterlife. I remember at the time thinking how comforting that would be. Sitting in a semiprivate space talking missed loved one even though there would never be a reply.
Another thing that I found helpful in dealing with my grief has been listening to music. This week in my Spotify account there was a recommendation for an artist named Dan Reeder. His song Maybe tapped into something primal in my brain. Because while we all hope that there’s something beyond our current existence, nobody knows for sure. that’s not something you normally would hear in church. A lot of what passes for church revolves around people trying to convince themselves with absolute certitude that the world is as they hope. But that’s not faith. To have faith you must be unsure. You must poke at the abyss and admit that there may be nothing under the surface. Faith is looking at the bleak picture and choosing to accept a narrative that paints a better picture. At least that’s what it is for me. That’s why when I heard Dan Reader song. It struck a chord, pun intended.
And so, the process continues. I send up a silent prayer and hope that the message is received.
