Dedicated to fathers everywhere. From... DAD, The Man Who Lied to Save the Planet
Chapter 12
The Three Most Powerful Words
"Express love while you can. It’s who you are in here," he said, pointing to my chest, “and in the end, that’s the only thing that matters.” Words are symbols of the action implied in them. Dad was more a man of action than words, yet his final words summed up the man.
He was unable to speak during his last week of life. He had elected to die with dignity in his small Idaho farm home, and my deaf mother could only helplessly watch as he gasped for air during those final days, unwilling to leave until he was invited by a Higher Power. My sister, who lived next door to them, finally called and told me to hurry from my home in Utah, four hours away. Hoping this was really not the end, I asked her to tell him to wait for me. Then I delayed my trip until the following morning. I was selfish. I knew he would wait, and I didn’t want him to go.
He suffered through that entire night and into the middle of the next day, a devoted father keeping his word. What I saw as I walked into the room shocked me. Even more skeletal than two weeks before, and fighting for air, he relaxed as I entered the room. He had made a final promise and had kept it. He spoke to me with his eyes as I sat beside him and read to him the eulogy I had prepared. I sought his approval. Unable to speak, he just weakly nodded his head.
Grant Pratt was a religious man and a spiritual man. You can be one or the other or both. He was both. His most fervent desires were that his children share his belief in God, and that we understand that our dad loved us.
By then, it was physically impossible for him to speak. His voice was gone, his lungs rattled, and his breathing was labored and shallow. I wanted him to witness to me one more time that there is a God. I needed to hear it from him. So I asked a question. I asked it for both him and myself, knowing he would somehow answer. “Dad?” I asked. He stirred in an attempt to keep his tired eyes open.
“Is Jesus Christ the Son of God?”
He groaned as if he would shout, and his back arched as if he would rise from his bed if he could. “Don’t you know that by now?” his face questioned, appealing to me to believe. Then he relaxed.
I was stunned at the great final physical exertion he made. I had my answer and was satisfied. I felt this was all I would get from Dad by way of communication. I had given him an opportunity to testify, and he had given one last gift to me—his final testimony. What I wouldn’t do for one more hour of talking with him, I said silently. It was time for him to leave. The talking was finished.
Mom said a tearful good-bye as she stroked his head and kissed him over and over, whispering into his ear, “You can go now, Grant. You can go, darling.”
My father groaned, struggling to form something with his lips, but unable to do so. He could barely raise an eyelid now but kept trying to speak, at least with his eyes. Even if he had been able to speak to his wife, her deafness would have prevented her from receiving the offering.
He closed his moist eyes and tears drained from their corners as his pulse steadily weakened. I sat at his side holding his left hand with both of mine.
So this is how Dad dies. Congratulations, Dad, I found myself thinking. He had “finished the race” and had “fought the good fight,” as Paul the ancient apostle wrote. I didn’t expect any more from Dad. But suddenly he turned his head to me, and he opened his eyes once again. Gazing intently into mine he said in the clearest and most deliberate earthly voice he had ever owned, these words—“I love you”—and then his eyes closed, and he was gone.
In the end it won’t matter what is left behind, if the gift of love isn’t. The three most powerful words any father or parent can speak to his child, and any child can speak to his parent were his final words, his parting gift to me. Of all the sacred words in human language, they are the three that say it all.
He didn’t leave a famous name. He left no money or wealth. But I was given something most kids on the block never got. He left me with his heart and soul, and that’s not bad. And after all, my dad was a hero. He had lied to save the planet, and that’s something no one can take away.
Express your love while time is on your side. In the end, it will be the only thing that matters.
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