A Blessing for All the Firsts Without a Loved One
“Oh God, the calendar tells me a big day is coming
and this is the first one in this new reality.
I don’t know how to get through it.
Show me what to do with
the memories, the traditions,
the pain, and the excruciating beauty
of all that was.
Blessed are we who come to you, oh God,
in the midst of grief and loss, fear and longing, irritability and anger,
gratitude and sweet remembrance,
and so much exhaustion.
Blessed are we who say,
God, I don’t know where home is
or who I am now.
Couldn’t I just rest for a while?
I am too tired to feel everything there is to feel. Too exhausted to face the truth.
Grant me solitude enough for solace,
and company enough for comfort,
people to be with who know how to slip quietly
under the burden of this grief
and shoulder it with me without much to say.
Blessed are we who ask you for permission to do things the same way
or completely differently,
to wade through raw emotions
or ride on the surface of it all.
Give us wisdom and guidance
that transcends the strangeness,
making whatever little plans are possible.
Blessed are we who ask for a way forward
during this time
to celebrate some small ritual of remembrance that becomes a safe place
to store the love and the grief,
the anger and the ache of the knowledge
that there is no one who can take their place. Not one.
Blessed are we who ask you, God,
to take hold of the fear,
and us with it,
and lead us through.”
~ Kate Bowler
This guy is the best dad ever. Present tense intentional. I know most women think their dads are the best, and for them, that might be true, but for me, this guy right here is the very best the Universe had for me. Tough yet gentle, commanding yet compassionate, mysterious yet simple. He was all that and everything in between. He will never get the recognition he deserves for everything he did for his family, his country, and me. His sacrifices are incalculable. However, his reward is in the great beyond, and while he reaps that reward now, I continue to marvel at how lucky I was to be his daughter. This being the first Father’s Day without him has been much less fun and adventurous, but looking back through the old photos reminds me that he is simply in the other room. That’s how it feels, and on the grand timescale, that’s pretty accurate. He’s just in the other room. Thanks to my friend Julene Jones for the beautiful poem A Blessing for All the Firsts Without a Loved One. There are so many of my friends who, like me, are marking Father’s Day without our fathers for the first time; Larry Scott Evans, II, Ronnie Gevedon, Renee Watkins, Jessica Stigall, Michelle Shute, Connor Barnes, Taylor Barnes-Gilbert, David Farris, Abigail Bartlett. There are probably others I’ve forgotten in the last year, but we have clearly reached the age when our elders are moving on, leaving us to lick our wounds and get through it together. And we will get through it. Dad would expect no less of me, and I won’t let him down.
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