Passing

My daughter brought her mother home on Thanksgiving Day. They flew in on a gusty day to Portland, Oregon. She had flown cross-country to be with her father before his breath left him. They didn’t expect him to go but he did and now there was no turning back. She would take care of her mother now.

I had been informed by text on my phone, “On my way to the airport, my dad in the hospital”

That was more than a month ago. When Cathy’s husband called to inform me an hour after Pete died, I sent flowers to her dear mother and prayed for Pete on his journey, and then for all the rest behind him … my daughter and her kids. Losing Pete was our grandkids’ first shake with death. We were all affected.

It was my part to step back into the familiar quiet of the unseen and fade to nothing in the face of their grief. Turning my volume to zero made room for Cathy to be in her family. She loved her father. They had been close; the way my father and I are close, the way – when they’re lucky – daughters and fathers are close. Now he was gone. My daughter wasn’t in a place that could hold any more that this.

I put on the silver ring with the amber stone that she gave me years ago and said a prayer, picturing it from my heart to hers until it was filled with love in the noisy silence; they same way I used to do before we met again.

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To read my daughter’s counterblog, visit ReunionEyes.
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