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And When I See Him Again

(Some thoughts from 2019)

I had never dedicated a grave before.

I have seen it done. I have read the procedure. I know how to do it, but I had never done it personally.

Until yesterday.

My dad passed away early Monday morning, and yesterday (Tuesday)—yes, just one day later—we buried him. Per my mother and my father’s wishes, there was no funeral. There will be a family gathering at the gravesite and then later at my home, but that will have to wait until my mother can attend. You see, she’s in the hospital, fighting for her life. So, all plans for a memorial gathering will have to wait.

No, they weren’t both in a tragic accident or anything like that. My mother has been sick for some time and has been in the hospital for nearly two weeks. She was in the hospital before my father fell and broke his hip early Saturday morning. We called 9-1-1. An ambulance came and took him to the hospital. A surgeon repaired his broken hip, but given my father’s severely advanced dementia and general health, we all knew this was a life-ending injury.

On Sunday night, he was approved for hospice care. A little over eight hours later, he had passed. This was almost exactly forty-eight hours after he arrived at the hospital.

We are grieving, of course, but his quick passing is also a tender mercy.

My parents have lived with us for the last few years, and their presence has been a great blessing. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to care for and provide a home for my parents in their later years.

Dementia is such a cruel disease. It slowly steals away your loved one. It slowly steals away the victim’s mind. I say, slowly, but sometimes this horrible disease progresses with stunning speed. At first, it was simply struggling to find the right words. Then he would start a project, like removing a shed door, and then forget how to put it back on. Then he would forget why he had come into a room. Then he would forget names. And faces. He would tell the same one or two stories over and over.

And then he forgot the stories.

His decline in the last two weeks has been stunning. He could no longer recognize me, didn’t know who I was. He didn’t recognize my mother anymore. Or my wife, Cindy. We were just strangers to him. He could rarely form complete sentences, and when he did, he would substitute words, seizing out of the recesses of his clouded mind whatever words he could. Often these words had nothing to do with what he was trying to say. He could no longer tell us what he wanted or needed. He could no longer understand what we were saying to him. Two weeks ago, you could have described his comprehension as that of a two-year-old. In the last few days, he had lost even that level of ability.

My father, a history professor and a very talented teacher, had lost the ability to speak.

In his last two days in mortality, there was nothing left of him. His soul was still there, but it could no longer peek out of those eyes—those tender, blue eyes that had once been so loving. In the end, he was trapped in a mind that could no longer allow him to be himself. In the end, there was only pain and fear.

My father was a great and loving man. He IS still a great and loving man. I have many, many fond memories of him. He was a strong man who worked hard all his life for his family.

We have an eight-thousand-gallon fishpond in our backyard. My dad dug the entire pond by himself using a shovel, a pickaxe, and a claw-hammer. He dug it the first time my parents came to “winter” with us. (They wintered with us three years before selling their home in the mountains of Nevada and moving in with us permanently.) I only expected him to start the project, perhaps to get only a quarter of the way done. He needed a project, needed something to keep him busy, something repetitive that didn’t require thinking. He dug the entire pond that winter. All by himself. In one shot. That was my dad.

That IS my dad.

On Sunday morning, I went to Choir. One might question how I could go to Choir with all this going on. The truth is, I was desperate for any sense of normalcy. So, I went. A few of my brethren in the Choir asked how I was doing. One of those men is my friend Brad. I told him. I unloaded. Then I sang the broadcast. And, yes, I was weeping through most of it. (No surprise, I know.) On Tuesday (last night, the day we buried my father), we had a recording session. After the recording session, Brad asked me how I was doing. I told him. Everything. He said, “You seem like you’re doing so much better tonight than you were Sunday.” And the truth is, he was right. I am doing better. So much better.

We are grieving, and we will miss him. But he is freed at last from the prison that his mind had become. He has his great mind back. He has been reunited with loved ones lost. He is himself again.

I miss him, but I am so profoundly happy for him.

I thank my Heavenly Father and His Son, my Savior, Jesus Christ, for Their great plan of happiness and salvation. I know I will see my dad again.

And when I see him again, he will know who I am.