Trustworthy and True

It is October, the best month of the year, in my mind. I love love love the autumn season with its change in temperatures and saying good-bye to summer. The transition outdoors is so magnificent with the leaves changing; we drive down the road and see farmers harvesting their crops, it gets dark earlier, and the wind is slightly cool. Ah, it is wonderful!

Russ and I got married during the month of October, so we celebrated that recently. This year, since we had just come back from China, we were very low-key with anniversary celebrating. October is also another anniversary of when my dad died. It seems hard to believe, but it has already been two years since he passed away.

My dad had leukemia. He lived with it for a year, going through chemotherapy and other treatments for his symptoms while we watched him progressively worsen in health. Actually, though, when he went into the hospital for the last time, I was not thinking that he would not come home. He had to have his gall bladder taken out, which is a pretty common surgery in this day and age. He was scheduled for a laparoscopic procedure, so I wasn’t too worried.

But then he developed complications even before going back to surgery. He had a serious infection that spread throughout his body and that eventually caused his organs to fail. He did survive the surgery, but he went to the ICU and passed away a few hours later. I struggled with this a lot; not just because it was my dad lying there, but because I could watch all of the procedures and things going on in the ICU and I knew what was happening and why because I had been in those situations as a nurse before. I struggled with seeing him, even though he was a patient, he was too near and dear to me to be someone who was simply being treated and managed.

When he died, he did not slip quietly away after taking a final breath. He went into cardiac arrest and the staff started CPR. I have seen that before; I have been involved in giving CPR numerous times as a nurse. Whether the patient lived or died, there was always one element that was the same: it was always someone else, someone who was a stranger or who was a patient that I only knew for a short time. It was never someone close to me, someone who had known me since before I was born. It was never my dad.

Although the rest of my family was there that night, I was the only one who watched them try to resuscitate my dad, which is probably good because it is not a good thing to see. I’ll never forget it. And I struggled so much that night because I was torn between viewing what was happening as a nurse but also as a daughter. And then he was gone.

I miss my dad. I think about him every day. I wish he could see the house that we built and I wonder what he would think of it. I wish he could see how Caleb and Asher and Ellie are doing and how big they are getting. One of the last things Dad told me before his surgery was, “tell Caleb not to worry.” He knew Caleb was a worrier and he was right. I wish he could see Caleb now.

One thing that sort of blows my mind, too, is that my dad and JQ both were alive for years on this earth, but each never knew about the other. My dad didn’t know that he had another grandchild in China and JQ didn’t know there was a grandfather here for him. I don’t know why the timing turned out that they never met each other or why we adopted Jia Qing after my dad died. I wish they could have met.

There are a lot of things I wish for and at the risk of sounding depressing, I will say that I can’t change much of any of them. That is how it is. So, instead, I will just speak kindly about my dad and remember him well. I will sit through the quiet ache that sometimes tears at my heart when I remember him or see his picture. I can still hear what his voice sounds like. I won’t forget him. Like the change in seasons that comes with October, there is always something new here, too. The best thing is to go on and live life well with what is here now. I lost my dad and I gained a son.

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”  Revelation 21:5