I Just Had to Get Out...

My niece Nicole is spending some time in Panama with my ailing Father.  For all purposes, he is Nicole’s Dad too, so seeing him in such debilitated condition is taking a toll in her soul.  As with all who knew my Father for longer than the past year, Nicole is facing the once unthinkable reality of seeing my Dad not in full control of himself and unable to function at full capacity.  

All his life he has been a strong tower, a fortress of strength.  He has provided a sense of safety and stability to those who knew him, specially his girls, starting with my late Mom, my sister, myself and of course, Nicole.  As a little girl I remember never being afraid of something harming me, because my Dad was always around.  I vividly remember the first time that I ever felt an earthquake.  I was in elementary school.  My Mom and Dad were visiting my Grandma, as they always did every evening until the day she passed away.  Then, something crazy happened!  The earth started to shake!  At first, I just didn’t know what was going on.  I was home with Rosa and I began to cry for my Dad uncontrollably.  After the quake stopped, Rosa quickly called my Grandma’s house and begged my parents to come home for she didn’t know how to comfort me.  There were several aftershocks, but my Dad had already made it home by then.  As soon as he entered the house, he held me in his strong arms and paced with me back and forth, quietly and gently brushing his big hands on my head again and again.  We had to go outside as a safety measure, but he never let go of me.  Needless to say, I immediately calmed down feeling completely safe in his arms.

Now that the world is up-side-down and it is up to his girls to make sure he is safe and taken care of, we don’t know how to deal with it.  “He wanted to continue chatting, but I just needed to get out,” Nicole told me on the phone as she was recounting a long conversation she had with him in his bedroom, while he laid frail in his bed.  “He wanted to talk, and even though he took long pauses to formulate his thoughts before the words slowly came out of his mouth, he was very lucid at the moment,” Nicole continued.  “But after a while, I just needed to get out of the room…”

There was deep sadness and frustrations in her voice as she confessed the reality of her feelings at the moment, but I knew exactly what she was going through.  The same thing happened to me a month ago when I was there, in that same room, listening to the paused words slowly dripping out of my Father’s once eloquent mouth.  I remember not wanting to be there.  I remember not wanting to see him that way.  I remember burying my head in a book so I wouldn’t have to witness his daily decay.  I too just wanted to get out.  

The tower of strength is crumbling.  There isn’t much left of the fortress that he once was.  But I do know that my real Tower of Strength is keeping His merciful eye on my earthly Father during his last days in this valley of tears.  I know the One and only Fortress will be there to receive him and give him a place to rest under His shadow.  And I know that when the time comes, my strength will be and my help will come, as always, from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. (Psalm 121)

Today, only the love remains.  However, the same way I remember wanting to burst out of his room not to see my Father in his current condition, I remember laying my head on his chest as he gently brushed it with his shaky hand again and again.  The memory of those moments when he pulled me toward himself and made me lean on him so he could embrace me and run his bony fingers through my hair as if to comfort me, as if guessing the agony in my heart, would live with me forever.  I would cherish the memories of the moments when, though wanting to run as far away as I could, I stayed in his room to enjoy his embrace even if for only one last time.  

The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.  Proverbs 18:10