Father's Day

One more day 

that settles sleepily 

into dark

just as all the days before it--

yes and no.

One more day 

of ordinary wonders,

 lungs that fill

and empty and fill again,

life that courses from 

chest to head to limbs

and back again.

But also a day that holds 

five years' time in its twenty-four hours, 

five Father's Days of being without.

A day that holds two small boys in hands 

that mark with incessant momentum

 seconds cascading into minutes

mounding into hours

piling into weeks 

until mountains of months

line the landscape over my shoulder.

A day that reminds me 

mortality is worn loosely, 

a garment that ill-fits us all

and will one day be shrugged off 

for something tailor-made.

____________

This Father's Day I remember my own dad: flawed, eccentric, loved. I think of the father of my two sons: quirky, tender, wholehearted. I think of all I have to be grateful for. 

This particular Father's Day also holds a great many thoughts of my mother. I'll be brief here and tell the short version; I'm still trying to sort out the realness of it all, and only some of the story is mine to share anyway. This past week Mom was diagnosed with cancer. On the 26th of this month she'll be having surgery to remove her right kidney, right ureter, and right ovary. We don't have a great many details about the severity of the disease yet; we just know it isn't stage 4. A lung scan and post-surgery biopsies will give more information about the status of metastasis. For those reading who pray, please pray for my mom. For grace to face the unknown, for courage in the face of fear, for hope of all the good that is yet to come--if not Here, then most certainly There.

I suppose Father's Day will never be just one more day. And that's okay. It's good to have days where we are reminded of all the hard and important things our flesh likes to forget. We are dust. He gives; He takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.