c. Kerri Powers
I watched my father fly into a rhododendron this afternoon.
Bear with me.
Six years after my father’s death, I see cardinals everywhere. He passed during the month of March, a touchy time—raw and moody just before the daffodils bloom gold. When we buried his ashes in June, and the trumpet blew Taps into the newness of loss and grief, I swore I would wait and watch for every sign of his presence from beyond. It was a promise I made to myself with conviction because after taking my dad, God should deliver, right?
There have been pennies. They’ve shown up randomly in the most unexpected places, all while I’ve been nostalgic for my father. The lights in my VW Beetle have flickered on and off while I’ve been on the phone with my mother, discussing her last will. (She likes to practice the death drill whenever possible, and I know my father would tell her to knock it off.) I’ve had a few visitation dreams. Many would file these events under bereavement hallucinations.
His sixth memorial anniversary was two days ago, and I miss him more now than I did when his soul departed. Maybe I held fast to his strength, believing his want and willfulness would render him alive and well– out of the blue heavens and back to earth.
I’ve experienced guilt and shame for being selfish, for wanting him to return after seventy-nine years in this life, for believing in the magic of his return, and for being caught up in his death instead of living my life with joy and love the way he’d wanted me to. I’ve struggled with extreme sadness, loss, anger, and resentment — depressive episodes that have folded me into a fetal position and showerless for days, wondering who and what I am.
This entanglement of emotions has led to a slow, negotiated acceptance. The deal is, I realize my dad is gone, but he gets to come back on occasion, transformed, primarily as a cardinal, to temper the edges of my sometimes unbearable grief. I would like to believe the deceased return, negotiations or not. It’s just too damned hard, the abrupt no contact and permanent removal. We rarely get enough notice before the people we love are called away.
Today, I walked along the shore at a retreat center through a banshee wind. The gusts tried to blow me toward the sea as it moaned and rolled, crashing wave to spume. Tired from contemplation and the resistance of trying to keep my sneakers from sinking in the wet sand, I sat and sobbed on a pile of driftwood, crying for my father, marriage, career, and aging mother—a momentary surrender to change. I figured it was time to start walking again when I almost lost my favorite yellow scarf to the wind.
Turning the corner to the main house, I admired the weeping beech, its thick muscular branches outstretched for a sacred, unspoken embrace of compassion. That’s when I saw my father. He was in a hurry, flying into the rhododendron like the flash of an exit sign.
Gone from sight but nested in the heart for keeps.
Life's Side Effects 