There are moments that take on an appreciable clarity as time passes. In the sharper lens of retrospection, we often see things in greater realization, gain greater awareness of their importance and how much weight they carry. Such was not the case of my last visit with my father before he passed away.

When I stood beside his hospital bed in the pre-dawn hours of that March morning, I fully expected that to be my last time with him. He was ninety-five and recovering from pneumonia but still very weak. In the dim light of the intensive care unit, I held his hand a while, then stroked the thin white hair above his forehead.

“You know, Dad, I admire you.”

He looked at me blankly, deafness muffling the sounds of my words, yet still catching some of what I was saying. Aware of other patients in the ward, I didn’t want to yell things meant only for his hearing. I leaned closer to him and said firmly, “I think you’ve done pretty well for an orphan kid from West Kentucky.”

He frowned slightly, shook his head ever so slowly and looked away, “Kentucky’s not important. What’s important is whether or not I’ve been pleasing to God.”

I couldn’t really say for sure whether he was speaking to me or to himself. He stared at the space above the separating curtain and quoted another old warrior, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.”

I knew that he had not caught what I had said but it wasn’t that important. I’d written a few letters over the years to him and Mom, thanking them for the lessons and the teachings and the example of faithfulness. Just a year or so ago, I’d written and thanked them especially for the respect of scripture and truth they had taught. I had not waited until either of them lay at death’s doorstep before rushing to say the things that I wanted to say. At least equally important, I had avoided saying things that I would wish that I had kept to myself.

As I stood there, body aching from the lack of sleep and the five hundred mile drive, I did not speak from desperation or fear of his coming death. There was no such pressure, no such straining to escape the pangs of guilt or regret. I had accepted the distance and differences between us while still appreciating those things that I treasure even now.

I remembered that conversation on the first Lord’s Day in August as I followed my sons and nephews as they carried the casket my wife, Randa, and I had made for him. As our steps pressed into the fescue flesh of that West Kentucky cemetery, I remembered, and smiled.

It did not matter, really, that Dad could not comprehend the words that I had said in that last private moment. It did matter that I had said them.

H. Arnett
9/23/09