My Father's Light

While I was sitting next to him, trying to keep him from what I thought was just falling asleep, my father passed away at home in his own bed. His wish had always been to be buried with his family of origin in Germany. My mother felt that she could not wait before being able to arrange and attend his funeral service overseas. She felt she needed an earlier sense of closure than that. The local church was not her preferred option since she felt slighted by its pastor who failed to uphold his promise to visit my father while he was still alive and bed bound. With the real funeral weeks away, my mother felt like she was in a torturous limbo. She desparately needed a more immediate, formal ritual that would help her both honor and say goodbye to my father.


My mother and I decided that we would make our own meaningful, interim memorial service. After some planning and purchases, we went equipped to a nearby lake at night. Into a starry sky, we released heart shaped balloons that said, "I love you" and shouted out the same as if my father could hear it. My father had loved fireworks since he was a child. So we had attached sparklers to the bunched balloons, wanting to celebrate his life. However, we stood in grievous yearning as the balloons became smaller and smaller until ultimately disappearing into mysterious night.

We then set aflame tiny tea light candles and pushed them out onto the lake. We brought one candle to represent each of my father's family members and one candle to represent my father himself. We watched as all the candles quietly glowed and flickered in the otherwise dark surroundings. Almost immediately, a number of the floating candles blew out, leaving only three. Both my mother and I simultaneously exclaimed, "That's us!" meaning that those three remaining lights represented our little nuclear family: a father, a mother, and their only child.

Moments later, one candle light began to float away from the other two. My mother was distressed by the symbolism of it all and cried out, "He's leaving us!" Then with a tone of defeat, she whispered, "He's leaving us behind." I felt differently and said so: "No, Mom. He's not leaving. He's just going on ahead, paving the way, like he always did."

We sat on a dry log facing the black night lake. Two candles stayed lit and close to shore. One light kept traveling further and further out into the murky distance. We wanted to wait to see how long that one light, my "father's light" could last, but we became cold and restless. With a pathetically dim flashlight, we stumbled in the dark back to our car, always checking over our shoulders to see if the one candle was still shining. It was.

Once we reached the car, we got in and watched some more, not wanting to leave while my "father's light" was still reaching out to us somehow. That single, tiny dot of a light shone in the darkness even though it floated away from us ever further. It seemed that candle light was as stubborn and resilient as the person it represented to us. With sighs, we finally decided to leave the lake, end our memorial service, and drive home. Our car rolled slowly over the grinding gravel road; as we physically distanced ourselves from the lake, we squinted and strained to see if the light had gone out yet. It hadn't. It seemed like it wouldn't die out at all, at least not when we were still there to watch it.

Unlike my father's death for which neither my mother nor I felt prepared, that night on the lake my father's light faithfully remained lit for us to see . . . My father's light continued and continued to shine for us. His presence through this light seemed to remain with us until, this time, WE were ready to say goodbye.

This memorial felt like such a gift of grace. There we were feeling despondent yet out of silly balloons, sparklers, and candles something wonderful was annointed for us. I remember in my first years in seminary, I had to write a psychological explanation for my faith. I wrote that my father's long periods of absence (due to having to travel extensively for his job) helped me to accept that Love could be communicated without tangible, physical presence. As a child, I knew my daddy loved me even when he wasn't around. So, it was easier to understand that God, Whom I could not see, loved me too. Even with my father's death, the ways of God's love were communicated to me again: In the midst of despair, in the pit of darkness, a steady Light shines as a beacon to comfort, heal, and show forth God's Love.

Thank you, Father.