In my Father's Arms - Stained Glass

Flickr photo by Daisyree Baker

Dad suffered a massive heart attack. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital. My earliest memory of Dad is being in his arms as an infant. He’s carrying me somewhere and I can feel the movement through his shoulders and chest. He’s not paying attention to me. His eyes are fixed on some point in the future and he’s marching on like a character in a propaganda poster. I like that. It comforts me to know he’s moving purposefully and that his awareness of me is purely physical. In that precise moment I have absolutely no fear. I know I will be afraid of things in the future, that all the things I do fear are out there in the direction he scans with his intense blue eyes. But that doesn’t matter because he’s looking at them for me and they scurry away from his laser gaze. I am watching my left hand. I have placed it on his right cheek, just above his neck. He hasn’t shaved for a few days and the stubble tickles my palm. This sensation runs through me, a warm buzz rampant in the neural network. Every molecule of my being vibrates in harmony with it and the sensation is so delightful I have to laugh out loud. I’m not aware of it – not then as a child – but the rippling joy is propagating in both directions, irradiating two souls from the tiny patch of skin where they have established contact. Now I know my father remembered that moment too... that it only died when he did, and then only half-died.