Watching Papa rise ...

It’s just the two of us, Emma and me, riding on a narrow two-lane Iowa highway to great-Grandma’s apartment.  Five-years-old and already a good friend of mine, granddaughter Emma is in her little girl seat placed behind me in the backside of our rented Chevy Malibu.  We’ve already been seven hours on the road from Michigan, but we’ve perked up some now, as my mother’s apartment is just a few minutes away.  Up over a hill and there on our left, so near the road that you can almost read the chiseled names, is an old small-town cemetery, the old-west style tombstones leaning this way and that as they hold stay over the graves of the sacred dead. These weathered stones were planted so that we would not forget that this is the place of journey’s end for those gone before us, and therefore, for us as well.

“Papa.”

“Yes honey.”

“Is great-grandpa under one of those stones?”  God, the starkness of that innocent question, the sudden imprinted image that it conjures up of my son Joshua and me standing over the fresh, raw, clotted black Iowa earth covering my dad and his granddad – waves of gracious grief wash over my heart with unexpected warmth.

“What Emma?”  I choke out the question, giving me time to think.

“Is great-grandpa under one of those stones?”

“No honey, great-grandpa is in another place, near the place where Papa grew up.”

“But Papa, is great-grandpa under a stone like them?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Is Jesus under the stone with him?”  Her five-year-old brain is locked onto the eternal worry, and like a little bulldog, she is going to hold on until the questions death has raised up in her are dead and buried.

“No sweetness, Jesus is in heaven.”  I have no idea where this is going, and only a vague idea of what I’m saying, but now I’m as interested in the discussion as she.

“But great-grandpa is with Jesus, right?”  I don’t answer soon enough for her, because I’m thinking ahead to the next question.  “Papa? Right?”  She says the “right” with that little child’s uplift at the end of the word – “rigHT” – you know what I mean, rigHT?

“Yes Emma, great-grandpa is with Jesus?”

“In Heaven?”

“Yes, in Heaven.”

“In the sky?”

“Yes.”  I’m struggling here.

“Papa?”  Because I know this child and I know this tone, I know this conversation is only going to go deeper.  “Papa?”

“Yes honey.”

“Papa, are you going to die?”  O my God, here it is, the reason she brought up all of this.  She wants to know about life and death, about loss and living with it.

“Yes Emma, Papa is going to die some day, but not for a long time.  You’ll be as old as your mommy when I die.  You’ll have a little girl just like you.”

“Papa?”

“Yes honey.”

“Will they put you under a stone?”

“Yes honey, they will.”

“Papa?”

“Yes honey.”  I’m fighting the tears now, fighting hard.

“I’m going to stand by your stone, and I am going to wait until I see you go up in the sky to be with Jesus.  That’s what I’m going to do!”  She says this with the matter-of-factness that can only come out of the faith of a child.  I pull the car over to the side of the road.  My vision has blurred.

“Papa, what’s wrong?  Papa!”

Composing quickly, I turn in my seat, reach out and run the back of my hand over her cheek.  “I love you Emma,” I say, because what else is there to say.  “I love you Emma.”

“I love you too Papa.”  O what a gift is a love like this – unabashed, undeserved, unyielding even to death, and unlike any other, so pure and childish and fierce is this love that it can only be from God and can only be like God.  What a gift!  Thank you God.

As I write this, a week removed, I find myself wishing I’d waited by dad’s grave for a little longer than I did – that I’d looked up from time to time as I stood there staring at the ugly mound of Iowa dirt. And I wish I’d taken Emma with me.  I have a feeling her eyes would have seen what mine could not, just as her mind is able to grasp the truth that mine is only able to grope for, but not find.

What a gift!