Dad

I lost my father on the 24th of September 2008, for the rest of South Africa that day was Heritage Day or “National Braai Day”, but for me that day signifies disbelief, shock and a completely new existence. Nothing will ever be the same after that day: I will not be able to look at people’s sadness the same way as before, life will not be the same as before. After 24 September living in the present would be the way that I want to live my life. Not looking back with regret or remorse of what has been or of what could have been and what should be.

But one has to look back, has to remember the good and the fun times – events of significance. Those moments that slips between the cracks of what we call life. Normally I wouldn’t be a person that misses other people a lot, when I was at varsity, if my mother would have asked me whether I miss her, I used to tell my mother that I miss her, but only to make her feel better. That also has changed! I miss both my parents now, my father who I will never see again and my mother who is in Johannesburg and has to work and deal with the estate of my late father. This is a difficult part for me, having my mother do this – letting her do this! Normally I would have taken over, would have done this for her, but I realised that she needs to do this on her own, she needs to do this by and for herself. My mother doesn’t only need to learn surviving without my father, she needs to learn living without him.

And that’s sad. 

Letting people into our lives, giving them significance – and losing them. That is always sad and leaves us a bit empty.

Never being able to watch a DVD with my Dad, never getting a chocolate covered toffee apple when he comes back from Fruit and Vedge, never being able to have him sitting in one of my sermons and asking how it went afterwards and this is only some of the small stuff. A lot is lost and will never return.

Now, I realise that you might be thinking: “has this guy no appreciation for everlasting life, he will see his dad again”. It makes me wonder if we can say that we’ll recognise each other on passing-on, in the so-called “next life”. Our natural premise would be to think that everything is about us. That the planet exist for us, for our pleasure and existance, and that when we stop existing the planet will stop existing as well. Most of the time we think that we are so important and if we mess-up the planet, that all will be lost. Therefore, within this thinking, heaven would be for us! Heaven would be the space were we could be happy, where there is no pain, no bosses ordering me around, no one telling me what to do… That would be a very egocentric heaven. Another thing that happens when we think like this is that we forget living while we’re still alive. We tend to be martyrs because one-day everything will be okay!

How about living now? Experiencing heaven now? 

Cobus once said that if we could take out the “heaven part” out of our doctrine, Christianity would make a lot more sense for some people. My colleague also told me the other day, that he was amazed by his Grade 10 son’s insight; when his son told him that he realised that people will be faceless in heaven. People will be faceless, because it’s not about us. That it wouldn’t matter whether we have faces or not, because we will be a reflection of God’s light, we won’t be in need of our own identity, our own voice and our own opinions. My colleague and I decided that becoming faceless here on earth would be the true challenge of living in “heaven”.

I wonder now whether my initial fear, that I would forget what my father’s voice sounds like, that I would forget what he looks like, might be a reflection on myself. Maybe I’m afraid that people will forget what my voice sounds like, that I might think that my voice is so important that it would be “a shame if my voice died down?”

I still miss my father. I have only but started to miss him, but I know – I feel – that one day we will exist together again and it won’t matter if we recognise each other or not.