Almost Slipped Away

I told him that night not to go,
not to leave me.
He said he’d be back,
as he kissed me goodnight.
His unshaven face was rough against my smooth skin,
while the smell of smoke wafted from his clothes.
Like a newborn babe, I slept and had not a care in the world.
The next morning was routine,
but an ominous spell lay amidst the air.
My anxious mother sighed with wonder, as to why he did not return home.
The phone rang in the midst of our morning preparations.
A storm cloud loomed over our quiet, sheltered home.
My mother anxiously grabbed the phone,
as to quiet the deafening ring upon the youngest babe’s ears.
Tears
Shrieks
My world stopped.
My mother held us as a single parent would.
She sent us to school that day,
yet the news of my father’s condition made us deaf to the world.
On the way to school I passed the town graveyard, as I always did.
Souls of the forgotten past seemed to cut at his place in my soul,
and lure it to the nearest naked plot.
Could my father be gone in but an instant,
with his only remains laying under the cold earth, lifeless?
The next few hours felt as though years had lapsed,
for there was no greater pain than the unknown.
“It’ll be alright” we were told, by uncertain lips.
My younger siblings and I held hands,
comforting each other’s cries.
An everlasting chain would seem brief in comparison to the strength we found in each other.
That day my life changed.
That day my family changed.
My mother, like the sun, so eagerly kept shining in spite of the storm.
Her sunbeams stayed and nurtured him,
emitting hope, even after the foreboding forecast.
The separation from the sun, my main light source,
compelled me to huddle each night, as a lonely orphan would.
No length could seem as long as the one I waited to see my father.
The dark tunnel at last shone light.
The day we reunited, time again stood still.
His sparkling eyes, which outshone the North Star, were cloudy.
His perfect body lay broken, like a doll’s.
Estranged wrinkles creased a young man’s brow.
An unfathomable, spiritual and physical pain stained his carefree heart.
I stripped my smooth, white coat for his knitted, red blanket.
My father, who had once carried and comforted me,
lay vulnerable.
Never had I thought my father, the invincible hero,
would ever need the saving.
The next five years held hope and sorrow.
The sun never stopped shining and our chain never broke.
Satan thought to plant distrust in our eyes,
but just as He led the lambs, the Lord led us back to Him.
The ground did not consume my father, nor take his soul,
but it could not take back the red blanket it had given me.
The clock did resume its normal heartbeat,
but the pains of the past lay unchanged.
Just as a newborn, he learned to walk,
though steps never turned to runs.
He will never be exactly the man he was.
Physically weaker,
spiritually stronger.
A sparkling eyed father once told a young girl of the most precious gift He had given him;
her.
I now thank and look to Him who gave me my most precious gift,
the miracle of my father.