“I look for the LORD, my
soul doth wait for him, in his word is my trust.” Ps. 130:5
My
father died of a sudden heart attack when he was 54. I was 27, working my first real job, married
for a month, and completely unprepared for navigating the rest of my life
without my father’s guidance and support.
It
was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. I know that doesn’t say very much compared to
what many of you have endured. But for
me, it meant deep personal sadness at the loss of a man I deeply admired and
who brought so much joy into my life. It
meant concern at the even more intense grief that my mother, my grandparents
and my brother were experiencing. And
the experience left me feeling adrift, more hesitant and uncertain about the
future, with a kind of fear in my heart I had never really known before.
I
was deeply grateful that I knew I could pray for my father, with words that the
church had placed in my mouth, when it was so difficult to know just what to
say to God about it all. My father died
on a Sunday afternoon, and he was buried on a Wednesday. The next Sunday morning I went to his grave,
and I took with me a little volume, The
Priest’s Book of Private Devotions, marked for the page for the Vespers for
the Dead.
