My father, David James Williams, gently passed from this life on Sunday evening, May 3, 2020.  He was 96 years old.  Dad was born on January 28, 1924 on the banks of the Ohio River, in the town of Martins Ferry, Ohio.  He was the youngest of six children of a car inspector for the Nickel Plate Railroad and his wife, who baked the communion bread for their church.  Dad graduated from Kentucky Christian College in 1946, and over the next 43 years held ministries in Advance, Indiana; Huntington, West Virginia; Akron, Ohio; and Grayson, Kentucky.  In 1989 he and Mom retired to Lexington, Kentucky where they lived for the last 31 years of their lives.  Mom preceded Dad in death by five months.  One of the last things Dad said at her funeral was, “Time to go.  I’ll see you later.”  Later has arrived and I imagine they are picking up where they left off, after 73 years of marriage.

A few months ago, I bought a mug from Cath Kidston, though not your typical Cath Kidston mug.  This one had a western theme with a cowboy twirling a lasso while riding a bucking bronco.  Though I had no idea why, the second I saw the mug I knew I had to have it.  Monday morning, about 12 hours after my father’s death, a memory stirred.

My father was always busy.  I understand.  I inherited his need for movement.  On Saturdays he mowed the lawn, cleaned the garage, weeded the garden, swept the basement and washed the car.  And he did it all in a flannel shirt my mother absolutely despised.  The shirt was a black, white and red print of cowboys on bucking broncos.  I thought it was the coolest shirt in the history of mankind.  When dad was wearing that shirt, I knew no matter what he was doing, he would be happy to have me close by.  He needed the diversion I brought from whatever job he was tackling.

Dad was not all that handy.  My father had a knack for turning small repairs into major catastrophes.  When he tried to put up a pole lamp (a thing in the 60s) he somehow broke the lamp, cut the cord, and burned a hole in the carpet, all in a matter of about 30 seconds.  I mean, that’s pretty impressive.  And he did it all wearing that flannel shirt, and the grimace that went with it.  Whenever Dad used his hands to do anything other than type, he wore the same grimace, usually accompanied by a lot of muttering and a trip to the hardware store for parts that had somehow been destroyed during the repair process.  It turns out the grimace and its attendant mayhem are genetic.  I can type faster than a streak of lightning, but outside of that, my hands should be forbidden from attempting the simplest of household repairs, all approached wearing the same grimace, though not the same shirt.  My New York handyman, also a friend, used to say, “Why don’t you stick to earning your money speaking and pay me to put that shelf up for you.  You’ll save us both a lot of grief.”

I am pleased I share other traits with my father.  We both were way more interested in asking good questions than in finding answers.  We knew a lot of the big questions cannot be answered on this side of time and space, and are likely to be elusive on the other side as well.  We both found people interesting, all manner of people, and never encountered a subject that bored us.  If your passion was archery, we’d talk with you about archery for hours.  It left us both with a lot of basically useless knowledge.  Dad and I both loved the church, and though it sometimes treated us badly, we never lost our conviction that the good news of the Gospel is indeed the hope of the world.

Dad was a better pastor than I.  Everyone loved him.  He was gentle, approachable and kind.  He was not a great preacher, but he was a great lover of people.  And he loved me.  My father delighted in me.  Right up until the last two years of his life, he loved talking with me about theology, politics, anthropology, music, or any other subject that struck my fancy.  Dad was eternally curious.  He was also honest.  If I had a big problem and asked for his help, he often would answer, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you.  You’ll have to puzzle over that one on your own.”  I found that wonderfully freeing.  If my own father didn’t know the answer, it was all right for me not to know the answer either.  He gave me permission to say, “I don’t know,” and to realize it is often the most holy of answers.

One of the reasons I wanted to make it through life without transitioning was because I knew it would bring great pain to my family, including my parents.  Yet my father, who was 90 when I transitioned, chose to embrace me as me.  He had plenty of questions, but unlike most evangelicals, he was willing to listen and learn. Dad lived as though there was one truth that triumphed over all others.  I saw it in how he treated church members and strangers and all manner of humans, including his youngest child.  Dad believed that love wins, and every ounce of my own theology is born of that same conviction.

My father is being buried this morning, next to my mother, in the little cemetery in Grayson, Kentucky where my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousin are buried.  It is the cemetery just north of where my grandmother lived, the cemetery where she took us for picnic lunches in the cool summer grass when we were children, the cemetery where I rolled down the hill laughing and looking up at the cumulus flecked sky, reveling in the simple goodness of being alive.

When I think of those picnics, and the love my father showered upon me, and the mystery and wonder that this precious life is even possible, I am filled with gratitude, and carry on, in my own heart, the same firm conviction that breathed its truth into my father’s soul – that above all else, love wins.

Carl Jung described life as a short pause between two great mysteries.  My father lived his short pause to the fullest, a true gentleman, living joyfully, trusting in the slow and steady work of God.  Enjoy eternity, Dad.  I know you’ve got a lot of questions you want to ask and people you want to love.  And I hope that when you explore your new home, and look in the closet, you’ll find that flannel shirt waiting for you.”

It is my birthday and it is raining, which is a fine thing.  I moved to Colorado 14 years ago, not knowing that it does not rain on the Front Range between October and April.  Not a drop.  One year it rained for 10 minutes in February and people got out of their cars and looked at the sky and then checked the calendars on their iWatches.

When Cathy began teaching here, she got a blank stare from her third graders when she said, “April showers bring May flowers.”  They thought she might be slightly deranged.  I mean, her New York accent had already thrown them off.  “Wait, Mrs. Williams, how do you eat an ahrange?  What is an ahrange?  And there are no April showers.  There are April snowstorms.”

Two weeks ago it snowed 24 inches.  I had to use my industrial sized Mac truck of a snowblower, the one that warms the earth two degrees every time you fire it up.  Then lo and behold, just 15 days later I pulled out my Honda lawnmower to give my lawn its first cut of the season.  For the 12^th straight year, it started on the first pull.  (That’s why you pay twice as much for a Honda.)

I needed the lawnmower not because of April showers, but because 24 inches of wet melting snow wakes up a sleeping lawn.  When I mowed the lawn yesterday, the lawn had no idea the coronavirus was going on.  It was yawning and wiping the dandelions from its eyes and grateful for the haircut.  It didn’t hear me muttering under my breath, “Yeah, you get a haircut, while my hair looks like I’ve been manning a remote outpost on a Pacific atoll since WWII.”

But back to this morning’s rain.  Colorado gets 300 days of sunshine a year.  And when I say sunshine, I don’t mean like Dublin, where they say, “Did you see that?  Over there?  The clouds parted for five seconds.  It was glorious!”  No, in Colorado we see the sun all day, 300 days a year.  When the rains finally arrive in May, we rush outside and watch the foothills turn green before our eyes.  The prairie grasses get all happy and  prairie dogs run around the fields hanging from lampposts, holding their little umbrellas.  It’s really cute.

You can’t see the mountains, but you know they are there because of those 300 days when you see them reaching out to touch the sky.  So, when the rains come, you take comfort in the mountains and their unseen stability.  Today is one of those days when I need that unseen stability.

The fox showed up in the backyard this morning, the red one.  He drank from my water feature because the water is fresh for a change, instead of the recirculated stale stuff that’s usually there.  He looked up longingly at the doves on the birdfeeder, then stared through the window as if to say, “You know, you could have put that birdfeeder closer to the ground.  Just sayin…”  Ever since we’ve all been quarantined, the fox talks to me a lot.  He’s lonely too.  Just the other day he was telling me about being chased by a mountain lion the night before.  I did not have much sympathy.  I said, “Well, now you know how the chickens feel.”  But I digress.

Today’s rain is misty, the kind I liked to run in when I lived on the south shore of Long Island.  It feels good on your face and breeds contentment in your bones.  Unlike a cold, hard rain, the mist quenches your soul’s thirst for all that is close in and nurturing and good.  These are hard times, with attacks coming from unseen forces, like viruses.  You protect yourself and trust in the truth of things.  You pull in and wrap yourself in a wool sweater and let the cool mist fill your lungs and pretend you are back in Dublin in an earlier time, before viruses and losses and such.

The doves left the birdfeeder and the robins returned, and I went out in the mist to refill the feeders and take a quick picture of the misty view to the southwest where the hidden mountains beckon.  When I got back in the house a Lazuli Bunting was eating at the feeder.  No, I’m not a birdwatcher.  I know exactly two Colorado bird species by name.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunting are here all the time, along with the Tanager family.  They all seem to get along well.  I think they vacation together.

Then I came back inside for my second cup of tea.  I’m drinking from the blue Cath Kidston mug a kind person sent me after my first one shattered on the kitchen floor.  The broken one is carefully gathered on a dinner plate that sits on my bedroom dresser.  I was going to glue it back together, but I actually prefer it sitting there broken into a thousand tiny pieces.  It reminds me you can be shattered and still be a thing of beauty.

I am going to go out running in a while, but I want the mist to be just right, Long Island consistency, drops large enough to kiss your face but not cause you to inhale any viruses.  Because, well, you know.

And so it goes.