We had dinner with a great many new friends in our new city from the church we've been a part of since we've been here [today = 5 months...I think]. In part, this was a celebration of the fruitfulness of a couple, and the fruitfulness of God's people. This couple had basically invited everyone who had brought them dinner after their giving birth of a new son. Needless to say, there were quite a few people there [hospitality is not patently Southern].
Fruitfulness is a wonderful thing. It is also a wonderfully scary thing. I imagine, however, when our first child comes along there will be a mix of emotion much to what I'm feeling tonight. I imagine that our child [our = me and La] will be a lot like I am; that literally scares me on more levels than you know [and I am not "just saying" this...] Part of what scares me is remembering how I reacted when taken to a grave site growing up.
That is, with indifference.
It was not with a flagrant disregard or in abject disrespect - it's just that I didn't know the person in the grave. I couldn't relate to who they were. I didn't have late night conversations with them, I never sat back and drank sweet tea on a hot Southern summer's afternoon with them, I never shot pool with them, nor did I play Scrabble on the living room floor with them.
But I did with my dad.
And so I think about taking my children to his grave in Huntsville, AL and how they'll react. What will they be thinking? I doubt that they'll have much of a thought of what life would have been with him - I never did [in regard to visiting the graves of people I never knew]. I don't ever think of life with my mom's parents, right [I had never met either of them before they passed]? Thinking about it the other way around - he'll never get to hold them in his lap and tell them about how goofy I was when I was their age. He'll never get cherish them, to see them grow, to see them change, or to be loved by them. A lot of what I hoped for when he was still alive was that when I had a family, that he would get to see a different kind of faith being lived out than what he was accustomed to [being generally skeptical of "Chrsitians" altogether]. I literally used to dream about what it would be like to pray with my children in his house - how something like that might grip his heart [as none of our conversations re: Christ ever seemed to].
And now, all of that is...impossible.
And now, I rarely even pray with my own wife except for meals.
That aside, when I am in Huntsville, I rarely visit his grave. Being at his grave once was enough. His bones are there, his casket, a concrete vault, a suit [he only wore it twice in public that I know of - my wedding and his own funeral - he said it was what he'd be buried in], and a headstone paid in part by the US Government [your tax dollars at work in memory of a Vietnam Vet] are all there.
There are no memories there.
It is an unfamiliar place...a literally lifeless place. It was a place that he'd only been to once and was never able to leave. It was the last place I saw his body, but not the last place that I saw him. And if I were to ever take my children there, they might remark about the trees, the landscaped lawns, the pond down the hill, but not about how life was with him; they'll never know that life or his.
Tonight is one of those rarities where I can't sleep - even after being surrounded by new friends, after enjoying good food and drink... even in bed with my own wife... as the loneliness of death is weighing upon my own heart.
