The Day I Lied to My Dad

I lied to my dad. I knew I was doing it. Despite he had raised me to hold honesty in the highest regard…

Of all the virtues, “Lying shatters your character”. I can still hear the heart of who he was, in me.

Call me a sinner, not a saint; deceiver instead of a good person.

“Daddy, Daddy”. We pull in the driveway and my two Preschoolers scream in excitement. We pull away, and before we even leave, my husband standing near the house, waves eagerly…

My three-year-old cries, “I miss my Daddy”. We haven’t even left yet.

However, just the thought of driving away, out from his shadow, my girl’s ache with a knowledge of how much they love and want to be around their Father.

They say a sudden death is harder than a slow fading. I don’t know…

I have only experienced cancer stealing away the bones, poisoning the blood, robbing oxygen from my Father’s hard-working lungs…

Slowly, stretched out over time.

When he was well.

During those years of living in that white house on a hill, across the street from him…

During those early Saturday weekly coffee dates, when my husband was working….

As I watched him teach my husband, build a shed, embrace all of his Grandchildren….

When I called with nothing imparticular…He listened. He didn’t talk. He just listened.

And at the end of those conversations, I would say, “Thank you for listening, Dad.”

He would recognize my dependence. Or maybe ask questions instead of telling me how to do something.

It was then, I would beg, “Daddy, please just tell me the answers.”

He would say, “No, because one day I won’t be here. One day you won’t need me any longer.”

“But Dad, I’ll allllwwwaaays need you.” I without hesitance responded.

Silence.

“I guess that means you can NEVER leave.” I would add in my bounciest little girl tone, next.

He smiled. I could see his smiling through the phone.

“Guess that means you are staying here forever.” My discomfort at the thought of Him leaving increases.

Silence still.

Then as my heart sunk, in my twenties and thirties, forties and onward.

Then, quietly, softly, patiently, humbly…

My dad would add like a giant dot, a period at the end of my reeling, “I love you, Honey.” And sometimes He would extend it to, “You know that I love you.”

I knew what that meant. I knew when He added, “I love you”, that there would come a time when despite all my begging, my insisting…

Our funny little ongoing joke over the decades, about how he could never leave because I would always need him…

Was a reminder that in fact…

One day, He would have to leave.

The cancer threatened like a prison wardon, nice one minute and unrelentless the next. One second it seemed like it would offer him freedom.

Then, the next, he was trapped in solitary confinement. Not able to move. Unable to see light, without his body being dragging wearily.

And the gasp. The gasp was the worst.

For a man who wore bright-red suspenders, thick jeans, and steal-toed boots….

The thought that my dad struggled breathing, made me feel selfish that I only wanted to keep him, and could never live without him here, next to me.

I knew he was in pain.

There is something about cancer that makes you grow up.

We all grow up. The afflicted. The caregivers. The spectators.

If you ever thought life was butterflies and fairy-tails, the real, raw truth that we are in carnal bodies, dependent on grace, desperate for a Creator to somehow pave the way…

Is the truth, when cancer hunts you down like the grim reaper, threatening to execute what was innocent and perfect.

Yet, there is something excruciating and yet beautiful about cancer.

The humbling cancer offers you is also some kind of strange gift, the kind that is unwrapped with an exhale and doesn’t announce, you are in fact setting yourself aside.

It takes the world and flips it upside down, until the very foundation, gravity itself, drops you in the arms of Jesus…

It is then that the world and everything in it, falls by the waistside…and everything carnal might as well just disappear.

And I despise cancer, yet thank it, simultaneously.

Because everyone has to grow up…

And when you grow up, you say things you NEED to, as if it was truth. Even if it is a lie.

I saw him fading around Easter. The love of my life. My strong rock and foundation. The man that never lied or deceived, and who ultimately gave his life up for me.

My Jesus in blue jeans and a white tee, with a pocket.

The sweet little fairy-tale of back and forth, my dad and I used to share, of,  “You can never leave Daddy, because I will always need you”…

Was blasted with a cold wind of truth. The kind of truth that freezes you in your tracks, like where your feet become heavy, yet you know you need to go on.

With a heavy heart, I slinked inside his bedroom, struggling for my own breath. He had just been given a dose of morphine to ease his pain.

It was then, I knew I had to say it. I knew I had to lie.

“Daddy”….I brushed his clammy, bald forehead. “Daddy….” The words weren’t coming.

A lump in my throat began to choke me.

“Oh God, help me to lie.” I whispered under my breath. “I can’t do this without you.”

And then, as he breathed heavy. As he lay there, like the giant, my goliath….Not coming to harm, but to heal and fade more towards healing…

I whispered, finally, “Daddy, it’s o.k. I will be alright. You can go see Jesus. It’s time to go see Jesus.”

“I will be alright.” I lied again.

I lied through my straight white teeth. The ones my dad labored for, sweat for, so as a youth I could have braces.

I lied, contradicting everything in my being. Words racing upstream away from my spirit…

And that lie sounded toxic, evil, aweful. Because I knew it wasn’t true.

I would not be alright.

A girl always needs her Daddy.

My girl’s would not be alright without their father.

This world is at a deficit of Daddies…

Not the running away kind, or the not paying child-support kind, or the finding a new life and forgetting about their children kind of man…

But the kind of Dad’s who are faithful and true, like mine.

The kind of men who wear suspenders and has thick hands from working so many years.

The kind of dad’s who takes the backseat so their wife and children can succeed.

The kind of Father’s who doesn’t speak or fight in their own strength…

But lean on the ultimate dad, their heavenly Father, to lead and guide the way.

The kind of dad that walks up the stairs just days before dying, because he is strong internally, proud; though a houseful of people fill the main floor, and came to his home to tell him, “Goodbye.”

Daddy, I lied to you that day.

I lied when I told you I could go on without you.

Today, Father’s Day weekend, I took a card to your graveside. It was the perfect card. I knew it.

I filled it out and read it to the air hovering around your plaque without a cement stone, because your death is far too fresh and the flowers don’t due justice.

You couldn’t sing to me today, “Happy Birthday”. And it was a big one.

I didn’t hear you say, “I love you, Baby” as you hung up the phone. There was no, “Hello”.

And there will never be another, “Goodbye”.

There is only these words that surpass time, and are the remedy and therapy to this mouth that had to lie to you.

Two hours after I told you to go, told your resting body to take fight, which even the angels knew would assend on Easter…

You entered the gates of heaven.

You transcended on the day Jesus did. You resurrected in one breath from this weighty world to the weightlessness of eternity.

I never saw you go. But I did.

I LET YOU GO.

Because even a girl who loves her dad more than the world, can’t be selfish.

She can’t cling to child-like ideas, such as, thinking now, every single time I pick up the phone, my dad will still be there.

Daddy, I let you go.

And I don’t know how I can go on without you.

But, I do know you are pointing me to another Father, an even better Father, if that is at all even possible.

You left me. But He will never forsake me. You gave everything and were the perfect reflection of a Savior who offered everything….

You modeled the only perfect one….Who also gave up His life.

I walk from your grave, after I lied. And I know you forgave me.

I know you needed to hear, “I’ll be alright”, two hours before, at almost midnight, when you took your last breathe.

You needed to hear it. And I needed to let you pass.

I wouldn’t have if I stayed. I would have pounded heaven until you came back to greet me.

This Father’s Day isn’t what I planned.

Daddy, I miss you.

But I will forever be grateful that you are not hurting anymore. That cancer did not win.

And that the world has been gifted with your fingerprints….Everywhere I look.

I lied. I am sorry.

But, I love you.

And Dad, no matter time or space, distance or ages…I will always be your little girl.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!

I’ll see you again, soon!