Last week my father passed away after a long battle with leukemia. It’s a surreal experience to watch a man you grew up with and saw as the strongest, most competent person you know slowly wither into a skeleton of a person, lose his mental faculties, and his bodily autonomy.
Caring for him in his final days was touching and humanizing. And hard. Never did I imagine that I would be carrying my father to the bathroom and wiping his butt because he could no longer do it himself.
From dust we are and from dust we return.
The entire experience demonstrated the bell curve of life. We enter the world as a helpless infant. We grow, we learn, we accomplish. And we leave the world as a helpless elder. It’s sad, and beautiful. And perfectly human.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.