Meet Me in Memory: A Father’s Parting Words

I would like to fling my voice out like a cloth over the fragments of your death, and keep pulling at it until it is torn to pieces,
and everything I say would walk around shivering, in the tatters of that voice. But mourning is not enough.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Requiem

Everyone leaves, and with their departure, I recall that Grayson is gone. Here, at the foot of his grave, I preside over a limitless darkness that fills me with dread and longing–dread for his absence, longing for his presence–and only memory speaks fluently to both. Twelve days ago, he was here. How many lifetimes have I lived since? Now, I commune with my memories and realize that only in his absence can his presence be enlivened in me. 

How death turns my world upside down. There is no more going out to him, only in. Closing my eyes, I comb the beaches of my own interiority, looking for footprints, images of our past together, but everything seems lost. Maybe my grief, like a violent wind, blows away those sought-after signs, evaporating my recollection. Here, sand runs through my fingers, as does Grayson. Was Christ really unrecognizable after three days in the tomb, or had those closest to him already forgotten His image? Grayson, I don’t want to forget, but time’s erosion is already pulling you away. Please don’t leave me again.

How do we measure the distance between your “there” and my “here”? Can my memory inhabit this region, delivering itself over to your silence, recognizing there the precondition of meaning? 

“Surely my memory is where you dwell,” said Augustine in his Confession, speaking of God, “Because I remember you there…and I find you there when I think of you.” If the Divine presence can inhabit those regions of our interiority illuminated by recollection, can you, too, nest within? Could such memories of you, Grayson, be a divining? Christ goes away that we may receive the gift of His Spirit. Grayson, can you send your own? Remembrance then becomes command: DO THIS in remembrance of me!  I no longer seek your visitation in external experience, but through careful repentance and internal expansion, I pray space is opened for our meeting. Could such an exercise allow a fertile void to open between us? Is it possible now that love, meaning, and language could cross such boundaries, bringing you close again through remembrance? I pray such an opening may fill my impoverished words, that my words may fill this void, that you may again fill my heart. 

For without this hope, how could my grief ever be overcome? Like Rilke, I have faith that such a passage between us can be populated with the flowers of eternity. It can be hallowed by a love that transgresses logic and holds to the inviolable glory of God who pours His very love into us. If, in Christ, the eternal and temporal can become harmonized, then what infinite boundary cannot be transgressed? Here, I can see you as a child, dancing your limitless possibilities…performing yourself, performing me. It requires faith to transfer our understanding of space from its quantitative grounding to the qualitative. To see the union of Kairos and Chronos in Christ and in ourselves as the most REAL form of existence.

Yet it is this very reality that transforms our understanding of all. 

What then, if such distance was not the nihilistic boundary of despair, but rather the meeting of all promise? A pregnant womb where you and I can be together? Could I pray for this possibility in your departure? Like breath that is expelled to return again, so might your loss already be clothed in the hope and glory of your return? 

I stand here at the foot of your grave and stare into the distance, recognizing the infinite ocean of being that lies between us. Yet with hope, I am inclined to pick up this wine bottle, inscribe on this note all my heart could say or desire, then set it upon water to find its way to you. I will wait here for your reply. Here, I will wait for you.

Silence in these moments descends like spring snow, lying heavy upon my barren branches. In its embrace, I am left to contemplate the apophatic mystery that resides at either pole of our experience. This gossamer veil laid between us places you close enough to feel your breath and beyond all longing. Are there words that I can offer to you that will not falter in the space between us? Perhaps my very grief could be transcribed? If tears could become words, what volumes I have already written you? Yet even these lack the necessary potency to reach you. In desperation, I must believe this silence holds our pledge and serves our communion. 

The silence of God is what makes our speaking possible; His withdrawal creates space for us to inhabit. Yet speech must begin, and within its very inauguration is already contained the gift of grace. My speaking to you stands in response to your absence, your absence, the very condition for my speech. Your descending and His ascending contain all potential for my own transcending; the space they create is all donation.

Therefore, I will speak words to you. I will ask you to forgive me for not being the dad I should have been. I will hear in your silence reminders of my own when you most needed to hear me. Your silence is an offering to speak, an invitation to meet you. My silence, a refusal to listen, a withholding of presence. 

You were always all grace; I read your journals. There, you danced above gravity, writing words with such sincerity and vulnerability that the angels themselves sing your outpouring as hymns to God. You were all love, all invitation, and all forgiveness. 

Those students who spoke to Corey and me spoke of your generosity. You gave yourself without inhibition for the promise of friendship and love. You, who without guile, were the perfect meeting of will and act, and thus the perfect manifestation of love. To my regret and shame, I did not see this. 

So now, placing myself at your feet, I ask for a moment of your time. These shivering words, I speak to the dark void, trusting in faith that they will be carried by the wind across the expanse of our parting. I offer them with tears and pray that just as they fall gently upon my cheek, these words will fall gently upon yours. 

Forgive me, Grayson; I see you now. You are lovely beyond all reckoning. You always were. May God, through my repentance, shorten the distance between us, and may your silence always hold the promise of your hearing and the invitation for my speaking. 

May your memory be eternal, my son.