My telephone rang last night at 10:45. As I went in search of the handset, the mechanical voice announced, "Call from Kieffer, Steve." My dad. As a general rule, happy calls don't come after 9 pm. I braced myself. "Hello?" A slight pause on my dad's end, "Hey Maroon. What's doin?"
It was in the beat that he took before he spoke. It was the way my childhood nickname sounded gentle and fatherly. The dark cloud of tragedy has broken on our little family again. My beloved cousin has been issued her fate: Nothing more they can do. Cancer has spread. Go home.
Those words collected into little pools and then overflowed into the realities of loved ones near and far, each of us trying to stop the flooding. How can we bear this storm? How can we reach our arms to shield one another from the pounding force of eternity? There is nothing more we can do. We need to go home.
It seems that all too soon the drops of the storm and the oceans of our grieving will lift up our sister and deliver her to her rightful destination. She will see her own Father - the architect of the storms and the eternities and I hope we will have to courage to wave her on. Go home, dear one. Go home.
And we sure will miss you.
