A Time For Everything

I want a day or maybe two.  I’m not asking for a full week; I simply need some time.

My father died.

Before his last breath, the hospice director inquired about funeral home arrangements and requested documents.  After his last breath the paperwork and tasks snowballed.  Medicare.  Insurance. Obituary.  Cemetery.  Social Security.  Funeral home documents emailed, returned, changed, corrected, notarized, repeated. Returning medical equipment.  And closing affairs of the living.  The business of dying, or more accurately, the business after dying is cold and corporate.  “Matters of consequence” punctuate the rituals of sorrow, breaking streams of tears into time allotted fragments.

I want a day or maybe two.  I want to mourn, uninterrupted.  I want to inhale the loss, absorb the grief, cry, and remember.  I want time when all I have to think about is … Dad.

Ecclesiastes 3 promises: “There is a time for everything, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”   Soon I will laugh and dance, but first I must weep and mourn.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.