Nothing Is Lost

Submitted by another parent of all boys.  Makes me think having sons makes you introspective.  I love the Irish notion of "Thin Places" - where we pass through both the ethereal and the corporeal aspects of the world.  -BTH

I have a friend whose father was in his early 50s when she was born. We were in college at the time when she said “my greatest fear is losing him since he is older.” I am happy to say that her father is now in his late 80s and very spry. He has watched her get married and held her two children who miraculously came into the world after 8 years of attempts. Her greatest fear back then hasn’t come to pass thank God. When my dear friend told me about her fear nearly 20 years ago my heart sank as I said “Lyn, you never know what will happen. My father was 42 when he died. Just take every day with him as the blessing that it is.”

I think of my dad and miss him every day. I was “Daddy’s girl” and his only girl with three brothers behind me. The other day I mourned something different.  It hit me that my husband of 10 years is a son in law without a father in law. My three beautiful boys are grandsons of a grandfather who never got to hold them. And even though this thought brings me to tears, I am somehow comforted by something that happened years before the first signs of the illness that would take him away from all of us.

In 1987 a movie starring Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis was released. It wasn't a big hit. I don't even remember it being in the theaters. A few years later my father recorded it on our blank VHS tape when it was on Cinemax. It was called "Made in Heaven" and it was a story about a man named Mike who dies in his twenties and finds himself in heaven only to fall in love with a new soul named Annie. Unfortunately, being a new soul, Annie was sent down to earth to become a baby. Mike decides that he wants to find her so he goes back to earth, but of course only remembers bits and pieces of his time with Annie. In the end these clues bring the two souls back together.

I know, it sounds pretty cheesy and predictable doesn't it? After watching it I just wanted to have hair like Kelly McGillis. My dad, who watched the movie a few times, fell in love with the picture of heaven that the movie painted. When Mike first entered heaven he found a long lost aunt. He asked her how you got around in heaven and she said "You just think about where you want to go and you're there." Annie's bedroom was a bed floating on a lake in the middle of a forest during autumn. Mike built the perfect little house with his mind for Annie. People were genuinely happy.

I once found a paper where my dad wrote his favorite quote from the movie "Anything you can imagine is and anything that is in heaven will eventually find its way back to earth--nothing is lost."

I remember it was a weekend in the Fall when we watched the movie for the first time. It was warm in our green carpeted sun room, but cold outside. I think we have just pulled the boat in for the winter. I am sure we were starting to stack up firewood for the fireplace. I could smell the heater kicking in. It was cozy. We were together.

It wasn't long after that Fall that my father was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a rare heart virus, and then a little over two years later on September 29, 1992 he was the one who went to heaven.

It's been 20 years. It seems like a lifetime ago, but it still stings as if it happened yesterday.

During nap time the other day I was able to find "Made in Heaven" in its entirety on YouTube. How far we have come from those scratchy video tapes! I wasn't sad when I watched it. In fact, it gave me great comfort. I realized that my dad loved life so much that the thought that you could come back even after you died appealed to him.

I know in my heart he has been back to visit several times. He comes back to me in music he loved and played over and over again on his mixed cassette tapes. On September 26^th I heard Paul McCartney’s “Simply having a wonderful Christmastime” on a popular Twin Cities’ radio station. I believe that was more than a weird coincidence.

When I met Pat I heard a voice inside of me say “get that guy’s address, you need to stay in touch with him.” I felt his presence at every one of my children's births. There were the times I should have gotten into an accident. There were the friends I have met that I have thought were truly heaven sent. And the conversation I had with him in the car that day where I agonized about moving my family back to New York in order to help my mother care for my grandmother and I felt him say “your mom will be OK, you need to do what’s best for your family.” Or the time when ten doctors and nurses rushed into my newborn’s room in order to help him breathe and all I heard in the commotion was a soft whisper “he is going to be OK.”

My grandmother says he visits her almost daily now and I believe her. She doesn't say much about his visits, but I know she is happy to see him again.

Sometimes I wonder if his namesake, my middle child, has a bit of my father’s soul in him. He sure has the “life of the party, live every day to the fullest” personality that my father had.

So if heaven is like the movie "Made in Heaven" on the 20th anniversary of his death my dad is probably on a boat in the middle of a lake with our beloved Dalmatian Napoleon, his father, and his dear friends who have also left this earth. There is good Italian food and wine. He is telling cheesy jokes and smiling and laughing. Maybe he is planning his next visit down to earth. Maybe he has discovered some great new music which he is mixing with his old favorites.

Wherever he is, I feel he is happy. And because I feel his presence--nothing is lost.