Is that the pope?

So, today's the day. The day that would have been my dad's 88th birthday. Blows my mind that he's gone. Even if he did live to be 84. He was just always young in my eyes. And in the eyes of many others. But time does march on and and we do get called back home, whatever home may actually be. Yes, I'm a bit down, touchy, sad and all those other negative feelings no one - particularly myself - really wants me to feel or talk about, today. Besides, I've felt enough of that crap for the last four years since he passed. I'm working on finally getting back to the light.

But, I will share a story he and I had about home. Heaven. He was looking forward to finding out what Heaven actually looked like. He'd been preaching about it for more than 50 years, and now he was finally going to learn the secret, see the glory. He didn't believe he'd be able to contact me after he left this world. I believed he could. So we a made deal - if he could, he would.

He planned his own memorial. No picture on the front of the funeral takeaway. No singing 'Amazing Grace.' No body. Literally. He gave that to science since he wouldn't be needing it anymore and they'd pay to have him cremated. Smart, really. He emphatically did not want an open casket. He hated those kinds of funerals. While those of us in the pews could see part of the body sticking up out of the caskets, my dad had prime view from the top. He hated that and joked about how some dearly departed might just sit up one time and cuss my dad out for making up such good stuff about them just to make the still living feel better.

And, most important, his minister friends were not to wear their robes. He made them promise and I was to make sure they followed through. He did not believe a robe made a minister a man of God. In fact, if it hadn't been part of church doctrine or tradition, he would have never worn a robe. I don't recall him wearing them at early morning or evening services. And, I remember several summer months, he'd decided to go without. He knew God didn't care, and he figured the "elders" in the church would just have to deal with it.

There was a picture in his house of him in a robe that had been taken sometime just after I left home in the late '70s. It was placed in a prime location over the fireplace mantel, in the den, where no one could dare miss seeing it. It had been put there by my stepmother, who, of course, made the rules about decorations. So there it stayed. My dad, my husband and I laughed about that picture. It was a story shared only between the three of us. Daddy said that picture made him look like the pope. Step mom would give us 'the look' every time we talked about the photo, but this was one area she could say nothing. My dad let the picture stay; she had to let us laugh at it.

He had, however, agreed to let my step mom place that picture in the hallway outside of the sanctuary at his service. He knew she loved that picture and had wanted it on his memory giveaway. Sitting outside of the minister's office was the compromise.

One of his friends, with almost 60 years of stories about my dad, choked his way through several parts of the memorial service, the parts that require you actually acknowledge your loved one is gone. However his eyes lit up when he told this story and looked directly at me. He told how he and the other preachers had gathered in the hallway before the service to go over their parts and pull themselves together. A mother and child came to the office, she needing to pay that week's childcare. The child was told to wait outside, to stand beside my dad's over-sized photo. When his mother returned, the little boy asked sincerely, and purely, as only a small child can do, "Mommie, is that guy the pope?"

After the service, I asked my dad's friend why he had chosen to tell that particular story. He said he didn't really know, that it just seemed appropriate because my dad loved little kids and they adored him back. He said it also came to him that for some reason, I might understand what that story meant. And, I did. Daddy said good-bye to me, and only me, in that moment of storytelling. I've never felt his actual presence again, although I know he's laughing it up in Heaven. So I guess we were both right. His spirit was able to hang around just long enough to let me know he could communicate with me. Then he hightailed on up to Heaven where he so belongs.

Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you. I miss you. I don't have that picture yet, but I do have your robe hanging in a closet.