A FATHER’S DAY CARD: THE LAST TIME

Buying cards for folks has always been difficult for me. As a choleric, I rush into the store with a task--grab a card and get out of there as quickly as possible. As a melancholy, I tarry over each card--I cannot purchase a card if the message inside does not accurately say what I honestly would say about or to that person. I read the message inside a card and ask, “Do I really feel that way? Would I really say that to (the recipient)?” This Father’s Day, what the card said was not the difficulty. It was the buying of the card itself. And not because I was short on cash. As I stood looking for the “Father” section of the rows of racked cards, it struck me, “This could very well be the last Father’s Day card I ever purchase.” Dad, who lives 900+ miles away, had had a rough two weeks. He’d had two trips to the emergency room after falls. He had begun having trouble swallowing hampering his doing one of the two things he still found enjoyable—eating. Dad may fool us and live for a long time yet. He has some genes for it; his aunt lived to 104. I mused on that as I browsed through the cards. “Yes, I may purchase a card next year. But, would he with his increasing dementia even be aware enough to know he had received it much less read it?” I amended my original thought to, “This could be the last time that I purchase a Father’s Day card that Dad could read and know he’d received.” I didn’t even know if he will understand this time. The “last time” can be a very impacting and unwelcomed epiphany. It’s a penetrating pondering that permeates all one thinks and does in regard to whom or what the “last time” entails. I contemplated: “What if we prefaced each thing of our life with that thought, ‘This could be the last time.’” I really don’t intend to cast a pall over Father’s Day. I really don’t want to sound or make folks feel morose. I just couldn’t keep from musing: Do we not in the constant, dulling routine of the cyclic seasons and grind of life do things simply because it is time once again to do them? What if we reflected before each that this could be the last time? I cannot say that the awareness that I might be buying my Dad the last Father’s Day card influenced what card I bought, how much I spent, or even what I wrote in it before signing it. But it did affect my absorption with and the significance I attached to doing so. Back to my musing: What if we prefaced to any act of our life, especially those related to relationships, the thought “this could be the last time.” Would it not affect how we kissed or hugged a family member good-bye before the separation mandated by the day’s routine? Would it not mitigate how we answered someone when we were miffed? Would it not alter how we responded to co-workers? The examples are endless when we consider the web of myriad interactions we have with folks. But, being a pastor, I had to wonder: What if folks prefaced each church gathering with “this could be the last time.” We couldn’t have known to then, but what if we had prefaced the last service before the three-month COVID-dictated hiatus with “this could be the last time”? Doing so would go something like this: This could be the last time I get to go to church. This could be the last time I get to see my brothers and sisters. This could be the last time I hear the music and join the congregational singing of “Amazing Grace.” This could be the last time I hear concerted prayer and feel its dynamics inspiring my own. This could be the last time I lift my hands in adoration and wonder of God. This could be the last time I clap my hands in accompaniment with others in applause of the greatness of God. This could be the last time I feel that holy moment that God is speaking to me through the time-consuming, stumbling of the pastor’s (me) homily. Please, lest you think me morbid, I am not saying this is the last time. I am asking what if you knew it were? Would we not give more absorbed attention to those things? Would we not attach more significance to them? Thankfully, for those of faith, there is an asterisk to all of this. *For the believer in Christ, the last time is not the last time. It is just the last time until. There’s been a lot of last times with Dad recently. Like the last time I had a real dialogue with him. Like the last time on Skype when he shared a memory. But all those last times were simply until… Until heaven. There will be no last times there.

A FATHER’S DAY CARD: THE LAST TIME

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