Epilogue: Drowning and Floating

Over the past two days, I have been sharing the final chapters of the memoir I wrote for my father. Today is the last. I wanted to offer these before Father’s Day, while there is still time to honor the fathers we love, cherish the ones still with us, and remember the ones we carry now by heart. I offer this closing chapter for anyone standing somewhere between gratitude and grief, love and letting go, still learning to trust the water at the bend in the river.

This chapter is drawn from the closing pages of my memoir, Seeds My Father Planted. If you’d like to read more—or share it with a father you love—you can find it by clicking on the title above.

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EPILOGUE

Drowning and Floating

Father’s Day 2024

I kept vacillating—

between thinking—

I am drowning

and he is drowning.

I was drowning in the knowing,

and he was drowning in the going,

and I could not save either one of us.

The air felt like water.

Inside and out—

it wrapped around everything.

Suffocating.

Enveloping.

Melding us together

in the unrelenting stillness.

I sat.

And sat.

And sat.

Helpless.

And then, a strange thought rose—

Maybe we are floating in the drowning.

Maybe this ache

isn’t the end,

but the middle.

He used to tell me to remember the ducks.

Why could I never float?

Why did I always sink,

even when the water was calm?

Now it’s storming softly,

and I wonder—

Was he teaching me to float

when the world feels like drowning?

To ride the ache.

To trust the water.

To remember the ducks.

And still,

I return to the silence,

where breath was his final word

and rain fell like a whispered letting go.

A Bend in the River

The silence did not end there.

It rushed in like a river—

slipping in through the window cracks,

curling around the bed,

and flowed through my veins,

filling my bones.

It echoed in my chest,

floodwaters rising,

threatening to breach the dam

I didn’t know I’d built.

It kept building—

like breathing underwater,

as I watched him rushing

into rapids where I couldn’t reach him,

couldn’t hold on.

He had taught me about rivers—

how they always bend toward something greater,

how they always lead somewhere,

even when we cannot see

around the curve.

“Water connects,” he’d say.

“It always finds its way to people.

If ever you’re lost in the woods,

find water and follow it.

Trust it to lead you home.”

I watched him slip

around the bend before me,

carried by the current we both shared.

Now I stood at the curve,

water swirling around my ankles,

unable to see where he had gone—

but knowing the river continued.

Perhaps this rushing silence

was not meant to drown me after all.

Perhaps, like the river,

it was simply carrying us both home—

him beyond the bend I couldn’t yet navigate,

me still learning

to trust the flow.

The Night of the Waxing Gibbous

It rained the night You met Him—

not the storming kind,

but the kind where heaven weeps

with reverence.

The air was thick,

not heavy like sorrow,

but dense—

enveloping and close,

like being held too tightly

by time itself.

There were no final words—

only silence,

laced with struggle,

as if breath itself

had become the message.

Throughout the day,

the heavens and I wept together—

tears of sorrow and wonder

braided in aching reverence.

The kind of tears

that rise when love

meets mystery.

Above us,

the waxing gibbous moon stood watch—

not yet full,

but nearly.

A moon in waiting.

A moon that knows something is coming.

It holds light

the way we hold breath—

stretching toward completeness

without rushing it.

And I thought,

how fitting

that on Father’s Day,

you went to meet

our Father.

And I believe—

when He gathered you in,

there were tears in His eyes too.

Not of grief,

but of glory.

And maybe, just maybe…

what I saw as drowning—

the breathless letting go,

the silence too vast to name—

was you floating.

Rising.

Teaching me again,

without words,

how to trust the water.

You never lost breath really—

just held it as you went around the bend,

coming up for air beyond the rapids.

And I know, when I finally follow

that same bend in the river,

you’ll be waiting—

those sparkly eyes and that mischievous look I know so well—

saying simply:

“What took you so long?”