Memory Eternal & Kalo Pascha!

Just a quick note to report that my father Allan passed peacefully from this life at just before noon on Great and Holy Friday. I feel very blessed to have been by his side when he departed, after spending a prayerful night with he and my mother in the ICU. Please pray for the repose of his soul.

I think it not coincidental that he died at nearly the sixth hour on Great and Holy Friday - the same hour the thief on the cross was admitted to paradise by our Lord. I hope that my father also came to know repentance in his last hours. I rely on the mercy of God that he is now in paradise.

The funeral will be held on Tuesday morning. My uncle asked that I read a piece of scripture and I am planning to read the part from the gospel of John (5:24-30) that is in the Orthodox funeral service. It seems fitting - when I was a lay reader in the Episcopal church as a teenager, my father (who really did not like organized religion, particularly the more liturgical ones) periodically snuck into a service just to hear me read. He was proud of me for doing that, even if he didn't agree with my choice of religions. So I'm honored to read at his funeral.

We didn't allow the girls into the ICU to see him. Emmelia didn't really seem to understand why adults got to go in to say goodbye but she couldn't go say goodbye to Granddad. We talked a lot about how he didn't look like himself, wasn't awake (he coded on Thursday and never regained consciousness after that), etc., and we talked about good memories and fun things she had done with him.

So after he passed, I went out to the waiting room and this is the conversation Emmelia and I had:

Emmelia: "Did Granddad die?"
Me: "Yes, he's with God now"
Emmelia: "How did he get there?"
Me: "An angel came and took his soul to heaven"
Emmelia: "Did you see it?"
Me: "No."
Emmelia: "When are we going to the park?"

My cousin with her three children and my aunt, bless their souls, arrived right then to take the kids to the park and feed them lunch - they ended up keeping them for the whole afternoon so we could go back to the hotel and sleep since I'd been up all night at the ICU and the Deac had not slept too well with the girls at the hotel. It was their first night without me but they did amazingly well. This impromptu "playdate" was such an incredible gift for us at that moment. And it was sweet to see how quickly my girls bonded with second cousins they had never met.

Tonight we are home for the Paschal liturgy. We had vague plans for where we would go if we were still at my parent's home tonight, but it's good to be at our home parish and have a chance to give the kids some normalcy before the funeral.

Kalo Pascha! In a few hours we will be singing "Christ is Risen" and "The Angel Cried." I can hardly wait.