Jack-83 and Beyond

I was born on March 30.

A day that has carried more than one meaning in my life.

On my 38th birthday, in 1967, my father died just after I left the hospital.
A day meant for celebration became something else. A crossing.

I have thought about death often since then.
Not with fear, but with a kind of knowing.

From a young age, I have had a close relationship with God.
Death has never frightened me the way it does some.
But I have known what it leaves behind.

An emptiness. A space that cannot be filled in the same way again.

If I could have spared my wife, Mattie, and my children that feeling, I would have.

When I think about my death, I cannot separate it from my life.

I was the first of nine.
The one who made my mother a mother.

We were raised with love. Growing up was fun.
There was fullness in those early years, even when life was not always easy.

I would go on to have nine children of my own.

There is something about that.
Life moving forward in that way that humbles a man.

Nine children. Then grandchildren. And more after that.

Life continuing.
Through birth and death.
Through joy and pain.
Through sorrow and love.

All of it unfolding in ways we cannot fully understand while we are living it.

These thoughts reflect how I think about death. I can’t separate it from a life filled

With God’s blessings. 

My wife, Faith, was my great love. We were married for thirty-three years.

When she died in 1984, even though we knew it was coming,
It still came as a shock. It was and still is the worst day of my life.

That is the thing about loss.

You can prepare your mind. There is no way to prepare your heart; it still feels the break.

After she died, I did something I had always told my children not to do.

I asked God, “Why Faith?”

Not because I had lost faith. Because I had lost Faith.
The question came from loving deeply.

In the years that followed, I came to understand something more quietly.

When someone you love dies,
You remember the ways you think you failed them.

But if you stay long enough,
If you allow yourself to feel beyond that first wave.
You begin to sense something else.

Forgiveness.

I came to know that Faith had already forgiven me.
Long before I could see it.

I still had children at home then.
We held each other through the grief.

There were tears.
Many tears.

And also, life continued.

I once thought I would be ready to leave this world
as soon as my children were ready to stand on their own.

But that is not how it worked.

God had other plans.

Life kept unfolding. Love kept finding its way through.

Even now, when I do something foolish,
I can still hear Faith’s voice: “Don’t be a jerk, Johnny.”

Our love never went away.  Ours was a true love story.

Love doesn’t go away. It changes form.
But it does not leave.

It has stayed with me.
Guided me.
Helped me become a better man. Helped me to be open to a new love.

A more thoughtful husband to my wife, Mattie.
A man who understands a little more about what matters.

When I think about my death now, I do not see an ending.

I see a doorway.

A continuation into something held by the same love that carried me through this life.

And now, as I look from where I am.

Ninety-seven years since my birth.
And, almost fourteen years since I died in 2012.

I am in the beyond now. Still here. Just not physically.

Still loving. Just from a different place.

And from here, I can see what I could not fully see while I was living.

The way life continues.

The way a single day.
March 30 can hold so much.

The day I was born.

The day my father died.
A day that once carried sorrow and slowly made room again for celebration.

Made room again for Hope. 

My daughter, Faith, listened to the dream calling for hope.

Her daughter’s middle name is Hope.

And now, new life has entered on that same day in my family.

Hope. Born 5 years ago today. Another beginning.

Another thread in the same fabric.

Through my children.
Through their children.
Through generations, I would only begin to know. 

And, they only know me now through the thread of story. 

Something is humbling in that.

Something sacred.

What we begin, we do not finish.
Not in the way we think.

Life carries it forward.

If I could sit with you now,
If I could tell you my story the way stories are meant to be told.
Not written, but spoken, felt, lived I would.

And now in  a way, I still can.

Because the story does not end with me.

It lives in you.

And maybe, in some quiet way,
You can still hear me.

Not just in memory. In your heart and mind.
In presence. In loving. yourself and one another.

Still speaking. Still guiding.
Still part of the life that continues to unfold.

My life did not end.

It moved. Our relationship did not end with my death. It only changed.

Just as yours will.

And all of it… All of it…
Begins and ends with birth and death. Two doors to the same journey.

Love,

Jack