A winter of discontent, a spring of hope and new life

When my wife, children, aunts and uncles and cousins gather Friday in Spokane, Washington to remember and bury my father, lilacs and other spring flowers should be in early bloom under a partly cloudy sky pierced by the rays of a freshening sun.

Saying goodbye to Robert Mims Sr., who died January 17 at age 96, while holding the hand of his wife, 91-year-old Katherine, will seem so much more appropriate as springtime unfolds rather than in the depths of winter, when his sojourn here ended.

It has been a tough year. Lost a job I loved, at the Salt Lake Tribune, after a mass layoff ended 20 years at the newspaper last May. Depression, a frantic search for meaning and purpose, followed. But gradually, buoyed by faith, family and friends, I once more began to move forward.

Then, Dad died. Not unexpectedly, but . . . still. 

This farewell comes after 40 days of the Akathist to Jesus Christ for the Departed prayer, as is the practice of my new Orthodox Christian faith. Dozens of candles have been lit for him, joining other remembrances of beeswax, wick and flame in the narthex shrine of Sts. Peter and Paul Church, adding their light to those lit for other beloved and mourned. . . their light flickering off the shiny surfaces of that "great cloud of witnesses" Paul wrote about, the saints, or at least their icons adorning the walls and ceilings of the temple.

Mom won't be at the memorial. In a wheelchair, on oxygen, unable attend to the most basic physical functions, her memories, ability to speak or understand have long since been robbed as late-stage Alzheimer's disease ushers her toward an end in increasing unconsciousness.

Neither will my "big sister," barely able to walk due to her age, cerebral palsy, and unable to comprehend Daddy's death so directly, given cognitive abilities of a 3-4 year old child. Dad is "with Jesus," my sister Carolyn knows, and that is enough.

I will see them both, my mother and sister, before I fly back to Utah. Likely it will be a final goodbye to the shell of what my once-vibrant, sharp-witted and quick-to-laugh mother was, yearning for a second of recognition. Regardless, she will get my love, a caress, a kiss and a prayer.

In college, I briefly wrote poetry. A professor liked it enough to give me an "A." A collection of those poems, scribbled on white lined paper and stuffed into a three-hole punch binder, have long since been lost, likely tossed during one of many moves over the past decades.

And while I have no delusions about reprising any abilities in that form, here, however flawed, is an attempt, for Dad's sake:

We live, we die
We give, we fly
Leaving in winter
Returning in spring
Flowers and resurrection
We bring

Grief in short
Mourning long
Death comes in ice and snow
Life rides equinoctial song
Memories precious, bitter, sweet
gathered in time short, and long

Father has passed
Buried in soil
Dad is immortal
In dreams nocturnal
A being of love and light
Memories eternal

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An Akathist for Dad: How an ancient prayer erased the barrier between my life and his death

 For forty days after my father's death, I believe we communicated on a level not just more precious and succinct than we had for many years, but deeper and more meaningfully than ever before.

 I'm not talking about spiritualist seances, ghostly apparitions or any other "new age" self-delusions so popular, or even the "near death experience" crowd and its money-making exaggerations of, or fabrications about the hereafter.

 No. But Orthodox Christians do pray for the dead -- their own, and ultimately ALL those who have passed from this life, believers or not. We do that at every liturgy, and at length during specially designated services throughout the year like the most recent "Souls Saturday."

 We especially pray for our loved ones, following a practice as ancient as our 2,000-year-old faith. So, offering me solace after my father, Robert Mims Sr. died at 96 in mid-January, my "spiritual father" -- Fr. Justin Havens, who ironically is a couple years younger than my own son -- suggested I pray the "Akathist for a Loved One who has Fallen Asleep" during my 40-day period of mourning.

 There's a lot of theology, tradition and pure poetry within this prayer. And certainly, it is first a prayer of intercession on behalf of the departed.

 Intercession, in that it seeks to support and bless a loved one who has passed in much the same way we do when they are physically present with us -- and for with Orthodox Christians, there is no separation between the living and those who have died.

 We pray for them, they pray for us; the circle is NOT broken; in the Eucharist and liturgy we enter heaven in worship, the church corporeal and the church spiritual becoming one in time and space.

 But it is more than this intercessory act of love for the dead. It is also meant as a spiritual balm and therapy for those who mourn. And THAT is what I meant by my opening comment.

 During those forty days of prayer, there was a photograph of my father on a shelf below icons of Christ, His Mother, several saints, and the cross, I communed with the Holy Mystery, and my dad, too. Often tears halted me, and at those times it seemed the piercing eyes of my father and his knowing smile literally shown with love. . . and encouragement.

 The last of the forty days of the akathist came on a Sunday, so I had arrived a bit early to have time in a small chapel off the narthex of Sts. Peter & Paul in downtown Salt Lake City. It was the toughest of the prayers for me, as if I was finally saying goodbye.

 I sobbed through much of the prayer, but as I neared its end there was peace; the bittersweet was somehow, well, sweeter.

 One of many of the prayer's kontakions that echo in my mind still was this one:

 "When earthly sojourning is ended, how grace-filled in the passing to the world of the Spirit; what contemplation of new things, unknown to the earthly world, and of heavenly beauties.

 "The soul returns to its fatherland, where the bright sun, the righteousness of God, enlightens those who sing: Alleluia!"