Peace, love, and rainbows

Excerpt from my personal diary. This entry means so much more after losing momma. I cannot read it without weeping. I miss them both so very much.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Peace, love, and rainbows

So Tuesday after work, I rode to Dayton with my mom so she could get her Physical Therapy done on her back.  After we went, it started raining and it rained the entire hour of her PT.  When mom got done with it, I told her I wanted to go visit Daddy's grave.  As soon as we turned onto the road headed toward the cemetery, there was the most beautiful rainbow.  It was only a partial rainbow and didn't complete an entire arc.  Its like the upper part of the arc just disappeared into the heavens. 

As we drove down the little one lane road, as we got closer to the rainbow, the rainbow itself got wider and brighter.  Then we noticed another faint rainbow, right next to it.  It is too faint to see in the pictures I actually took on the way to the cemetery.  The closer we got to the cemetery, the more it seemed that the rainbow was leading us there and that the other end of the rainbow was right over the cemetery. 

As we turned onto the little dirt road that the cemetery was on, I saw two deer standing in the road and I stopped the car, waiting on them to cross and one stopped and looked at me right in the eye; then two more pranced across the road slowly and another made eye contact with me briefly as it leaped into the grassy area on the other side of the road.  I remember the look in their eyes, neither expression (from either deer) was out of fear; you know sometimes you expect the "deer in the headlights" look but that wasn't it at all.  It almost seemed like a gesture of courtesy instead of fear.  I can still see that last deer's face in my mind.  I'll probably always remember the expression on her face and the big fluffy white tail as she turned and leaped into the woods.

I arrived at the cemetery, I looked up to the sky to the rainbow that had guided us there and it disappeared.  Just as quickly as we had spotted in the sky, it was gone.  I drove up the little path through the cemetery and parked next to my dad's unmarked grave.  It still had the flowers we put on it for "decoration" on Mother's Day, seemingly just as we left it (that was the last day I visited him). No grass had grown and no dirt had settled.  It was just as I remembered it.  As I stood there in silence, with gentle warm tears rolling down my face, there was a soft breeze that wrapped itself around me.  The breeze itself wasn't really warm but it wasn't cool either.  All of a sudden I felt completely surrounded by warmth and I just felt completely at peace and knew he was at peace too. 

In the Bible, a single rainbow symbolized God's covenant to Noah to never destroy the earth by flood again.  In modern times, the symbolism of rainbows has been with homosexuality and gay pride but the Christian symbolism remains similar; a single rainbow is a symbol of God's promise to you and his covenant to you to never leave you and to see you through all of the obstacles in your life. 

The double rainbow is the symbol of transformation. My life has totally changed since losing my father.  Its changed for everyone in my family and our family friends. I know losing him has changed me.  When he passed, there were a ton of flowers and plants.  I got a single red rose (which has since dried) that I keep in my living room on top of our entertainment center and a potted plant (a peace lily).  My mom kept most of the flowers and gave some to her brother, sister, and their kids and one to my grandmother. Every plant from my father's funeral that my mom kept herself has died.  Mine is the only one still living that I know of. 

I call it "daddy".  I know that seems incredibly stupid but somehow I guess if I keep that plant alive and talk to him (my dad -- not the plant), that it keeps him alive somehow.  I'm a little neurotic about making sure it gets watered once a week and I keep all of the dead leaves pulled and clipped away and I really care for it.  My momma looked at me so funny the first time I asked her to water Daddy.  We were leaving PT and it was raining and I said to mom -- remind me to water Daddy.. She put her hand out in the rain and said gently, "Your daddy is getting watered right now"...  Somehow that was comforting to me. 

I loved my Daddy.  I never knew how much though until he was gone.  We fought a lot, because we were so much alike and we bucked heads a lot.  But after he coded I held his left hand everytime I saw him, because I knew it was connected straight to his heart.  I miss him so much. I know I always will.