Fleeting Eternities
“Every moment is its own glimpse of eternity.” — Rev. Dr. Eric Park
In April the sun set on the life of a beloved family friend and at her Memorial Service, her Reverend said the above.
It moved me to my core.
I am one who ponders the mystery, joy and heartbreak of life.
I have always wished to understand others and the world around me more deeply.
That desire has become more pronounced since my son was born in 2010 and my father died in 2011.
To experience the beginning of one life and the end of another in such close proximity transformed how I process my own borrowed time on this planet.
Not only did I witness the beginning and ending of two lives, but both lives are intricately intertwined with my own.
My beloved father gave me life and I brought forth my beloved son’s life.
It is a profound experience — one I have been grappling with ever since my son’s first breath and my father’s last.
At the Memorial Service, when the Reverend said, “Every moment is its own glimpse of eternity,” I felt a measure of calm I have rarely felt when I reflect on motherhood and life without my father’s physical presence.
As I have adjusted to life and the world without my father, so too have I had to adjust to my son’s constant evolution.
When I lost my father, my son was a cherubic infant. In his face I see the passage of time, and the shift of the world as it was when my father was alive and the world as it is now.
The times I have wished to share an aspect of raising my son with my father are infinite.
Yes, my son is my father’s continuation in the world but that does not change the fact that I wish he could be a part of the growth of this individual he had a hand in creating.
An individual who has so much of his grandfather in him — from his kind, striking green eyes, to his curiosity and compassion, to his propensity for dry, chapped lips.
The Reverend’s words, however, made me realize that although every life ends, we carry those whom we have loved and who have loved us.
Every moment, too, is a lifetime in that we never know which moment will be the last.
The moments we experience and the moments we share end up defining the measure of our lives — and become the connection to those whose light we carry.
Given that I became a mother and a fatherless daughter within a year, the concept of time for me has been transformed.
There was life before motherhood, when my father was healthy, alive and an integral part of my every day.
There was life in the year after my son was born, when motherhood redefined the wonders of being alive and simultaneously, my father’s light was diminishing.
And then there has been life since my father’s death, when I have had to make sense of the world without my father in it.
Almost every milestone of my son’s has been colored by the physical absence of my father.
Witnessing the becoming of one’s children is awe-inspiring — and I have often wished I could share these moments with my father.
Next week my 14-year-old son will graduate middle school and as I prepare for his big day, I have found myself feeling very moved.
Even as I write these words, tears have sprung to my eyes.
This moment in my son’s life is yet another milestone.
He will be in high school in the Fall — this being whose heart once beat within me.
And my father has missed it.
That is a sadness I will always carry and something only those who have been fortunate to experience deep, unconditional love will be able to understand.
How I have yearned for my father’s physical presence as I have done the most important work I will ever do — raising my son to be a force of good in the world.
And yet my father has been present — in part because we are his light but also because every moment we shared remains.
When we lose loved ones, we must learn to live with their essence, rather than their presence, but if we look at every moment as a glimpse into eternity, our dead are never truly gone.
When my son receives his diploma, that moment will become its own eternity and I know my father — along with all of our dead — will be beaming on the other side of the veil.
Every moment is fleeting but every moment is also eternal.
