The darkened room is lit only by the blue hue from the computer screenof my lap top. Three feet away from me lies my 80 year-old father in his hospital bed, wheezing for breath, reaching for hallucinated objects, babbling incomprehensibly. And I try to make sense of this beginning of the end for my dad.

I struggle to understand what could be the purpose in such an ending to this life, to spend weeks if not months or years in deluded or vegetative states. As I watch my father change from being a jovial retired fighter pilot to an atrophying nursing home resident, I can only make sense of it all through the lens of my faith in something greater than us and the experience of Love.

A friend asked me tonight, “If we all believe so strongly in an afterlife of pain free and joyful salvation, why do we do everything we possibly can to avoid it?! Good question. Could it be we fear more than we believe?

Ignatius offers me another way to look at this moment. “Above all, we seek to place ourselves with God’s Son so that in all ways we seek to respond to that Love that first created us.” To place ourselves with God’s Son. That more than anything is where I want my dad right now. I desire neither his death nor his recuperation (neither sickness nor health) for I honestly don’t know what would be ‘better” for him at this point. But I do have a certainty that above all at this middle of the night moment what my dad needs more than anything is the calming grace of being in the presence of the Son of the One, one who knows exactly how it feels to be human and facing death and one who will walk that journey with him.

Even more appropriately at this time, I try to discern the implications of this moment for me. To place myself with God’s Son so in all ways I seek to respond to that Love that created me. God gave life to me, gave an essence to me, through this man gasping at my side. My connection to him is overwhelming. If his essence is no longer to be present in my life, if I will no longer hear his great stories of flying adventures or hear that knowing phone ring during half-time of the Notre Dame football games, I will still know Love because of him. I look at this moment while being in the presence of Christ and respond in love, confidently, by letting him go if need be, by comforting him for the time he remains, by not angsting or prolonging or regretting, by breathing deep and being fully present to this moment, by fluffing the pillows one more time, and calming the jittery hands with a gentle touch and raising the paper cup of water to his parched lips yet again. Mine is not a cup of sorrow to be begrudgingly swallowed that I must endure this, but a chalice of life that gives me the patience and energy to choose to sit at his side for yet another night, knowing we are both at this moment sitting with God’s Son.

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