Now Thank We All Our God

The day before Thanksgiving was bleak and raw.  The sky was the color of wet ash.  Margaret sat disconsolate on the living room floor, hugging her knees, and wondering why the men in her life left her when she needed them the most.

On the end table there was a stack of sympathy cards (“Sorry to hear about your Dad… I knew your father and he was a fine man…May God comfort you in your time of grief.”), unpaid bills, and a letter from her attorney explaining that getting overdue child support and alimony from a deadbeat, out-of-state ex-husband was not an easy or inexpensive procedure.

Stacks of old blank-and-white photos were scattered around her on the floor.  There she was when she was just a slip of a girl, hugging her father’s leg, both of them smiling.  How young and strong and handsome he was.  There she was on the porch of the cabin up north.  It was a place where the mountains come down to wash their feet in the cold lake waters.  The cabin was on a lake in a valley, surrounded by trees.

At night she’d sit with her father on the screened-in porch, and they’d watch the sunset, and he’d blow smoke rings and tell her stories and make her laugh.  They’d sing hymns: “Amazing Grace,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Softly and Tenderly.”  His favorite was “Now Thank We All Our God.”  One night he lit his pipe, blew out the match and asked, “When you extinguish a match, where does the flame go?”  And all that night she lay in bed and thought, Where does the flame go?

           

She thumbed through another stack of photos.  There she was with her husband.  It was a malignant marriage, and he finally left her for a secretary with long legs and a short attention span.  There she was again with her father.  Now she was older.  His hair was gray.  He had his cane; so the picture must have been taken after the stroke.  She remembered him hobbling around his apartment, grabbing onto pieces of furniture for balance.  There she was with him on the church steps.  She picked him up every Sunday for church, and they were walking up the steps she’d always stop and straighten his tie.  His tie was never straight.

When she saw him at the funeral, asleep in his best brown suit, she thought, Where’s my father?  Where is his mind?  Where are his memories?  Where is the sound of his laughter?  Where are all his stories?  He used to say that’s why he walked so slow, because he was remembering all the stories.  The match was extinguished, but where was the flame?  There he lay, the world’s best father.  He had taught her how to skip stones, how to cast a fly-reel, how to ride a horse.  To all the world he was just one man, but this one man was all the world to her.  She straightened his tie and whispered “I love you, Dad.”

Sitting there on the floor, Margaret prayed.  She thanked God that her father was no longer in any pain, and that out of a bad marriage had come 2 good kids.  She thanked God for the good memories that got her through the bad times, and for the promise of a better time.  She asked God for the strength to be both a mother and a father to her children.  She thanked God for the assurance that, although others might leave her, He never would.  She sang “Now Thank We All Our God” in a weak, weepy voice.  Her eyes began to leak, and her mascara got smeared and streaky.

Then she leaned back against the wall and fell asleep and dreamed of a golden, sunny valley.  There was a blue stream, and a man was standing by the shore, skipping stones.  He was a young, strong, handsome man, and he waved at her and smiled and called “Maggie!”

“Daddy” she cried, her heart filled with joy.  And she ran to his arms, pigtails bouncing, little-girl legs running through the meadow, a happy child, happy forever.