Things Only Heaven Can Fix (Part Five)

…
He is gone now.

And if I could truly convey the depths of his account, I would impress upon you the burden with which he lived his life. The abuses, the tragedies and the damages done to his body and mind were immense. In turn, the brokenness and heartache he passed on to others cannot be undone in this temporal world. That is all that needs to be known in order to understand the end.

Or, perhaps… I should call it the beginning.

We visited him three times before he died. And during that last visit, my father had a few moments alone with him. I watched from the hallway, through a crack in the door, as they talked.

This is the image I want to keep of him, and bury all the rest:
He is propped up in his hospital bed. Tears fill his eyes. The cancer is ravaging him, but he still has the strength to speak. At his bedside sits my father, hunched over, holding his wrinkled hand. I cannot hear the words being spoken between them, but I know they impart repentance. And forgiveness. This man has spoken the name of Jesus for most of his life, but he has never quite understood the power therein. My eyes, peering intently into the splinter of light, behold redemption. I catch a small glimpse of the scandalous grace that is the gospel.
The grace that changes and washes all else away.

He took his last breath, alone in that room, just a couple days later. The bed sat empty for a time. The whiteboard on the door, blank. His name, erased.
Wiped clean.
The government claimed his body and buried him in a veteran’s cemetery. It was the last thing bestowed to him on this earth. A plot of dirt for his sacrifices in Vietnam.
Dirt.
That was the best this world had to offer him.

And though he left this place an empty, broken man, he also left clinging with all he had to something greater than himself. Someone greater. Greater than everything that had ever been done to him and greater than everything he had ever done: Jesus.

When he slipped out of that lonely room, he passed into another one that was echoing with multitudes, rejoicing and praising that Greater One who won the battle none of them could win.

I suppose, in a way, I am still standing in the hallway. Waiting. Only having seen a glimpse of redemption through a crack in the door. There is healing in the other room and I long to partake in it.
I will. One day.
But of this I am certain: He was something that only heaven could fix.
And perhaps I have come to realize with clearer understanding that I am too.