Dear Dad: Let me tell you about today (at Notre Dame)

It soaked into me as I walked across the Notre Dame campus yesterday, the grief. My footsteps fell where they had fallen more than 30 years ago, and where yours had fallen 20 years before that. I looked up at Father Sorin’s gray marble face, and it was the same face that had stared down at you.

There is something magical about such continuity, and it transformed the grief from a layer of sadness into a balm, like an ingrained, transformative, occurrence that has happened and so cannot un-happen, a way of internalizing your spirit rather than simply acknowledging its existence. You were here, I keep telling myself. You were here, and I was here, and now we are here together.

When we visited the carved mausoleum stone, it was shocking to see Mom’s name there next to yours, albeit without a death date, of course. I think you would have laughed and laughed — your way of reminding her that she can’t get rid of you so fast.

Your fifth grandson, my 11-year-old boy, loves to reduce life to pithy, manageable citations. The other day, we were talking about history, and he said, “A lot of great people are dead, right, Mom?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Like Bull,” he continued. “But they’re not really dead. Because they’re here with us.” Yes. But since you died seven months ago, I have missed you. I don’t dream about you. I haven’t felt you next to me, and that has been difficult. And then today, here, standing next to the physical you reduced to ash and bone and sealed in a carved wooden urn — you seemed more gone than ever.

After the service, we stood in front of the mausoleum and Fr. Kollman blessed the stone with your name, and then blessed the urn — a lovely, simple, wooden urn hand-carved by Franciscan monks. I stared at it, feeling flummoxed. How could this small chest, the size of a shoe box, possibly contain the big-spirited, omnipresent, generous, tall, handsome, you?

“He’s not in there, right?” I whispered to Fr. Kollman, weirdly desperate for reassurance.

“No,” he said. “Those are just his remains.” He was quiet for a moment. “Your father was pretty larger than life, I take it.” You were. You are. And at that very moment, I became filled with the idea of you, and the certainty of your spirit soaring overhead in the cloudless blue sky, circling the Golden Dome, diving down to circle around our heads and hearts, then back up into your forever life.

Later, before Fr. Kollman left, I asked him to bless the cross I wore. It’s an exact replica of the Cross of the Holy Spirit you were wearing when you died. I felt a bit silly because I’m no longer the least bit religious, but I love this cross because of you and I know the blessing would have meant something to you. Fr. Kollman did his priestly thing over my necklace, but he was speaking to you as he did it, perhaps reminding you of your ongoing parental duties. “May your spirit flow freely in her,” he said. “Guard her.”

His words made me so happy. I came here thinking it would be my final goodbye to you. I had no idea it would also be an exuberant realization of your living spirit. I have inhaled your life force and created in my own self a permanent space for you, a steady place for you to reside and stay alive and be relevant. In this way, the final goodbye has become the first of the many, many reunions we’ll have — for from this day forward, though I will always miss your voice and hugs and visits, I will greet you each day like the presence you forever have been for me, and the presence you always will be. Hi, Dad. I’m so glad you’re here with me.