” …a church in a country village. An old log house is built right next to the church as if it is leaning on the church with its onion domes and crosses. A whimsical design wraps itself around the top of the wall on the church. The clouds in the sky have descended to the church… focused and deliberate as if they are creating the design on the wall… as if its design is embroidery joining heaven and earth…

I walked over the bridge. I stood in front of the church. I walked up the steps and through the door. I had come for a reason. In Mongolia, in the middle of the middle of nowhere I discovered that my father was dying while sitting in an internet cafe in Ulaanbaatar. I had been eating a Mars bar waiting for the slow computer to reveal funny stories from my friends. There it was… the message from my father’s old friend. As I took the train toward Moscow, a week away, I wondered what I would find there.

I sat in the church for a long time with Jay and Sergey on either side of me. The wooden floors creaked as people quietly walked in. Women from the village scrubbed the floor. The sunlight poured into the church illuminating the ancient icon stand. The bench we sat on in the back of the church, old and worn. Emotionally tentative, I felt myself leaning a little on the clear presence in this church. Trusting the moment, I rested.

I thought of my father and me. We had a long troubled relationship since I was about 8 or 10. It had been those books… it had been my forays out into the world of learning… it had been talks with my grandfather… it had been all of those things and none of those things that convinced me that I would have to find ways to survive… that it would be those things that would help me survive. I had been a good Romanian girl in every sense. My father’s glass was not empty, and I would fill it. If his plate was empty, I would quietly remove it. I had been a good student. I had never given him a reason to distrust me. His anger came out of nowhere. Often, even as a young child, I was the only one who could reason with him. After a while, simply worn out, my emotional distance grew. I really feared my father.

The last time I had seen my father was when he had been in the hospital. I saw him just before I left for China. I had not seen my father for ten years. I listened to all of his travel stories. I was sad that those stories were the only thing we could talk about to keep the old wounds from opening.  I thought of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on the drive home who had written that sometimes in the time leading up to death what is resolved is only what can be resolved. I would like to say that I felt resolution about my relationship with my father… but, I felt worn out all over again.

I thought of Gerasim in the Death of Ivan Ilytch as I sat in the church. Gerasim was the only one who knew what to do to give Ivan comfort and relief from his pain… the only one who understood Ivan Illytch and his spiritual pain… the one who had ministered to Ivan with simplicity. I have strived to be Gerasim for all of the people I have loved as they have died one by one. They are all gone now. But, I was not Gerasim to my father. I will always be sad for that.

I have one good memory of my father. Perhaps I was 10. It was in the autumn of the year. We drove to a local lake by ourselves with Jack, our dog. The water was high and my father carried me on his back over the water and into a pine woods. We walked and walked and finally sat down on the carpet of fragrant pine needles. We said nothing to each other, just looked up into the trees. Later, we stopped by the airport. JFK was running for president that year. We watched, just the two of us and the dog, as JFK drove by. He waved at us.

I shared this memory with my father on the telephone one night while he was in the hospital. Amazingly, it was the same memory that had meant something to him as well. He remembered the JFK part and I remembered the pine tree part. He told me that he loved me. I told him that I loved him. Of course, he loved me. Of course, I loved him. Love had never been denied.  This memory we shared would be our farewell to each other.

I got up from the bench and went to light a candle for my father. I tried to decide whether to light a candle for the living or for the dead. I chose the living. I prayed for an easy death for him. The tallow from the candles smelled sweetly of bees, honey and a summer’s day. I left the church in Listvyanka… walked in the snow to a bluff over the lake. The sun was setting. I could no longer see the church, but I remembered the woodcut. Just as the clouds had stitched the wispy design on the church in the picture, perhaps the design of my father’s death was meant to be for me.

I have accepted that.