Dad, who had earned a master’s degree in journalism, who’d had a career as an author, could no longer understand the daily newspaper.
That painful moment, even now, brings tears to my eyes. My memories of the years that followed—increasing dementia, moves to nursing homes and finally a secure memory care unit—have most often been memories of loss, a loss forever captured by that last glimpse of my father in his old pajamas.
Dad wanted the text for his funeral sermon to be based on the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-4). “I would like to think,” he wrote, “that when the time comes for me to stand before that great mystery of the unknown, that I, too, may have the courage of Abraham and trust that God will be there, too.”
This message is an excerpt from “My father’s pajamas” by Karen G. Bockelman in the June 2018 issue of Gather magazine. Today we remember John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, who died in 407.
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