Between Goodbye and Hello

13 years.

This was the first time I made it through Rustin’s birthday without the grief hitting me like a ton of bricks. For so long, it has held both the most beautiful joy and the deepest ache. They have always lived side by side for me, hello and goodbye, tangled together.

My Papa was one of the safest places of my childhood. As long as he was here, I never had to question if I was loved. He chose me like his own, and that kind of love roots you. It steadies you. It teaches you what family is supposed to feel like. Some of the happiest years of my life were when we all lived together, under one roof, with him and Granny. It was simple and loud and ordinary in the best ways. Supper at the table. M*A*S*H as a bedtime show. Granny playing old gospel hymns. Him tinkering outside like he always did. I didn’t know then how sacred those everyday moments would become.

In 2013, he wanted so badly to be there when Rus was born. CHF had put him in the hospital before, but it was always the same pattern: manage the fluid, get him stabilized, and he’d head back to the farm. So when I was sneaking him a Big Red in his hospital room and he smiled and said, “You can’t have that baby without me,” we both believed that.

There was no reason not to. He had always come home before.

But the next couple of weeks unfolded in a way none of us expected. What started as routine slowly became something heavier. The doctors’ tones changed. The pauses got longer. Conversations moved from the hallway to the room. We each had our time with him before they turned off his defibrillator, thinking it would happen fairly quickly after that. It didn’t.

We moved to the hospice floor. Our whole family piled into that room trying to be near him - naps on the floor, whispered conversations, alternating between our usual chaos and loudness and then falling completely still, quietly listening to his breathing. And there I was, past my due date, trying to fit in the bed next to him… feeling my body prepare for life while his was quietly preparing for death. Holding anticipation and heartbreak in the same breath.

I was being induced on February 11th, and the night before they gave me one last moment alone with him. I laid beside him, prayed, thanked him for choosing me all those years ago. I told him I loved him. I told him he had done enough. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be there for his final moments.

As I prepared to bring Rus into the world, Papa took his last breaths. Seventeen hours of labor. The worst physical pain of my life. The greatest joy of my life.

Family in and out of my room. The same faces that should have been around his bedside - and no one telling me. Somehow we were living in both rooms at once.

And I will forever believe that in that space between goodbye and hello… Papa and Rus were passing by each other. That Papa took his time with him. That he whispered something steady and strong into his little soul before sending him to me.

For years, Rustin’s birthday carried that shadow. The grief would rise up so quickly it felt like it knocked the air out of me. But this year… something shifted. The ache was still there. It always will be. But it didn’t crush me. It felt softer. Less like being pulled under and more like standing in the water, remembering. Maybe that’s what healing looks like.

Not forgetting. Not loving less. Just carrying it differently.

Thirteen years without him. Thirteen years with Rus.

And somehow, they still feel connected.