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"We're on a mission from God." --Elwood Blues

Updated: 19 hours ago




We’re on a mission from God.

 

It's 4:01 in the morning. I am wakened by wild dreams and memories of my father, who passed in 2019. He fought one hell of a long illness that included surgeries and lengthy hospitalizations that left our family with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I wish it were all some bad dream, but then I would have to have been sleeping; I assure you I was awake.


As a kid, I would have bad dreams, and my father would be by my bedside, comforting me and cradling my head in his hands. There was something about his hands that I will never forget. They were large, strong, but gentle. They were the hands of someone who had been there and done that. Hands that learned tough lessons and, as a result, grew from those experiences. God, if only I could feel those hands once more...

 

So many things flood my mind, including how he read to me before bedtime, If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss, or taught me how to play chess as I came of age. He also gave me a love for model railroads. Together, we won the science fair with a simple project on what makes a toy train run.

 

My father’s two favorite movies were 1941 and The Blues Brothers. I know both "b" rate comedies at best, but this was my dad's taste in film: ridiculous plots, bad jokes, and humor of the absurd. The only connection between these films is Steven Spielberg, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi. 1941 was a disaster of a comedy. Spielberg directed it. It’s incredible that they even let Spielberg direct again. "Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert, who called Spielberg’s first – and to date, last – comedy an "assault on our eyes and ears, a nonstop series of climaxes, screams, explosions, double-takes [and] sight gags … that's finally just not very funny.” I never agreed with the critics of a film, but perhaps Roger Ebert was right. That didn't matter to my dad; he loved it with all his heart.

 

In The Blues Brothers, Spielberg makes a cameo appearance as the Cook County Tax Assessor's Clerk, who receives the $5,000 to complete Jake and Elwood Blue's mission from God to save the orphanage where they grew up.

 

These films make me smile when I think of my dad—from the corny acting and bad jokes to the crazy plots. That's my dad's taste in films; what can I say? We all have our thing, and that was his. I was blessed to know the guy.

 

We didn't always see eye to eye, and sometimes, I hurt him with my actions and words. Times when I said things and didn't fully appreciate the sacrifices he and my mom were making to put me through college to be the first one in my immediate family to graduate with a four-year degree.


Throughout the years, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought there was plenty of time. I thought one day we could talk about all that had happened since I became a moody teenager and an arrogant, know-it-all adolescent turned married career-driven adult. I kept him and my family at a distance. I realize now, all these years after his passing, what a mistake that was; however, as Anna Nalik wrote in her song 2 am about regrets:

 

 

I wish I could cradle my dad’s head in my hands the way he did for me as a kid when I had terrible dreams. I wish I had just one more minute, hour, day—one more--you know.


When I would visit him in the hospital, I felt it was some professional responsibility as a pastor and a son to pray with him. My dad was never one to pray out loud. At least, I had never seen it, but I thought maybe this was the time he experienced something different. I think I was trying to save him, but who knows? This is six years later, and my feelings about this time are so raw as his hands would be after shoveling snow after a storm. The storm for me has never stopped. It has only built to this point, and I think the only way to stop it is to tell his story. I will go on. So, I did what I thought would help. I took his hands in mine and prayed the Lord's prayer with him. It's all I could muster, no words of grace or bargaining with God for healing. These were words that were spoken over 2000 years ago in a wine garden of weeping and the sweating of blood right before Jesus’ arrest leading to his death. He had hands, too, hands that healed the sick, drove out demons, opened the eyes of the blind, and restored the outcast to the community—and prayed when he needed his father. I need my father at this moment. I need his hands.


I don't doubt that my dad had faith; after all, he was married to the love of his life for over 48 years and raised four kids who put him through HE-double-hockey sticks.

 

The last time I saw my dad was on the Saturday evening before he completed his mission from God. As a family, we gathered at one of his favorite restaurants, Como, in Niagara Falls, NY. We ate and laughed, but I could tell something was off. He didn’t seem like himself. A spark was going out, like the flickering of a light bulb that wasn’t screwed in, just tight.  Something had been taken from him, but I didn't put it all together. How could I? All I had to work was, "Give us this day, our daily bread." So we ate, drank, and laughed the night away.

 

When we returned to my sister's house, where he was convalescing from a hospital stay that lasted almost three months, I walked him around the block in his wheelchair to have some more time with him. I can't remember what we talked about, but I remember feeling that he could leave us anytime, but this would not be that night. I was going to make sure of that; I was on a mission from God.

 

We stopped before my sister's house, and I took his hands as I had before and prayed those words: "Our Father who art in heaven..." His hands trembled, and I didn't know what to think. Those hands were hurting with the emotional pain of what he had endured; I wept as the Son of God did in that wine garden, sweating blood as he prayed to his father. I hugged him good night for what my gut told me would be the last time, but I wasn't buying what my gut was selling; I was floating down the river of denial.

 

In the back of my mind, my dad would always be there for me and my family; I couldn't imagine him not. He was Dad, or I always thought of him as Elwood Blues, who coined the phrase, "We're on a mission from God," while being chased by the Chicago police through the city, suburbs, and into the parking lot of a shopping mall and then through that shopping mall.  It's corny, corny, but that scene always makes me smile. It's also important to note that the great Bill Murray also has a cameo appearance as he is looking for a Miss Piggy doll at Toys R' Us just as Elwood and Jake crash through in their 'auction police car' with cop tires, cop motor, and cop suspension.

 

I went to work the next day and preached my guts out about the grace of God and the ability to heal, yet I couldn't make God heal my father. I went home frustrated and tried to rest in the afternoon and recover with my after-church nap. I spent the afternoon with my wife, daughter, and black labrador retriever, whom we called Buddy.


I didn't call my dad that day. I wish I would have, but I can't change the past. Oh yeah, it's like,



That evening, my dad attended my sister’s birthday party for the last time. I thought, what an excellent thing for him to do. I didn't call to say good night; I love you the way he had said it a thousand times before to me on the end of my bed after reading that dam Dr. Seuss book If I Ran... the truth is I couldn't run anything, not even my own life.


I thought I had just seen him. What more would I have to say, "I'll call him on Monday." Now I realize there was plenty to say, but I didn't have the guts. Those guts told me time was short, but I was buying a bigger boat for the river of denial.


His hands haunt me sometimes. Perhaps it's because they held me so many times when I hurt him. Maybe I wonder if I can hold onto my daughter's hands like he held mine when I made mistakes or hurt him and my mother with words and actions.


Do I have the strength of God who held his Son's hands in the wine garden that night?


The afternoon came and went, turning into a beautiful evening; it was dark now, and I was on the porch with my heavy glass of Larceny bourbon and a St. Louis Rey Reserve Especial cigar. It has a dark, oily wrapper with notes of oak and spice. It takes a good hour and a half to smoke, and as I doomed, scrolled Facebook and the other social media trash sites. I didn't call; I couldn't. I can't tell you how much I wish I had. I went to bed thinking there will always be tomorrow. Tomorrow came, and my boat on the river of denial pulled into the port of grief and truth.


As I ate my lunch, watching the world's madness unfold with the talking heads of the national news, the phone rang like a nuclear explosion. It was like heaven's bell declaring something tremendous and terrible had happened simultaneously; it was my sister.


Before I answered it, I knew that my dad had died and completed his mission from God. My sister, weeping, had told me he had collapsed during PT, that the ambulance had taken my dad to the hospital, and he was unresponsive. I sat there for about half an hour with tears in my eyes; I called my wife, got my daughter and Buddy in the car, and set off for a three-hour drive of grief and loss. I thought of his hands, warm, soft, large, full of grace. I thought of how many times I held his hands and prayed, "For thine is the kingdom, power, and glory now and forever. Amen"

 

I arrived in the Emergency Room, and it was bedlam. In addition to my dad's death, there were patients racked and stacked in the hallway, all crying out for someone--anyone's hands. There was no one for them; I began to cry like the Son of God in the wine garden, hands folded and sweating blood. I just wanted my father's hands.


My mother was weeping and cutting the locks of his hair. His cold body had a sheet up to his chest, and his hands were lying there, lifeless and cold. He was still hooked up to machines, but they were off, and some of the monitors showed a flat line indicating death. His hands were not like I remembered. They were cold and lifeless.


With my best friend Jerry, we took his hands, and I cried out loud. So much so that a nurse came in to see if everything was okay, but it wasn't OK. My dad was gone. Didn't she know that? Didn’t she know this was Elwood Blues? That this was a great man…this was my dad, and he had completed his mission from God. I scowled at her with anger and tears. She walked away as if she were afraid of me; that was the way I wanted it. We took my dad's hands. We prayed those words, "Our Father who art in heaven..." however, It seemed they were falling on deaf ears. Did God stop listening? Or maybe those words were for a time and place, and this was neither. I cried and fell on my dad's chest.

 

I felt so alone at that moment, but I wasn’t. My mom, sister, brother, his girlfriend at the time—now his wife, my wife, and daughter were present, but we weren’t.


Nothing was okay, so for the second time that week, we went to the restaurant where we ate on Saturday night. Instead of sitting in the dining room this time, we opted for the lounge--dark and quiet this time of day. No one could see the tears streaming down our faces. It was the same waitstaff and manager from the Saturday when we were eating, drinking, laughing, and quoting old movies, "We're on a mission from God," we said. They shared their condolences and the platitudes you say when someone passes, "They are in a better place" or "They are not suffering anymore." Damit, why doesn't anyone say, "This sucks to high hell!" All my years doing this work with grieving families, I think it's because they have never held their "father's hands."


This evening was very different; it was cold. My dad had left us, and we were trying to fill the vacuum of joy that my dad had brought to any situation. My dad could find a silver lining even in the worst plot of a movie. At Some point, I'll write about his conspiracy theory concerning Glenda, the good witch of the North, in Frank L. Baum's The Wizard of Oz. That was my dad always coming up with something to add to an already ridiculous plot.

 

What exactly was my dad’s mission from God? All these years later, I am still not sure. Still, I have an inkling perhaps it was to do the best he could with what he had: to raise a family and go through joys, hardships, and the hell of it all while teaching his wife, children, and only grandchild to remember that there is great power in love that can only come from God and holding one another s hands. And, oh yeah, in The Blues Brothers, Steven Spielberg has a cameo appearance.

 

Well done, Dad, receive your reward.

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