Do You Miss Me?

When Lori’s dad died six years ago, some friends gave her a small, stone bench with the inscription, “A father holds a child’s hand for a while…their hearts forever.”  We placed it beneath a tree, in the shade, within a few feet of our garden. From time to time, I’ve sat there, if only for a few moments, maybe after I’ve been weeding around my plants or simply taking a few moments to reflect. Whenever I’ve read the inscription, it’s always been on Lori and her dad that my thoughts have landed.

But that changed a few days ago, although George (Lori’s dad) and their love will always be present there.

I’d been throwing the baseball to my grandson, Eli, when he was ready to move on to something else. That’s when I grabbed Emersyn by the hand and walked my four-year-old granddaughter to the backyard. She was working hard on an ice cream cone, an afternoon snack, gratis Gigi. After looking at the compost pile (“Yeoow, nasty,” her standard response to the humus), we made our way to the bench and sat for a while. I knew I’d better take advantage of this rarity: a stationary four-year-old.

“What do you think is inside that barn? What color of bird is your favorite? What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Do you like to eat the cone?”

Then I eyed a jet plane, leaving its vapor-trail behind in the clean, blue sky—high above us. 

“Looka there, Emmie. See that plane?”

She nodded, squinting her eyes skyward.

“Just think, not long ago, you were in a plane like that, way up in the sky, flying back from Oklahoma.”

I was expecting her to ask perhaps how a plane could be so small like that in the sky, or maybe to talk about what it was like to be inside that plane, or perhaps even to mention the airport or landing at it. 

Her question back to me was as simple as it was surprising.

“Did you miss me?”

Her honesty was arresting, for her question probed what we want to know, deep down inside, but are often too afraid to ask.

“Did you miss me?” 

It’s a question that probes the significance of our being. It is to ask, “Am I so much a part of your life that you miss me when I’m gone? Do I matter to you in a way that, deep in your soul, you ache when I’m no longer with you?” And beneath those questions are the more fundamental ones: “What is my life? Do I define it or let someone else? What difference does my life or anyone’s make? Will anyone miss me when I join the dearly departed?”

Emmie didn’t ask all those questions, mind you, nor was she pondering “the significance of her being,” as she watched the melting ice cream drip on the grass. But one day she will ask, I feel certain, for asking the question and facing the answer is part of the human condition, the quest for meaning in the chaos of life.

At that moment, it was I, not someone else, holding that child’s hand, there and then, not at another time in another place, but there, on that bench, PopPop and Emmie, the two of us strolling back to the house, so she could wash her hands—by then sticky with ice cream. 

And so, the epigram etched on the bench does have a different meaning for me: I held the hand of the child I missed while she was on that plane, knowing I would hold her heart in mine long after she had landed, just as she will mine someday, when I’m gone.