Claw Marks To Heaven

My dad was a planner. He planned everything to the nth degree, his day, the details of a road trip, and his life. For the most part everything went as planned. Through the years I always thought he would get a hitch in his life plan. I was paying attention for when the day came that his plan would fall apart, making it nececcary for him to frantically create a contingency plan. It never happened. He pulled it off to the very end of his 86 years. But there was one thing that causes me to ponder. I think about it almost every day. HE DID NOT WANT TO GO!! He literally tried to crawl his way from death in the last moments of life. Two days before he died, he was in pain and even pleaded for someone to shoot him. Those moments were sad and pathetic in a way. Then the final hour came and he wasn't ready to face the afterlife. It seemed to me that he was hiding something. There was some guilt he did not want to share with a priest or family. I wonder about that very last second if God told him it was ok, and that his life was spent mostly for the good and he could see the torment earned absolution from his other deeds. As I said, I think about this. I come up with different conclusions depending on that day's thinking. I want to believe that he was fine with God and everthing is ok. Father Phil says that in the end God wins at that moment of death. The time must have come for dad to give it up and say, forgive me for my sin, and God Said, "Done Richard".