Dear Dad,

Only four days ago you would have turned 72, had you lived to see the day. You didn't. Cancer claimed you mercilessly. After five long years of battling the disease your bodily frame could take it no more.


I've reasonable hope that I will see you again, although I have to concede that I cannot say so with absolute certainty. Yours was never a ringing confession of unshaken faith. So my echoing hope of reunion has to rest on small but important glimpses of what resided in your heart.


During the summer that was to be your last, you told me after waking up from intestinal surgery that you had read my text to you some days previously, and that you were determined to "follow suit.." I took that to mean that you had understood my heartfelt appeal to you about embracing God's offer of reconciliation and peace with him through calling on the name of Jesus. Only he, I wrote, could do for you what you really needed above anything else.


I was still hopeful that the doctors, or God, or both, could successfully help reverse the adverse direction cancer was taking you in. I clung to that hope. Fed on it. But I also had learned that sometimes our prayers go unanswered. And Heaven seemed not to pay much attention to my cries that summer, even if I tried with decent success to recruit an entire army of intercessors via the Internet. We prayed. Oh, how we prayed.


It was difficult - handling the disappointments. First, instead of recovery came a huge setback in terms of your already severe problems becoming even graver. Only a few days after being released from hospital, I got a desperate call from mum that the paramedics had been to your house to pick up and return you to hospital: to the intensive care unit this time. And on this occasion there would be no release.


Second, I had much anticipated you and I talking things through concerning your spiritual needs. I was so longing to hear you say, unabashedly and crystal-clearly, that you now cherished Jesus as Lord and Saviour of your life. That I, too, never got to hear.


I hope eternity will provide what eluded us down here on earth: reconnecting and making up for the time we lost or never shared on earth. We lived apart for most of my adult life, and seldom got to see each other. But the phone calls each Friday afternoon were a staple treat to both of us, and in a very special way helped strengthen the bond between us.


My grief doesn't sting as sharply as before, but tears form in my eyes as I think of you. And that I do every week, frequently more than once during a day. There's so much around to remind me of you, even the boots that I walk in during winter or the overcoat that mum gave me because you would no longer be needing it. Dead people don't need their personal belongings. So some of them are passed on to others. I still wear your wristwatch. It's of excellent quality. You never bought anything that was second-rate, remember?


Despite your failures and shortcomings I will always hold you in high regard. You are, after all, still my dad.