Surrounded by Love

I look around the room. Every flat surface is covered by pictures. Smiling faces of his wife, his daughters, and all his "boogers". The bed where he spent every night of the last thirty plus years with the love of his life is gone. Replaced by a hospital bed with whirring ticking sighing appendages. He is waiting, we're not sure what for. Perhaps it's the goodbye kiss of every grandchild, the surety that we are ok, that we will be ok. We wait. We watch. He sleeps on, surrounded by the love he created. We are not on death watch. We are on a heaven watch, for in that moment that he draws his last breath here he will draw his next there. He will open his eyes to his bride elbowing Saint Peter out of the way at those pearly gates. What a welcome home party he will find. We will cry for a Papa sized hole will have formed in our hearts. Hearts that may feel like Swiss cheese for all their recent holes. We will smile through tears and remember the wonderful man who has gone on to ship shape up Heaven for our arrival someday. We will go on because that's what he taught us to do with every breath and every moment of his life. Someday soon we will have our family reunion in the sky and on that day there will be much rejoicing. Back here we may not be able to rejoice for awhile but we will again...because the He Coon said so.