Where is God? Where is my Dad?

[Tucoball]

I lost my Dad to pancreatic cancer on February 6th. This was the most difficult thing I have ever been through. My first prayer to God was to please not take my Dad. I flew to be with him in his last week of life and when I saw him I asked God to take him quickly. It took 6 more days. Six days of pain, suffering and loss of dignity while I had to assist a total stranger with changing his diaper. Now that he is gone I wonder where my Dad is. I attend his funeral every time I close my eyes. I see the black liquid that spilled from his nose while I rolled him to his side to bathe him 30 minutes after he died. I have lost my faith.

 

It occurred to me that I was taught when we die we go to be with Him in heaven. And there we feel no pain and everything is perfect. Is it really true? If I were to ask a Hindu he would tell me that my Dad is a cow. It's all about faith and what we believe or were taught to help us move on and make us comfortable. God took my Dad and made him suffer while He did it. I last kissed my Dad's cold forehead before they closed his casket. How can I know for sure that he is not alone, ice cold, in the dark buried under 8 feet of earth? I miss him terribly. Where is my Dad? Where is our merciful God? He abandoned us and now we are both suffering.

[Naive]

I know how you feel. I lost my mom when I was 12 and it was the worse feeling ever. It hurt so much, so bad. I prayed to God from the bottom of my heart, from deep inside my soul but my prayer was not answered, at least not how I wanted it to be answered. I was thought that when you pray from your heart, from deep inside of you with all your faith God hears you. Since then all that was washed away. I do believe in God but I cannot say that I have the same faith in him. It's sad but now I try not to pray a lot because I do not want to be disappointed. I tend to think that if I save my prayers for selected things there is a bigger chance of him hearing me out when I need him.

 

I just want you to know that you are not alone and if you need to let it out you can always PM me.

 

I know it's hard. There is no answer as to where your dad is and that is scary but what can we do? That's life. If there is one thing we are sure in this world is that one day we are going to die.

[moimeme]

God took my Dad and made him suffer while He did it.

 

God didn't do that. Some unpleasant pathogens did. Nor did God abandon you. God is not celestial Santa Clause, there to give all good boys and girls everything they want.

 

We humans want our free will and that means we have made all sorts of choices (like funding wars instead of medical research, for instance) for which we and our fellow humans suffer consequences. We were given the world but we've made it the way it is and we are stuck with it. That's not God's fault.

 

I'm very sorry for your loss and I'm very sorry your dad suffered. Take comfort in the fact that his suffering is over.

 

Where is he? We are, all of us, energy. Everything you see and most of what you can't see is energy at base; different arrangements of its components create different elements but when you break it all down, that's all we are. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. That means your dad still exists. Maybe he's in our dimension but operating at a frequency nobody can detect. Maybe he's in another dimension. (Maybe it's called 'heaven'). But he hasn't ceased to be.

[Israfil]

Maybe there is no God?

 

There is freedom in there - somewhere.

[Stone]

God is with you so is your father and you will see them both one day.

[Undertaker]

I was debating on whether or not to post a reply to this considering my username. So forgive me if it seems tasteless (I watch wrestling).

 

Anyway, I often find myself in your position of questions why things happen IF there is a God and what not. I also have learned to sometimes live by the saying, "When life gives you lemons...make lemonade". It's a simple, sometimes stupid saying, but if you break it down...it has a very good lesson.

 

For one thing, 'life will give you lemons'...meaning, bad stuff happens to all people - good or bad.

 

The 'make lemonade' part refers to what you're going to do when the bad stuff happens.

 

Are you ever really going to get over losing your Father? Of course not. But what are you going to do after losing him? What would he want you to do? Would he want you to question your faith like you are now? Regardless of your faith and what you believe, you know that where ever your father is right now...he is feeling no pain. Meanwhile, you are still alive and in pain. But, ultimately it's going to be up to you whether or not you chose to believe in something greater than all of us & with that, will come the answers for which you are looking.

[Moose]

Listen, you sound angry at God for what happened to your Dad. It's not God's fault. Some of the things I'm going to tell you may not be what you want to hear, but please understand, what I say is based on my personal faith, and doesn't neccessarily mean that you have to believe it. You opened the door, and now I'm going to come in and tell you what I think.

 

I'm sincerely sorry your Father suffered the way he did. Mine died of a heart attack, butt naked on his couch at home. Talk about embarrassing! What you went through was horrible. I'm sorry that those images are going to be in your mind your life. Try not to dwell on that. Your Father pasted the way he did because it was the natural selection of things. Not God saying, "I'm going to make this man suffer, and his family along with him".

 

IF, your Father accepted Jesus' gift of dying for our sins, traveled the Roman's road, and had faith in God's promise, he is indeed in heaven. Otherwise, he is now dead. He's not an energy beam, or frequency lingering in the air. Hell is a real place, and people do go there and suffer. God told us that those who don't believe will die and be seperated from life itself, so that to me means that people who do burn in hell, ultimatley die and are permanetly seperated from life.

 

I truly hope your Father was saved before he pasted. If so, he's no longer suffering and is enjoying his glorified body while conversing with other saved souls. Don't lose your faith. God may have brought this into your life so that you can help others through the same thing.

[blind_otter]

After I lost my first baby I was angry at everyone and everything. It really made me feel upset. After I delivered the second one into my own hands, dead, and the poor little thing slipped out of my hands and hit the floor in the ER bathroom I was actually not as upset. I just accepted it. Life is life, death is death. Everything happens, people die whether you want them to or not, whether they are loved or not....

 

My Dad is terminally ill now, and I really feel for you. But when I pray, I never pray for anything specifically. I just ask for the resolution to be as it should be.

 

I hope you find strength and growth from this experience. My thoughts are with you and your family. Good luck to you. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is a good author to read about death and dying. She is a therapist who works with hospice patients.

[Pocky]

Death is a part of life. There is nothing you or anyone can do to bypass that reality. At some point we all must come to terms with this. Life wouldn't be as valuable to us if it never ended.

 

As a Buddhist I would tell you that your father decided this path for a reason. That your father chose to have his life end this way because he needed to learn form this experience so that he could move on to enlightenment. I'd tell you that you chose your father and agreed to experience this with him. That both of you agreed that you needed to learn from this experience.

 

I'd also say that your father will continue to be reborn until he reaches nirvana and ends the cycle of samsara. I'd tell you that life itself is the epitome of suffering and it's through this realization that we obtain enlightenment. Your father isn't suffering now that he's left the physical plane, but when he chooses his next path he will be born once again to obtain the knowledge he needs.

 

As a Buddhist, I'd tell you that your father is one step closer to nirvana.

[HokeyReligions]

Questioning religious beliefs and anger are a natural part of the grief process. If we are fortunate enough to love someone, it hurts to lose them. It's not something to get over, but to get through.

 

As for God, well, I don't believe in God so my views on that may not mesh with what you are feeling right now and I don't want to influence you away from your belief when your emotions are so vulnerable right now.

 

I used to believe in God and something that you do have to separate is that no God holds power over mortal life or mortal death. Everything dies. Some believe that their God holds power over the manner of death, but I don't think that is necessarily true, unless that God has some kind of 'suffering scale' that we do not understand. The one thing that our laws, including most religious 'laws', does not give us is freedom to choose our manner of death.

 

We hold on to tradition and superstition to help us in our grief process, and sometimes when we question those things we feel worse before we feel better. Perhaps if you spoke with the minister at your church of your faith they could better explain to you God's role in life and death.

 

Losing someone hurts. I know. I've been down that road too many times to count and am facing it with my mother right now. It's okay to cry and to question---for a while. You will get through this and you will establish routines which are comfortable and you will stop crying one day. Don't try to rush it, just navigate your life day by day right now, even hour by hour if you need. Look for some grief sites online. I can't link commercial sites here, but there is one that I've recommended to people before and where I go sometimes. Look for beyondindigo.com and you may find some words there to help you understand and ease your pain.

[suegail]

I am so very sorry you lost your father and that you had to go through such a traumatic experience, seeing him suffer. How hard that is...

 

My mother has a very serious illness so i'm sort of bracing myself. I don't want to see her suffer ever, but she is having a very difficult time and it's hard to watch her go through it.

 

Yes, I do believe that if the soul is in God's hands, there is no reason for fear. You mentioned that this is what you'd been taught... And yes, I do believe Heaven is a place without suffering of any kind, and this is why regardless of what happens to us here, what happens to our bodies, the soul is safe in the hands of a loving God, who never brought pain of any kind to us, but does deliver us from it.

 

I am reminded of a family out here who lost a son, a dearly loved son who had such great potential, plans for college. He was driving on a snowmobile and someone hit him, killed him in the accident and apparently panicked and ran from the scene. Well, the family made a statement to the newspaper which quite amazed me...they said, "hey, we were blessed to have him with us for 18 years. we have no doubt he is in Heaven and is doing great in every way and we know we'll see him again." they then expressed that their concern was for the person who'd hit him because they didn't want that person to suffer from this all the rest of their life. These people understand something about God and about life and death, something so rare, something I think is hard for even many who do have faith to grasp.

 

I hope and pray you will find peace about your father's passing. I'm sure he would want that for you, more than anything.

[Nicholas]

Do not let anyone allow you to question whether or not your father is in heaven.

 

Heaven is for the living, not the dead.

 

If you don't feel positively about a belief in God, you don't need it. The idea of God is a human manifestation of love (which is why truth is relatively unimportant if you think about it)--try your best to find a community to rely on, whether it's your grieving family, a licensed therapist, some group counselling--some sort of environment where you can feel love again. Because it's love that led you to God in the first place--if ever you're coming back, it's on the same road.

[quankanne]

Tuco, you have my sincerest condolences on losing your dad ...

 

that journey of faith and death and life is different for us all, so I can't honestly tell you that what helped me will help you, but take comfort in knowing that somewhere, your dad is at peace and the love he's had for you all his life doesn't end with his death, and that the way his physical life ended has no bearing on what he experienced spiritually.

 

I lost my mom in Dec. 03, she pretty much died a slow death due to complications from a lifelong battle with diabetes. I was truly blessed in sharing part of that journey with her because I got to witness her strong faith. I knew that she wasn't worried about dying because she was sure of her God, but rather, was worried about us kids and my dad. I still grieve for my mother, but I don't doubt that she's with God because even through all the pain and hurt and possibly even questioning, he remained her one true thing.

 

are you seeing a grief counselor, or do you have someone close to you with whom you can share what you're feeling? Sometimes, just talking about it helps resolve what you're feeling. For me, it's been my close circle of friends and the people here at the 'Shack who've eased the hurt and loss a great deal.

 

hugs,

quank