Perspective 

May 21
2 min read

Updated: Jun 12

The American flag covered coffin of a WW2 with flowers in front of it is presented with a guard standing in the background.

John R. Bergman

God in the Garden

On this earth, I have no father.

I keep the shirt he wore when he entered hospice.

For a long while, if I held the shirt close I imagined I could feel the warmth of his hug and smell his morning aftershave.

Now-I can hear his voice because I videotaped his talks with my students about

Omaha Beach, about St. Lo and the Ardennes Forest.

We wanted the young to know why and how they fought then.

(I cannot quite shake loose in my mind the frigid confusion of the Ardennes Forest.)

Certainly when I made the recordings the purpose was to preserve history but now, looking back, his words cut splinters in my heart because I took them so lightly, as tales for teenagers.

I laughed and teased him about his stories because I had heard them so often and he never demanded the Melancholy when he spoke and he never told me the worst.

He was a watchman with a cryptic insight into the world, a guy who could outrun me in his seventies.

Though he was by no means perfect, he represented to me many of the elements of the Heavenly Father: loving, curious, loyal, stern when necessary.

My father’s mind was focused on the universe, on why stars twinkle at night, and pictures of Christ that run through the Old Testament.

He found God in the garden, both toiling and worshiping.

To be absent minded was to focus not on what is before the eyes but beyond the body.

Hands working mean more time to think—about eternity and the soul and how temporal this life.

I love my father.

His thumbprint on my brain grows only deeper with

time.

A WW2 photograph of an Army soldier features my father, John Bergman.

WW2 service John R. Bergman