Dad, I’m giving your military sleeping bag to the Anglican Church of Canada. The last time you unrolled this large pocket for sleepy cadets and folded your frame into it, Eisenhower was president, and you were training to be a Naval Air Traffic Control Officer. From Midway Island, you witnessed atomic testing in the Pacific, received a gooseberry pie in a package, and wrote long letters to your sweetheart.
When civilian life resumed, you kept this olive-green souvenir of the navy, and after your death in 1995 the bedroll that once padded your bunk remained coiled in my Missouri childhood home.
Not long after the 20th century spiraled into the 21st, the sleeping bag was given to me, and I took it home to a new, more northerly, shelf. Out of active service for 61 years, nobody expected it to unfurl for a second mission, and if the pandemic had not struck, it might have lain dormant forever.
But today the Community Director of a Toronto church has called your Navy gear into service. He has requested emergency donations of sleeping bags and water for people who have pitched their tents against the Church of the Holy Trinity.
Heeding the call, I plucked your bedroll from the basement cupboard and ran it through the washer and dryer. Then I wound it round itself and bundled it into a shopping bag.
On donation day, I arrived before the doors of Trinity opened. To pass the time, I paced the nearby labyrinth with a dolly that trailed behind like an unsteady pilgrim that carted your sleeping sack, a case of bottled water, and a blanket.
Guided by the twists and turns of an ancient pattern, I meditated on the looping journeys of the sleeping bag — from Midway Island to landlocked Missouri, United States to Canada, Cold War to global pandemic, Navy to civilian encampment, father to daughter, car trunk to dolly, labyrinth to arched door.
In the maze of my mind’s center, my father is in the sleeping bag, 21 years old and having seen the ocean for the first time, and now it is 2020 and a new person is snuggling into the bedding, someone who needs it.
Dad, I see your spirit in the sleeping-bag transfer. I remember how you volunteered as a job counselor for a local shelter and as a cancer-hotline listener. I still see you in acts of service, like the unrolling of a temporary bed and its placement in a tent, a shelter during a time of pain. If you could send a message to your brother or sister in sleep, I believe it might go like this:
Take this donation with my blessing and heartfelt prayers for your well-being. May it provide a protective layer between you and the hard ground below as well as the cold air above.
Like you, I have known struggle. I fought a cold war, lived with epilepsy, and battled for my very life, surviving two bouts of cancer before the third one got me. I was vulnerable. I was scared. I often felt alone. But suffering passes. You keep smiling. You keep making jokes.
May this old but sturdy bedroll of mine help you sleep through the night, giving you strength to face the morning. May it contain some of my optimism, fight, and love to match yours. May it not let you down.
Sleep well, dear comrade, and may sanctuary enfold you always.
Be warm. Be well. Be safe.
Be at peace.
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