Tomahawk

Writen by Joel Adams

"Tomahawk, Joel, Tomahawk... Tomahawk." That word changed my life forever. Well not really that word but the words that came after it.

It was July 21st 2016 sometime around 2am when I was given the words that will shape the man I will be for the rest of my life. The crazy part is that these life defining words were given to me in one of the hardest moments, and in by far the hardest season of my life.

My dad was in the last few days of his life on earth. The Leukemia that had been waging war in his body had progressed so fast in the last month of his life, that now he was having a hard time waking up let alone getting up to use the bathroom. That's why I was there that night. The night I will always remember. The night, in a way, that forever changed me. It was the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in my life.

Dad would ring a bell when he needed to get up to use the bathroom. When he rang I would get up from the bed in the room next door and help him sit up, then stand, move a few feet to the toilet, and help him sit down. His body was so weak by that point that I would sometimes have to hold him up so that his body wouldn't collapse onto the floor. Then, when he was done, I would help him back into the bed and he would go back to sleep for a couple hours before we would repeat the process.

Sometime around 2am, dad rung the bell, so I came out. "Are you ready dad?" I asked. "Tomahawk...tomahawk" was his reply. He kept saying it, 4 maybe 5 times. Real intensely, like he wanted me to understand. I said "tomahawk, dad I hear you. What does that mean?"

I had him sitting on the edge of the bed and he indicated that he was ready to go, so I got him on the toilet and then back onto the bed. As soon as he was back on the bed he started saying tomahawk again looking right at me. I said to him that I heard him and that I got it, tomahawk. I really had no clue what he meant, but he knew what he meant. He knew what he wanted to tell me, what he wanted me to know.

He then told me the 5 words that have begun to define me, 5 words that I have thought about so often since that brutally hard night in July. They have helped me walk through those hard days since he passed away only 54 hours after saying them to me.

He looked right at me and with the little strength he had left in his body, he said to me;

"You're a good warrior son."

Those words would be the last words he said directly to me. Wow. So many words he spoke to me through his life. So many lessons, talks, sayings and stories that I heard him tell. But I don't know if any of them measure up to the last words that I heard my father, my hero, my pastor, and my dad speak over me and leave me with.

"You're a good warrior son."

What else does a son need, I had the affirmation and the blessing of my dad. He told me who I was and who I will continue to become. A warrior is who my dad knew I was, even when I don't know who I am, my dad knew. And, in one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me, he gave my dad the strength to say those words to me.

Now when I hear the word tomahawk, it means something so significant to me. For that one word set the stage for the 5 words that will forever define who I am and who I strive to become.

"You're a good warrior son."