On the Life and Legacy of My Father, Godfrey Bethell
They say that funerals are for the living, not the dead. So when a public person dies, it feels as though the family of the deceased often have to share the grieving process with those he/she interfaced. I found this to be true in my life. And for this reason, I want to briefly write about the bittersweet loss of my father. It may not be the most eloquent thing I’ve written, but it’s simply what I have.
On February 6, 2021, almost a month to date of this post, we lost Rev. Dr. Godfrey Anthony Bethell, my father. He was critically ill for three weeks, but death was not something we expected. The illness itself was sudden.
A week before his admittance to hospital, two of my sisters and I, along with my nieces and nephew met up with him in Nassau for a quick lunch before he returned to Eleuthera. At this lunch, we briefly caught up while we talked about his Sunday morning at the church he so loved serving. He had a broken camera that he wanted my brother and I to either fix or replace. I took the camera from him and he said to me, “I’ll get it from you all when I come back next week.”
That trip happened, but not how we wanted—for hospitalisation instead of visitation.
As the weeks went by during his hospitalisation, I spent a lot of time finding it hard to fall asleep. I kept trying to process what could’ve been, what is, and what could be.
I kept thinking to myself, “You always think you have time until you don’t.”
We prayed and hoped with every fibre of our being that he would pull through–holding out hope for the smallest of signs. But, while working a memorial service for a faithful member of my church, I got a text saying that the family should come to the hospital immediately. In my mind, I thought maybe his body had slight improvement or we needed to make a long-term care decision. But alas, I should’ve known that on arrival, the doctor would inform us that he was no longer with us.
It seemed as if the hospital stood still as we wearily walked from one wing to the other to see him. We arrived at the room to find him absent from his body, but present and at rest with his Lord.
His burial service was the Saturday, February 20, 2021—the Saturday after Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. It is a time where we Christians stop to remember our mortality. The pastor or priest administers ashes in the sign of the cross parishioners foreheads reciting the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return” (harkening to Genesis 3:19). It is a solemn time where we flash forward to the death of Jesus and remember just how fleeting life is. We remember that life is but a vapour (Psalm 144:3-4; James 4:14).
I can’t shake the fact that we buried him around this penitent time of the Christian calendar. The admonition of Ash Wednesday and Lent is not to be morbid and sulk about the fact that we’re all going to die. The point is that we ought to make it count while we have it.
Although this Lent will be the most Lent of all Lents that I have ever Lent-ed, I consider that my dad made his life count. He did not seem fearful of death or afraid to talk about it. Many of us in the family, particularly my mom, had conversations and experiences with him where he seemed to speak or act as though his soul was preparing to complete his work here on Earth even if his mind was aware of what he was saying or doing.
I could be sad about the three weeks he was hospitalised and unconscious. And honestly I am. Sometimes I feel robbed of a proper goodbye. And I own these feelings when they come. But I also choose to have gratitude for the 71 years of full life he lived and the 31 years I was blessed to have him as a father.
Whether you knew Godfrey Bethell from his thirty years in government public service or twenty years in ministry, if you knew him, you knew he was a very pedantic man. He wanted things done well in a very particularly—often to my annoyance as a teenager. I remember in the ninth grade doing math homework at the dinner table. He walked by and saw me erasing something in pencil. It clearly was a mess, but I was keen on getting it done so that I could go on my Playstation. He said to me, “Keith, get another paper and start over.” I frustratingly replied, “Why? I just erased a little bit!”
I will never forget his response:
“No. Get another paper and start over. Keith, remember: whatever you do, do it to your best.”
It was a simple word that had the butterfly effect in my life. Because when I thought he was being a thorn in my side, he was actually shaping me into the man I am today.
I recalled this memory when I heard people quote a particular Bible verse after his death: “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23). Sometimes we quote this just to mark that someone has passed and moved on from this life to the afterlife. But I truly believe that when daddy met the Lord who was his shepherd face to face, he heard the words “well done,” because whatever he did, he did it with everything that he was.
He gave all that he was for his wife, his children, his family, his friends, and more often than we realised, the stranger. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to live our lives in gratitude to God for the gift of such people. May we offer ourselves fully to others because someone did the same for us in God’s love.
I write this because I am grieving his death, but I am also celebrating his life. Death is a restless thief who is wildly unaware that justice is coming. But, as we journey toward Easter and resurrection, and walk through what seems to be this valley of the shadow of death, may we remember that death does not have the final word. And thanks be to God for that.
You worked well, daddy. Now, rest well.
I love you.
Rev. Dr. Godfrey Anthony Bethell
September 15, 1949—February 6, 2021