In 1993 my parents set out on a trip to B.C. with some Dutch relatives. In Thunder Bay, my dad experienced heart issues that sabotaged their adventure. He was flown home in an air ambulance and then brought to a hospital in Hamilton. In the moments before his open heart surgery, we – my mom, Marja and I – stood anxiously beside his stretcher. He looked up at us and said something that I’ve never forgotten. “Don’t worry about me. I’m going to wake up somewhere. Maybe here. Maybe in heaven. But I’m going to wake up somewhere.”
I shared this inspirational story in a summer church service in 2021. Afterwards, our pastor, Jane Porter, encouraged me to turn it into a song. So I did. When my dad heard it, he expressed amazement at the idea that “someone would write a song about me.” He died on Dec. 31, 2021, at age 97, twenty-eight years after his heart operation. Ten days later I sang this song at his funeral in Surrey, B.C. It expresses the difference “resurrection faith” makes when faced with our mortality!