Lost & Wandering

I don’t know how long this will last, but grief has depths to it that I had never imagined. It’s strange when death stares one in the face for the first time -- at least, it’s so strange to me. I’ve known people who have passed away, but it never changed my life so completely.

My father lived in this house with us for the last twelve years. When he helped us find this house, he made sure it was large enough so that he could make a good chunk of it into “in-law quarters” for themselves, and we thought it was a great idea. Not only did it help us get into our own home (which we probably would have never been able to do on our own), but he brought our family together. To do so, he and my mom both gave up their own little house in Oregon for a much smaller living space. He did this only to help us, with no thought for himself.

I’ve always been grateful to him for that, but of course, probably not enough. We had disagreements and outright fights because we were so much alike -- both struggling with inner emotional demons and afraid of being vulnerable. That fear kept us from connecting, although the last few years were the best. If it had been possible for him to live another 10 or 20 years, we may have grown to be best friends.

So, how does this relate in any way to my eventual enlightenment? I’ve been asking myself this for some time, and so far, I’ve come up with this: There is absolutely nothing here on the physical plane that lasts. Nothing. Not relationships, and certainly not “things.” Nothing here really means anything.

This is not a nihilistic point of view. It’s simply the truth. There’s nothing here that offers anything but temporary happiness, and temporary happiness is, in my opinion, not worth that much. After all, how can one be happy knowing that it will eventually end? That knowledge pollutes any sense of happiness, always adding a “bittersweet” quality that destroys any hope of peace.

The trick, then is to find out what does last. If life after death is a reality, and I believe it is, what is it that’s permanent?

This is where spiritual teachers have often answered with, “Love.” Love does transcend the boundaries of death, because my love for my father hasn’t ended with his death. So, for him, assuming he’s still aware, the love from his daughter hasn’t changed for him. If anything, I appreciate him more now because I’m painfully aware of how much he did for me while he was here. And if he’s still aware, I have no doubt his love for me is still intact.

The problem is, I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. It doesn’t seem to make any of this any easier.

I know I’m going to be struggling to make sense of this for a long while to come yet.

Requiem

I apologize to the world for not blogging until now. Things got a bit busy in November and December, and then tragedy struck when my father passed away on December 27, 2007. He had just turned 84 on Christmas Eve, and went relatively peacefully during an emergency heart operation. My life has been turned inside out.

My father and I had an intense relationship, one built on the dance of two strong wills fighting for understanding from each other that we never quite got. Happily, I can say that I think we reached a truce in these last few years, thanks to years of the study of psychology on my end, and the addition of antidepressants on his. My heightened understanding and empathy for the events that made him who he was (the lack of a mother to raise him, no stability, extreme poverty, and the belief instilled him during The Great Depression that a man's personal worth is assessed only by how much money he can provide for his family), along with his being relieved of the constant burden of the painful emotions that kept him imprisoned for most of his life, made for a tenuous rope bridge between our two cliffs that allowed us to finally meet in the middle occasionally. Of course, it wasn't enough.


It's widely universal, I read, that when a child loses a parent, there is always a feeling like not enough was said or done before it was too late. It is a sorry state for humans to find themselves in -- always knowing there is more we can do to make each other happy, but never getting around to doing it. Even though I was aware that my father's health was failing, a part of me was terrified to commit more time, as if that alone would have made his impending passing more immanent. I was very aware that I would regret the decisions I made to stay away, based on fear of intimacy, yet I didn't change my behavior. And now he's left the physical world, off on the Great Adventure we all will one day embark upon, and there is no way for me to be heard when I yell, I didn't get to say, "I love you, Daddy!" nearly enough.

What are we so afraid of that we don't connect with people while we can? Or, more apt, what am *I* afraid of? The regret I feel is far worse than any vulnerability I might feel by connecting with another human being on an intimate level. For some reason, I chose this excruciating regret over the chance to get to know someone who became one of the most wonderful men I've ever known.

Grief is new territory for me. I've never experienced such bottomless pain. The psychologist in me stays a bit detached, observing with morbid fascination how being halfway orphaned is redefining who I thought I was. The part of me that had always viewed and understood myself as a child of two loving parents has also died. In a way, I grieve not only for my father, but also for my own childhood self.

But I can already see that my empathy for others in pain has grown a hundredfold. If nothing else, I will attempt to embrace this traumatic initiation for others. For those who someday come to me for counsel, my father has given me the gift of understanding through experience. Before this, I only thought I understood the grief process. I didn't. No, reading about and experiencing are by far too very different things.

Acknowledging one's shortcomings is very different from feeling sorry for oneself and getting mired in self-pity. I see now how important it is to reach out to other human beings because there is only a limited amount of time in which we're allowed to do so. And inevitably, the lack of doing so causes a searing regret.