LAST WEEK, I NEEDED TO WRITE MY DAD'S OBITUARY ...
but instead I shopped online for a fine mesh colander. You know, the kind with the long handle for rinsing out rice (my favorite use) or sprinkling powdered sugar over pancakes (a thing I never do, because why waste your sugar credits when you already have maple syrup?) and which I had been meaning to replace for years.
The next morning, Thursday, January 13, my dad took his last breath and I wrote the obituary.
As a writer, I think this is less of a lesson in grief, and more of a lesson in creative process - sometimes you need to get the small, manageable things out of the way before you can tackle the bigger things. If that seems like it probably also relates to grief, I can only say, in my slow transition from the shock of death to its companion, everyday depression, that grief is not the kind of thing we are in charge of. Grief is to manageable tasks as a thunderstorm is to your picnic basket.
Grief has been my uninvited house guest for some time now, since I lost my mom to cancer in 2014. One thing I've been thinking about lately is how our relationship to the dead changes over time.
For example, my relationship to who my mom was in life - an angry, wounded person who had a bad habit of putting out her own light - is very different to who she is in death. I've only recently figured out that holding onto who she was in life is a way of maintaining an older version of myself, too. So to fully heal from how she abused me in life, I may actually need to get acquainted with her true self - who she was born as - which is another way to think about who we become in death.
I know this is counterintuitive, because we often think about the dead as ghosts, and we tell stories about how unfinished business on earth - unhealed wounds, untold truths - are held onto by the dead. But I'm not sure I believe this anymore. I think it may be that we hold onto those wounds and truths, and it's up to us to figure out what to do with them.
Here's a wound about my dad that is also a truth: he moved out by the time I started the first grade, so I didn't know him that well. In my adulthood, I worked hard to know him better, but like all of us, he contained multitudes - he was deeply connected, compassionate, and tender, but not great at speaking his feelings aloud. I know with certainty that we both did our very best, he and I. And so, now that he is no longer alive in this world, I know that getting to know him is not lost, like his breath...it's a process that continues, through his old sketchbooks and the artwork he made, through letters we both kept, and through the meditations I practice because of the parts of him that are inside of me: walking, writing, silence, deep friendship.
My dad was not a lecturer. He did not tend to impart wisdom, and sometimes couldn't come up with a doctrine even when you asked him directly. Instead, he lived according to his values and beliefs, and he did that in a way that was so free of judgment and self-consciousness, it could be disconcerting. In remembering him today, I'll share some of the things I learned from him by osmosis, and I bet you'll find some of them familiar, or inspiring, in which case, you'll be living like Dad.
1. Park the car in the spot furthest away from your destination store. Not only do you save all that stress and anxiety about finding or fighting over a spot, but you get more exercise.
2. Plant trees. There are as many different ways to do this as there are varieties of trees, but here's one place to start.
3. Don't skimp on the butter, jelly, mayonnaise, mustard, the thickness of a slice of cheese, or the size of a spoonful of honey. Everything tastes better when you eat with generosity toward yourself and others.
4. It doesn't matter how many times your school-age kids may decide you're weird or embarrassing - be yourself. Satisfying the judgments and demands of others is an exercise in futility. Don't waste your life on that. Answer your calling.
Remembering,
Dor
photo by Jane McTeigue
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