Who Passes

My Father

The weather is immaculate. Today there is a crisp, frozen rain falling and changing to snow, then back to its own confusion. The sky is violet, blue, gray, wet in a powerful gloom and no sun. A day or more ago, dad was transferred to assisted living in Ravenswood. We followed his journey through a tremendous downpour and storm warning. When we arrived we were able to see him and his modest, shared room, and then we had to leave him there with our hearts uncomfortable. On the way home I saw a rainbow. The weather was crazy and as we came to School House Run the sun came under a bank of clouds and cast the brightest, golden color onto the road. Cam had to put his sunglasses on. My mind filled with the experience, the rainbow and the light. The sun was magnificent; its molten-gold shine transformed our path almost into pure brightness.

I cry alone, in small moments: back seat of the car driving home; while bending to roll my father; stroking his hair; watching his lover - an aged hand holds another; walking through the house; standing outside, smelling and feeling the air of where he lives and what he knows. Crying is a lump of anguish and sadness that cannot be swallowed. It rises up, pulling my cheeks to my eyes and squeezing, bending my forehead, then releasing me back. It’s the pulse of this experience. My mother knows it well. She must. The beat is hers.

He smells like decay. A sour, withering. It stays in my nose and for a time carries into the flavor of what goes into me. He’s slow. Hard to clean. He has bed sores. Obstinate - he’s mean and offended if his medicine is missed, and if he needs tending he’s like paper that’s upset each time it moves. He needs family, and slow, easy communication repeated. His world is delicate as he deals with understanding and feeling all of this. Everything hurts. Everything is too much.

His medicine has been missed and we are working to get his baseline of medication back so that he can be communicated with more easily. When he came in he said so earnestly to the physical therapist that he needs to be able to walk to the bathroom. There was a soft chuckle. I know, to him, this is true and honest. It is everything. If he cannot walk, he cannot leave. This is what he needs to go home. It’s so simple now.

I’m tired. I can only imagine the labor of my mother for her best friend. The soft hurt that must exist for her as this happens, as she gives and guides him through this, as she wakes and rises and begins. I have spent my life relating to others and when I seek an understanding of her weight, it fills me with her suffering. The gift of her eyes and senses bring the experience in. The strength of her love magnifies it beyond understanding. My father is a guaranteed ocean of power swirling around the openness of her shores, whittling and slamming at her. His ocean has taken so much of her. She has given his ocean everything: a dedicated shore, never moving.

I have spent time thinking of what a gift life is. All of us, as spiritual beings, are here moving through the experience of being human, and every aspect - every single aspect - is a blessing. The suffering, the hurt, the reprieve - these are equal in measure. And they are all sweet in their emotion and our opportunity to live them and know the gift of their experience - the gift of life and feeling. This is an honor.

He is stubborn. I do not understand what we have saved. Why do we seek improvement of the situation? Why have we created suffering to then need to guide the experience among its levels? What have we done? I spent time asking his mother, my grandmother, if she is around and not yet returned, to see him and take him. If there are others to help, please see him and take him. Help him go. There is nothing here. Nothing we need. It is okay. Take my father or sooth him. Help him release. There is nothing to fight or to seek. Surrender.

How do you hold someone correctly? You don’t. You just hold them. We all have a chance to cry as we need, to be polite while managing the absence we slowly create. We can also cry as we anticipate the waiting that follows. We can also cry for each other, if we are given understanding of the work, or the art of each form.