GM.
Don't complain about autumn.
Walk with grief like a good friend.
Listen to what he says. - Rumi
I opened up my journal this morning to see what day my das passed away 4 years ago. I was thinking it was the 12th. Nope, it was the 10th.
I should know that. I won't be to tough on myself though. The morning I got the call, around 4 AM, it was 20 below. Anytime it drops below zero at the beginning of January I'm reminded of that morning.
The world around me doesn't let me forget. For that I am grateful. Because I know some day that won't be so.
I was actually thinking about him on Friday a lot while delivering mail. It was sunny, above 30 degrees, felt like spring.
I could do anything I wanted and he'd still love me. I dropped everything in my early 20's and lived how I wanted to live. By that time I owned 100 acres, logging equipment, and had built a house.
Everything most parents would be proud of. Son with financial security. I achieved it through discipline, hard work with my hands, and of course luck. Today it would be much harder with the price of land and such.
But I was miserable. Depressed and anxious a lot of the time. It got to the point where I couldn't go on another day bearing the weight of it. My mom saw it while they were "up north" visiting. So we closed up the house I'd built with their help. Then they took me home to where I grew up to live with them.
During all of it he never criticized me once. I inherited some of it from him. I'm guessing he understood this at some level. One time he told me to never get in a rut like he did. He put 30 years standing on the floors of the same factory.
The lines by Rumi that follow the ones I started this off with are:
"Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave
give the opening we most want."
Little did I know the darkness led me to the "opening I most wanted."
I've spent the last 30 years following my nose trying to understand what happened back there in my early 20's. I remember James Hillman, the father of archetypal psychology, saying one time some people will spend a lifetime trying to understand a depression.
One thing it taught was to deepen. To deepen my relationships with humans and nonhumans. To not forget moments of wonder and awe.
My Dad gave me space to do that. There's a good king and a bad king in mythology. When it comes to this Dad had his good king going on.
#gm #coffeechain #plebchain #fire #fatherhood
