How can I be dry eyed as I sit and write?

For days I’ve gently pushed aside writing this blog because I thought I’d be a wrung out hot mess and yet I sit here with my cup of steaming mangoberry tea and feel light, grounded, while the top of my head has a pleasant buzz happening. 

None of this makes sense.

Grief is supposed to be messy. Gut wrenching sobs, terrible tantrums which result in pillow abuse, a sense of loss so overpowering that you feel like you’ve been sucked into a void that has no exit marked in a glowing red.

It’s funny, not as in ha ha funny, but as in the funny that makes you pause and wonder. One moment you’re upright and functioning and then the next, seeing a simple butterfly flit about leaves you feeling destitute.

I think the thing about grief is that you need to accept all it’s twists and turns, embracing the roller coaster by leaning into the pain and the laughter.  Be unapologetic about your feelings and own each moment fully.

My dad passed this past Sunday, very early in the morning.  From the time the brain cancer was discovered until he passed was 24 days.  Okay…now I’m crying.  Tears flowing unabashedly down my cheek until they drip off my chin unto my collar.  It’s like the waves of the ocean-gentle and salty.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this writing, but please stick with me. At the end we will both know.

This may be a piece about reminiscence, or rejoicing, but definitely not regrets.

My dad had a bit of a rough start.  His father died of cancer five days after he was born.  Dad grew up in a home where he watched his mother be abused by man after man, until he was 16 and he threw the man beating his mother through a window.  He had the liquor store on speed dial, drank too much, and was on a path toward destruction.

Two things changed his life: my mom and his faith.

Once he met my mom, he spent every moment living a life of honor and love.  My dad’s greatest gift to the world was the way he modeled commitment to family and walked his path of faith.

I never doubted that I was loved, accepted, championed.  It was an all-encompassing, unconditional love. The stuff of legends.  The stuff both you and I so deserve. 

This is the gift I’ve passed onto my daughters and hopefully they will pass onto their own children someday.  A total acceptance for who they are, a knowledge that regardless of the choices they make, I’ll love them.  It’s powerful and heady stuff- it’s the magic dust that can change the world.

If you haven’t been blessed by this type of love, you can be.  Start by loving your near and dears unconditionally and within that energy you’ll see a shift and you too will experience this depth this love.

What you put out into the world comes back to you.  If my dad, who never experienced love as a child, could find it in his soul to love unconditionally, anyone can.

It’s weird and yet wonderful.

My dad had a premonition that something would happen, and he wouldn’t be able to communicate his true thoughts and feeling at the end.  He had the premonition.  He was right.  The cancer took his speech quickly, limiting him to very few words “love you” being the last ones he could utter.

The miracle is that dad acted on his premonition, his intuition, that someday he may not be able to say all he wanted.  He wrote letters one day while my mom was gone, helping out at church.  He wrote to my mom (a beautiful missive, so tender, so strong- she let me read it), my sister, me, and his four grandkids. 

Each of us received a typed letter with his signature, since dad’s handwriting was horrendous. 

Reading mine I felt bereft, pissed, and cherished.

I’m not going to share the details, that’s between dad and me. 

But I’ll tell you this.  As much as I cherish the letter, my dad’s real gift was his faith.  Faith in God, faith in love, faith in the generosity of others, and faith in me.

Faith- don’t discount the power of belief.  When you believe in something greater than yourself, whether that is God, Love, or the Human Spirit- life becomes so much sweeter.

Love of Family and Faith, the two gifts my dad left for me to share with you.

Please share them with others.