6.09.2012

Let go of any illusions of who you think you are.  Be
not afraid:  allow your delusions and confusions to be burned away in
the fire of emotion, and allow yourself to emerge from the ashes
renewed and with a new understanding of who you really are.



Journeys come in many, many flavors.  They can be little snippets of your everyday routines, something new and out of the ordinary dropping into place, or something larger...a cataclysmic event that defines you for the ages.

I am journey bound.  Eternally it seems.  Always have been.  Looking for more, searching, finding, wondering.  My friend Meg tells me I am a seeker.  Always looking beyond.  She says she loves that about me.  I say it wears on me more than I let on most of the time and that I find on the most intense seeking journeys, I lose myself in the quest to find.

This week I'm at my father's home in Pennsylvania.  A trip I honestly dreaded.  I feared what I would feel and how I would react.  He has advanced Parkinson's Disease.  I don't even really know him well, and those two factors alone are enough to begin to spin me into seeker mode.  

I decided though, to look at this trip as a journey of sorts.  A way to link with this man.  This man from whom I originate and with whom I seemingly have much in common.  I decided to look at this trip through a lens of love and discovery instead of fear, questioning and sorrow; though they may have been easier to fall into.  

This week I've found that we have a similar cadence to our voice.  He trails off at the end of sentences much as I do.  The richness in his voice reminds me of my own when I'm intoxicated with fatigue.  His laughter is joyful and full.  He repeats his stories multiple times, but never loses his zeal for telling them.  It reminds me of my inability to tell a joke.  He looks at me with eyes that are my own reflected back.  Blue and full, soft and welcoming.  He's frustrated and sad, wary and confused.  I am all of these things in my own ways and in my own time.  His is just focused on a pin point of being.  On a little path laden world of safety around his home.  Schedule on schedule on schedule...that too is me.  

I helped him get his sweater on this morning, guiding his hand like a child into the sleeves that eluded his own control.  We shared that.  We marveled at a French romance movie last night, side by side...discussing contrast and beauty.  I downloaded the soundtrack onto my iPhone, he called me a show off.  His humor is mine, his loves, mine.

The ashes of a missing father from my childhood seem blown away this week.  Gone with the passing of time.  The clarity of his gentle soul and his vulnerability have replaced them and I'm understanding myself a little more though this time with him.  It may well be my final time with him.  My final time to find pieces of myself in his presence.  What a sweet, sweet gift that is.

1 comment:

  1. Wonder why you have not been updating your blog. I have enjoyed reading your postings.

    ReplyDelete