I held my dad’s hand the night he died.
Through four to five hours of hallucinations and fear and struggles to run beyond his own consciousness. I was 25. Though I had grown up within the inner workings of hospitals where my mother spent her days as a nurse/administrator and I spent one summer as a candystriper, I knew nothing of the intimacy of death and its transformational power.
What surprised me that summer night was the emotional violence that battered my dad somewhere so deep and unknown to me that it kept me squeezing his hand to make sure he knew I was there despite the late hour. It was a struggle to keep my dad in bed though he had lost at least a quarter of his normal weight due to treatment for metastatic prostate cancer. My brother was asleep in the room next door until the hour his alarm went off and he relieved me of my shift so I could get some rest.
In that next hour, while my brother was on watch, my dad transitioned.
We were the only two people at my dad’s house that dawn on New Hope Road. We didn’t know what to do so we cleaned his body and the bedroom, dressed him, and called hospice to alert them of his death. The immediate grief of having watched someone I love suffer for so long was complicated by feelings of relief and helplessness and a general lack of knowing what to do next.
What would my life look like after my dad? The one person who accepted me without judgment and supported me in my choices and ambitions was gone.
One thing I know for sure was that my dad was not at peace when he died.
Anger followed my grief. It came on as a powerful, all-consuming wave. Nothing seemed right anymore. Nothing seemed fair. I felt orphaned, sad, and unable to trust the world around me. I felt a door open and a beckoning towards a path that I had not known before nor been tempted down in any meaningful way since then. I watched as my mind sought destruction of the world and people around me. I felt so much anger and the impulse to act in so many ways contrary to my nature that one day I just ran and ran from the house as hard as I could until I couldn’t run anymore and ended up at Greenbriar Mall.
I felt such deep pain and anger that I thought I had no way to unravel. I called my aunt’s for somebody to pick me up as I had spent all the energy I had that surely would have endangered myself or someone around me had I not physically been able to release it.
And yet, at some point over the next few weeks an impulse much more aligned with my heart, with the path I consciously chose when I was eleven years old, took hold of my spirit and implored to me to just let go. Let go of the anger, let go of the wishing things could have been different, of the desire to avenge what was lost and fight, fight for what should have been.
I saw in a heartbeat where that other path led and I didn’t like what I saw. It was ugly and unending and mired with lawyers and paperwork and phone calls, none of which I like dealing with. And so I let go. I chose to go into a gentle unknown and it was a decision that, I feel, has led me to the blessed life I now enjoy.
This life of miracles and blessings and richness and love that I cannot explain in any logical way has been a path of peace. That moment when I chose to let go and trust, that is the moment I committed to this peaceful path, to the Light that I have within no matter how hard it gets outside.
A peaceful path requires much work on the mind. Our mind can be our most volatile enemy because it directs our body, this temple/template that sets the course of our lives.
Choices we make at 11, at 22, at 35, have a direct bearing on reactions and harvests that happen at 46 or 65.
It is a path of temperance and conscious responsibility, filled with discovery and adventure that has brought many beautiful experiences that I could have never dreamed up. There have been challenges – most due to the necessary periods of isolation for such a life – which left me feeling melancholy and alone when I was younger. But, what has emerged is a peace of mind in my current life that I could only have wished for my dad.
On this 46th celebration of my arrival I honor my dad by being grateful for the lesson he taught me in his life and in his death: Peace of mind is the only thing that matters at the moment of our inevitable death.
This peaceful path is one of diligent work, conscious consumption, silence, and meditation. It is exciting and unexpected. Of course those wounds I had at twenty-five still exist today, but my relationship to them is different. I can appreciate the wisdom they render and the doors they open when I choose to accept them as gifts rather than limitations in life.
A couple years ago a friend of mine told me about Chiron return. She said it’s the point around 49 or so when people either become wise or when they just get old.
I aspire to be that wise woman who continues to live an honest and true life with my eyes and my heart wide open. Even in my mistakes – moments when I’ve unintentionally caused pain for others or myself – I take full responsibility for my thoughts and actions. For this my body is at peace, my mind is at peace, and my thoughts are at peace as I embark on another year on Earth.
