o grief, o sorrow

the time is upon us. a heaviness has descended upon my spirit today.

what lightness has graced me as golden thread through dark cloth this past week has hushed and fallen sideways in the small corner of the room

my father lies in between worlds and what he sees, I do not know.

he is leaving.

what hesitations or fears or peace he may carry, is secret to him only.

he is far.

he has been walking the path for the past week, without food or water, without words.

I write this and I stagger with fear.

I will never see my father again.

and the great flood of tears arrives;

a terrible howl scars the silent night

the face of death is haunting.

I am not bedside, I am not holding his hand, I am not near

still, I see and tremble at the hovering point of the final breath.

what does he see?

please let there be light and peace and clarity; freedom from fear and suffering.

please let him walk into a sea of love that embraces and forgives his wounded heart.

my god, this is a complicated mess,

but, in this end....it is my deepest wish that he not suffer, that he be at peace; happy and full of joy.

Let there be angels or devas or dakinis or saints or saviors, but let there be peace and freedom from pain.

Though I am his daughter, and though I have struggled and suffered greatly in my life in largest part because of the severe abuses, abandonings and cruelties borne of his thoughts, speech and deeds.....I still wish for the suffering to cease. Enough is enough.

I called him on the telephone tonight and the hospice worker, Marsha, held the phone to his ear for me to talk with him. "Dad, I love you. I want you to know this. I do love you. It is okay to let go, Dad. I love you."

Marsha returned within a few seconds and told me she feels sure he heard me and understood. I briefly wonder about this. It is a reassuring thing to hear and perhaps its a kindness extended more than an absolute truth; a last and meager gift to offer those left behind by the dying. I am thin enough right now to need it, so I accept it as absolute truth. He heard me and understood.

I shake with grief and fear when I envision him, eyes open and seeing nothing, a remainder of bones and thin skin, a body ravaged and defeated by aggressive cells, his breath vague and labored.

I will not hear his voice again.

I will not see my father again.

I made this call from a parking lot I pulled into on my way home from the Harvest Festival. The festival was nearly an effort for me to attend. I was sad and drawn and disconnected. I prayed and offered gratitude and offered all my offerings of candles, bread, fruit and flowers. I ate food and gathered around the fire and sat under a tree with Mary and let her hold the parts of the story that have silenced me over the last several weeks. I cried sparsely and tried hard to let her soothe me, but could not fully allow it. I shared a few heartfelt intersections with people I know that I love and that I know are trying their best to love me, but I felt so alone and so sad and could only accept that this is just where I am, my own doing or not; apart from the crowd...the family.

I was leaving when I retrieved messages and heard from mom that Dad is in his last hours. Linda is there and he is starting to go. I called Julie and she had a house full of guests; we spoke briefly and I offered the invitation to meet her somewhere but she needed to just have dinner and go to bed. I called Linda in Florida and told her that I love her and want her to know that I am here and I support her. She thanked me and said that feels huge and enough for her. Then, we had a conversation that broke me open in the way that light comes into the cracks; in the way that one knows there are wings of angels surrounding them; the hand of the Goddess on my back; Tara enfolding me. "all is well. all is not lost." It was a conversation of real truth. We shared back and forth that we love each other, we want the other to know that we support each other; we are there. It is hard, it is terrifying, there is grief, there is fear. In this moment, I am not entirely alone. I take a breath and when the call is over, in that random parking lot, stopped zigzag in the spaces, I wail a loud and oceanic grief. Tears spill from my eyes and inside of me the thick steeled walls melt. I am dissolving with the inevitability of these hard facts. My father is dying. now. today. tonight.

Did I say enough? Did I say the right words? Should I have said I forgive him? Should I have flown there? Should I be there now? Should I go there now? What should I do? Is there anything to do?

It is a futile grasp we attempt. Our hands scatter like a shock of birds at the signal to fly. What can I hold onto? What can i do to stop the natural progression of this season? How can I avoid this suffering; this pain? and, of course, we cannot.

And what isn't being said yet, here is the other layers of this complicated mess of a story.

Because now is not the time? Or is it the time?

Everything about everything is relevant right now. Because nothing makes sense; none of this. Why is the grief so great? and, OF COURSE it so great.

It is grief for the entirety of everything colliding in this one potent episode.

Grief. Fear of death. Grief. I will never see my father again. That grief alone multiplies itself and multiplies itself again and again. Grief that I never had the father that I needed; that gave me the innate knowing of my worth, value and rights to be loved. For starters. and that that has contributed to a life and that life has led to this moment where the snake is eating his tail. My father could not and did not give me that; in fact, my father worked almost diligently against that purpose by making sure I got the message that I was worthless, unloveable, invisible, not valuable and certainly beyond hope for a healthy and happy feeling of belonging in the world. This same father, refused my attempts to love him. And though, cognitively, I can arrange the puzzle pieces and see that the embedded truths of worthlessness, et al. were merely projections of a man lost within his own untamed traumatic developments, it is a truth that is difficult to extract from the neuronal pathways of the now, hard road traveled adult that is me. The grief is the disorganization of this nervous system. Come. go. hide. run. fight. choose. don't choose. where should I be? here? here? how should I think? act? what should I ? what? where am I? dissociate...what? where? you love me? you hate me? now? when? I love you? I hate you? You are trying to kill me? you say you love me? you say you don't love me?......confusion. yes. disorganization. yes. this is the belly of the chaos of this grief.

I have been disorganized about where I need to be. Florida? here? talk to him...don't talk to him. forgive him....don't. he loves me. he doesn't love me.

I am most organized when I am at my altar and in prayer about it. Soul to soul talking with him.

Here, it makes the most sense. On a soul level, I am more clarified. I see the ancestral thread. I see the legacy of terror. The cultural divides. The horror of humankind. The disasters of the human heart in chains. The terrible consequences of silence and denial.

Only a generation back, his father; Shanghai, China. My grandfather lost everything. What he began with or what he endured or inherited from his ancestors I do not know. But, he lost his homeland, his language, his family, his friends, his traditions, his food, his clothing, his connections, his name....everything. He left after the Shanghai Massacre, that's what I've been told. This alone is an avalanche of trauma for the soul and body to endure. And then, he lost everything.

This was my father's father. My father carried this unspoken, unresolved devastation. Imagine the rage.

I don't have to. I didn't have to imagine it. I knew it. I know it. I met it every moment of my days from the time of conception to know. It informs my dance in this world.

Now, I am not willing to sit and simmer in the blame of this. There are big questions to consider; larger mysteries, if you will. At conception, I was likely making some choices about where to be and some would say that it was me who contracted for this wild ride. Ok, I'll keep that in my pocket, though I'm not sure I'm committing to it as a hard truth.

and then there is the matter of one taking responsibility for one's own life. A worthy topic to discuss, but also one loaded with paradox and points of view. Yes, we are called to claim ourselves, retrieve ourselves. But, when does that begin. If the divisions begin even as early as in utero and continue through the developmental stages of our growth and we learn that the world and people are dangerous and necessary all at the same time and we are not given opportunities to support a healthier argument against these hardwirings, WHEN praytell and HOW, do we begin the sticky business of reclamation? With what TOOLS or TEMPLATES? If you are a rabbit raised in a den of lions and have never SEEN a rabbit, HOW do you ignite the epiphany of the awareness and knowing of RABBIT?

I am lost again in the comfort of writing.

I say all this to illustrate the point of the disorganized attachment trauma that is operant in the infrastructure in my soul. (the infrastructure that I have methodically and courageously been at work at dismantling via SE, PSM, and a whole lot of other soul retrieving, eyeballs deep in the shit, warrior, not for the faint of heart work)

Another edge of grief. Relevant to all of this. The other end of the snake. Through this hardest time, I am alone. Relationally, I have not managed to arrive at resolution. Here is one place the legacy of trauma is most visible. I do have friends. I do know there are people who love me in a big way and hold me even when I am at arm's length and I bristling with my quills at the ready. For this, I am blessed and grateful. There does exist a reflection of my loveability. But, tonight...in this crucial time, when I crave for the comfort of real live physical embrace, I am alone. The neighbors are fine to wave and adore me from across the street, but in this private yard, with the house and all it's contents turned upside down, I am alone. Again, I am capable of zooming to the grand design of things to trust that alone is exactly where I shall grow the flowers from this particular plot of shit, but the here and now human being, warm blooded mammal of me cries in despair for the severity of it all.

Tonight, as I contend with the dying of my father, the tangle of grief of my self and my family and all the poisonous tentacles of associated emotion......is it too much to ask to be physically embraced and held with love and presence as this unfolds? oh grief upon grief.

There comes a time when I write when it's time to stop because the words just begin to fall off the edges of my thoughts, failing to gather. That time is now. I'm tired. I've been writing for about 90 minutes. I leave this now, reluctantly, for then I enter silence, a quiet house and the imminence of the phone call that is bound to come. And I am alone. But wait, Ursa and Luna are here and they are no small potatoes. They are my blessings and grace. Things are as they are. All of this is in motion. It is happening. There is fear. panic. grief.

Goddess, Oh merciful Goddess..... Tara...please hold me and my father and my family with your benevolent grace and compassion and love. Thank you.