At 6:15 this morning I had the thought I should drive to Pennsylvania. Sit at my father’s graveside for a while. Talk about all of the things that have changed in the 30 years since we buried him there, the all of us still in shock about the accident, the sudden death, the things we’d left unsaid.
Thirty years is a long time — almost half my life now — there would be a lot to say.
I hadn’t thought of a cemetery visit, made a plan. The grief is so subtle now, with no demands for place and time. It comes as it will come, whether I am sitting there among rows of stones, or sitting in the woods communing with the spirit of everything.
So that was my choice — the spirit of everything in the woods early this morning, and I was happy for the solitude, the Sunday morning quiet.
While I hoped for a sign — he often appears as Hawk — or a voice on the wind, what I found was gratitude.
A deep and unyielding gratitude for how very well he raised me, how strong he taught me to be; for his laugh and the stick-with-it, positive way he approached life; for his encouragement to dream big and love big.
My favorite story about my Dad was the time he took me sledding when I was about four-and-a-half. He set me up on the sled at the top of a rather large hill and reminded me to steer left when I got to the tree. But I got my left and right mixed up and hit the tree straight on — requiring a race to the emergency room and ten stitches. A few weeks later, he brought me back to that hill and told me to open the glove compartment. Inside was the bloody rag he’d held to my forehead — it was a no-pain-no-gain moment. Then he made get on the sled and go back down the hill because…“When you fall off the horse, you get right back on.”
These days we call that tenacity, perseverance, courage, strength, resilience — all of the things that got 29-year-old me standing graveside to this version of me now. I like to think he’d be really proud.
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