Author: Tom (Page 4 of 71)

Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.

You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".

Action Breeds Confidence (Warrior Prose)

March 13, 2020 / Tom

We are, my friends, in scary times.

In my life I’ve noticed that there are two types of occurrences in each and every experience. One is what we can control and the other is what we can’t. In challenging time I’ve learned to focus intently on what is within my control and much less on what I can’t. I’ve learned that action breeds the confidence to relegate fear. Inaction allows the fear to fester and can render us useless. I’ve also found that fear is often nothing more than a lack of confidence.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

Boxer’s Dread

I used to box in my younger years and I feared losing and getting “beat up”. Rather than be hamstrung by fear, I would train harder and push my body and training beyond what I thought I could handle. I wanted to be better conditioned, better trained and better prepared than my opponent could ever be or, at a minimum, believe I was. That confidence not only rid me of fear, but had me actually stir crazy while waiting for the fight to happen.

I could see my opponent in my mind and see him working his ass off to beat me. That vision would cause me to increase my intensity. I could not imagine losing to anyone because I was not prepared. If they were better than me it was going to be a contest of skill, will and preparation. They were going to have to bring their “A” game.

Fear in the Fire

In my time as a firefighter, fear was an ever-present companion. Firefighters die and get severely injured doing their thing and it happens quite frequently. I’ve lost four friends in the line of duty and have never met a more courageous person than a firefighter. We all know what we’ve signed up for, so fear would be there as a constant companion. Our trick is we learn to use fear as another tool we carry and not as something that prevents us from action.

Fear drove me to constantly be educated on the methods, technology, and science of fire/rescue work. I would train, study, train, and respond. Those efforts bred great confidence. While I could not control everything on a fire/rescue scene, my end would not be due to a lack of preparation.

The fear was still there, but I was able to use it to hyper focus on the skill set I had developed. At no time was I limited by my fearful companion. Action had bred confidence and confidence put fear in its place.

A Stroke of Action

Fast forward a couple of decades when I found myself in an emergency room having an ischemic stroke. I believed I was going to die or, at the very least, be incapacitated. I had lost control and strength in my limbs and was blind. Swallowing was a challenge and I felt that nothing was ever going to be a same if I was able to survive.

While lying there on my gurney waiting for a CAT scan, I decided on settle down. I began to meditate. In that state I could feel the dizziness, the weakness, and the fear. I also could feel something else; a calm and it spoke to me. Not in English, but in a language that spoke directly to my inner intelligence.

“You are on this ride, and there is no getting off. Enjoy it, learn from it, and use it. You know what you need to do, so do it. The outcome is not guaranteed, but you can be an active participant in getting there.”

I did know what to do, and I decided to do it. I needed to trust my inner self and disregard what others told me. In the process of healing, whatever that meant, I had to become an active participant and not just an observer.

So I employed everything I had always employed. I approached even the most menial work with joy and intensity.

The first mission was get my sight back. I would visualize my eyes working again and the neural pathways being rerouted. The pain was intense as I would open my eyes to check my progress but I even approached that with joy. Soon, I was able to see again and although I still have some trouble with my eyes, I am nearly fully recovered.

Learning to Walk Again

When it was time for me to learn to walk again, I would actually laugh at myself. This amazed my physical therapists and they would often ask me how I kept so positive.

“The last time I learned to walk I was too young to remember. I think its fun to act like a two-year old again. Besides, if I learned once I can learn again.”

I would visualize walking and work at it. Within a few weeks I went to walking with a walker, having two therapists holding onto a gait belt, to walking (then jogging) in the hallways. I would challenge myself in every way I could (I would walk endless laps in a pool, the waves challenging my balance). My balance took a while to recover, and I still have some issues, but I’ve learned to deal with them well.

In dealing with any issue I face I find that improvement always follows. If I approached them in fear, I could expect to do nothing but sit in my own swill.

The actions I took in this challenge kept me positive and out of the muck that fear would have created. Each time I would hear the voice of fear nibbling in my mind, I would do something to counter it. Action always was the antidote and it still is.

The question to ask yourself when in the presence of fear is “What can I do?” and never let the answer be “nothing”. Then do it and see what happens.

To Be Free

March 4, 2020 / Tom

Sometimes I just want to vanish, to leave everything and forget the world exists. It’s those times I detest what I do, how I do it, and for whom it’s being done. I find myself swirling well outside incarnations of self-pity or remorse and, rather, find myself staring in anger at my lack of control and my lack of self-determination.

Fuck it all. I’ll see you on the other side.

“What,” I ask, “must I do to open my arms freely in my liberation? Is there something beyond this mind-numbing routine of shit that rolls down my brain onto the chair now caressing my ass?” My current hellish and mundane task of sitting in a box and waiting for the clock to turn is too much to bear. I must be free.

I wonder if the horses I pass on the way to my self-imposed incarceration feel the same way. Do they hate the cage they’ve been placed in? Or have they surrendered to their plight of being kept from running free on mountain trails by the barbed wires of enslavement just hoping to be fed again?

Who the fuck knows? What matters is I detest the wire, detest the grass you feed me and hate the fact I need you for the water that keeps me living.

To Be Free

It’s time to disconnect. I need to vanish. It’s time I hop the fence.

I’ve had this thought before. Many times, in fact. It comes in the realization that I’ve done little of what I’ve dreamed. I’ve certainly built wealth for others, but what does a man whose dream it is to write until his fingers grow old do with such a dream? What can a person who can’t stop diving deep within himself do when he just wants to run free? Is there recompense for a man who feels so much pain around him that he can’t escape the pain he feels within him?

Likely no. Escape for those chosen ones remain elusive, even if the door has been left open. We have responsibilities far beyond our selves. There are people who depend on us and who see us for the examples we are. I will not leave them even as I pray for relief. My back is to the wall and my solitude will have to wait until I finally have had enough.

Then I will disconnect. I will vanish. I will destroy this cage.

Numbness

Thoughts that I hold deep within will fall out of me like a raging torrent without much interference. I will finish my novels and publish my essays without much more to do with my days save the things that keep me alive. Truly alive. I will kiss the face of moving streams and touch the dirt that gazes unforgivingly at the houses down below. Then I will write more and try to forget I did anything but create that magic.

I don’t wish to be numb to my fate while surrendering myself to destiny. It’s the numbness that leads me to this place of rage. It is in moments of comfort that I forget what really brings me joy. I can lay silently in the sun, forgetting about the words bouncing within my soul,and let all manner of creation disperse wastefully to the ether. I need discomfort and the numbness. Despite the allusion to the lack of feeling numbness brings, it hurts me to no small measure and drives me mad with boredom.

I need more than just existence and this numbness suggests an existence mundane in all it’s boringness. The numbness that drove me to near death is a curse I wish to exile into hell, and action is the means by which I do the exiling. When my hands grow numb all I need is movement to bring them back to life. I need to move, to create and to bind myself to the winged creatures I envy.

For now, I will seethe in my discomfort and bide my time to liberation. I will crouch low in the tall grass like a lion stalking his prey and when the time is right I will spring forth to end this hunger. The growls will come and will serve as a reminder of what needs to be done. You cannot feed your soul on dreams, and you cannot end the numbness by remaining in the position that made you numb. Complacency feeds nothing. It’s time to move.

Some things just are, and they are perfect that way.

February 12, 2020 / Tom

I can’t really remember the day I fell in love with her. Not because I’m uncaring or just ignorant. I can’t remember falling in love with her because I can’t remember ever not being in love with her. It’s like I can’t remember my first breath. I know it happened because, well, here’s another, but I don’t remember it. It’s just always been.

Perhaps love is just something that exists like the soul. In my relationship with the Divine, my current soul is not a separate thing but a separated thing. I am one with a vast sea of divinity who has, in this experience, been separated like a droplet of rain from the ocean. Maybe love is like that. I’ve always loved her, in one form or another, and am blessed to know her again in this life. Just as I’ve known her in the eternity of that sea, not as me, not as her, but as we.

It could be, but I see no point in continually questioning it. Sometimes what is, like our breath, just is and questioning it becomes just a waste of time. Instead, I choose just to enjoy it, to bask in its light, for however long it blesses my existence. I see no point in trying to remember, or seek out, my first breath. Instead, I will just inhale and enjoy the life that breath brings. Then I will exhale and enjoy that too.

Truth is that I don’t really remember the origins of a lot of things. I know they’re there though, and I can enjoy them as freely as someone who saw the first sunrise, or the first wave caress the beach, or the first steps I ever took. It’s just a matter of presence, of enjoying what is despite not knowing much about it, and of trusting that I don’t need to know everything. Some things just are, and they are perfect that way.

Much More Than #24

January 28, 2020 / Tom

Kobe Bryant. A star athlete. A hero to many. A legend.

I don’t want to get into the minutia of hero worship or the frailties of a boy made rich and famous before manhood. There are many challenges we all face as we mature, but few of us have to do so under the spotlight. Even fewer of us have to do so under the intense pressure of performing for wealth and adoration. We make our mistakes and, hopefully, learn from them without much in the way of fanfare or notoriety.

Today, I just want to focus on a Dad and his daughter, a man with a girl he surely loved more than life. That is, after all, what truly matters.

I won’t pretend I can’t imagine what they went through. I believe I can. It makes me sad that such a loss had to happen in such a way. Yet, as I see grief on the faces of fans and athletes, this tragedy allows me to realize that great love exists. It exists even among the famous, the wealthy, the legends.

Because at the core of all the accolades, he was just a Dad with his little girl, a man with his legacy.

Tears

I have often felt waves of sadness roll over me as I contemplate my end. There is no fear of death in me but there is a sense of sadness. I want to experience all of life with those I love, and the thought of missing some of those things saddens me. I don’t want to miss a thing.

My children, if all goes according to plan, will carry on without me. Sometimes, as it so happened with #24, our plans as parents vanish in an instant. That’s the part I can’t, or won’t, imagine. It’s a horror needs to quickly vanish from my mind. I need to die before my children.

That is when the tears come. I think about Kobe, sitting next to his little girl on that helicopter, experiencing the horrible realization that nothing was going according to his plan. Not only was he going to die but so was his child. I can feel his impossible fear fighting his need to comfort his daughter. Waves of desperation poor over me as I sense his need for survival mixing with his desire to protect his baby girl. In my mind he fights his desire to tighten his restraints with his need to undo them just to hold her tightly.

I can hear screams mixing with “I love you”, fear mixing with love, and helplessness mixing with the desire to survive. It is quickly overwhelming.

So that’s where I stop. The intensity of pain mixed with the focus of a Dad’s need to protect his children proves too much. I can’t take it any further. It threatens the idea I have of my own plan, and leaves me realizing just how little control I have. I say a mantra, wipe the tears and shatter my shell, determined to live. I still don’t want to miss a thing and I know, deep inside, that fear does nothing but cause me to miss things.

The Legacy

I’m not a die hard basketball fan. I knew of Kobe because I grew up not far from where he grew up. I knew of him because of his childhood basketball exploits and the controversy he created locally by deciding to jump right from high school into the NBA.

It turns out he knew what he was doing and he trusted his instincts in doing it. Good man.

The death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, as well as everyone on board that helicopter, comes with a legacy outside of sports legend. It offers us a moment where great numbers of people can reflect on who they are at the same time while mourning the loss of someone they cared about. Hopefully, it also gives us all a chance to reflect on the things we haven’t lost and the opportunities we still have to embrace those things in gratitude.

Kobe Bryant’s death is not just about the loss of a legend. It’s an opportunity for parents to contemplate their own mortality and their own relationship they have with their loved ones, particularly their children. We often miss those opportunities as we swirl in our life’s distractions, but they are vital to experiencing life fully in our moment. Our moment that is so unexpectedly fleeting.

The American Character (Published Essay)

January 23, 2020 / Tom

This article was written for, and published by, ELIFE magazine’s Winter 2020 issue. You can read the article here, and peruse the magazine, here.

We are at the end of one decade and the beginning of another. The last saw an American experiment tearing itself apart. We are still embroiled in a nearly 20-year war with no real end in sight and no real understanding of the mission with little evidence that we care. We have impeached a President who is, arguably, a man completely devoid of character and honor. I could list the basis of that opinion, but I’ve been given a word limit for this essay.

This decade, which coincides with my 50^th here on earth, has given the philosopher in me a cause for concern. I grew up with a notion of what was the “American character”; one that stormed the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa, one who survived Valley Forge, one who waged a Civil War to free an entire race of people, one who stood up for human beings when they demanded equality. I grew up with images of students facing down our military on collegiate battlefields to end an unjust war. I grew up remembering when a President resigned after the honor of his office was sacrificed upon the altar of personal paranoia. I grew up feeling as if “we the People” could accomplish anything once our honor was challenged and our way of life threatened.

This decade I no longer feel that same determination of character. Instead, I’m wracked in the knowledge that a President can be elected despite the overwhelming will of the People. I’m pained in watching a man of great dishonor lead others in a nationalistic fervor that not only threatens our way of life, but our standing in the world. It seems like we live in a society more concerned with partisan ideology than honor and more about Party than integrity.

James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I wonder if our American character has become one built solely on Wall Street whims, and if Goldman Sachs is the new rock on which our church is built. I’m not a Democrat, nor am I Republican. I’m just a man who cares about people, who strives to follow a sense of character born within, and I fear my society and my country no longer understands me as much as I no longer understand it.

“…a good moral character is the first essential in a man…It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.” – George Washington

The Love of a Parent

January 16, 2020 / Tom

I get sad sometimes.

I miss my oldest child. Memories flood my mind of her wild curly locks, her diaper swishing in hurried toddler steps. She once fit in the crux of my arm, and now she’s a woman nearly as tall as I am. She’s a powerhouse, and I’m a proud poppa even as I swelter in the wish of wanting her nearby.

I chat with my middle child on the way to school, her life a swirl of priorities I barely remember having. I marvel at her smile and her determination, but mostly I admire her courage in just being who she is. She makes no excuses, offers no apologies, and stands tall as a master of herself.

My youngest spends most of this morning trying to make us laugh. He knows success when his sister smiles. She is stingy with such things, and she makes us work for her reaction. He doesn’t care for her approval, but he does have a need to make the world a happier place. He’s been that way since the day he was born.

Time has been my best friend and my worst enemy.

This sadness is not a typical sadness. It’s a joyful sadness. I am so grateful and happy for what time has given. I’ve held three wonderful children in my arms, watched them grow from seeds to saplings, and marveled as they’ve bloomed in every season. I don’t hold onto their youth as much as I wish it was longer, that I had more time to marvel, to appreciate and to soak it all in. I want more time.

But the sunrise is fleeting and the dawn but a passing moment. I still have the day to enjoy in the appreciation of both.

So my children walk away and I smile, feeling both joy and sadness at the same time. I let them go even as I hold them close and watch them bloom even as I wish they’d stay saplings for just a little while longer. This is the love of a parent.

Warfare, Home and the Journey

January 13, 2020 / Tom

“Life is warfare and a journey far from home.” ~Marcus Aurelius.

What do you think when you read this quote? Do you think of places you’d like to visit? Where is it you’d like to go?

In Stoic circles, many suggest that this quote was advising travel to faraway lands, while others say it is evidence that the Stoics were travelers who sought adventure. I wonder though, can it have a much more meaningful connotation, one that directs us more inward in our own journey?

To me, stoicism always been an inward process that radiates outward. I see much of philosophy as inward activity generating an outward expression. Stoicism has become the inward displaying itself in the outer world and is a catalyst for who I wish to be. It is not, for me, so much a way of life as it is a way to life.

As I see it, this quote seems to have more to do with inward warfare and that journey we all undertake to varying degrees. It has less to do with traveling to exotic locations and more to do with traveling inward to places I rarely go; those places that scare me yet seem to have such influence over my life.

To understand what I mean, let me start with the second part of the sentence.

“…and a journey far from home.”

What is home to most of us? It is a comfortable place where we feel secure. We can lock our doors and close our windows if need be. We can walk around our space naked without judgement. The choices we make are ours, and we can live in a way that pleases only us. It is our safe place.

Stoics seek balance and in that balance, home is a necessary space. Yet, as with any place of comfort, staying too long at home is a waste of living. While spending time under the blankets in bed is wonderful on a cold winter’s day, it ceases to be a healthy way of living if we stay there too long. We need the discomfort of getting out of bed into the cold, and we need the outdoors to truly feel alive.

That is what I believe Marcus meant with he said, “Life is…a journey far from home.”

Many of us search for those comfortable areas within. Some of us choose to stay there, often for too long. Inwardly speaking, life is a journey far from the comfortable spaces we’ve discovered. Life becomes, instead, the journey away from our comfort zones into the relative undiscovered and uncharted territory of what makes us uncomfortable.

I will rephrase one of my original questions to reflect that notion.

“Where is it you fear to go?”

When I answered that years ago, I also decided that is where I had to go if I wanted to heal and live my fullest life. That took much in the way of the first half of Marcus’ sentence. It took warfare.

“Life is warfare…”

Many will misconstrue Marcus’ meaning when they read the first half of this quote so, invariably, they will be led to the wrong location for the second half. I don’t see life as a inevitable war outside my mind, but I could certainly have experienced the persistent warfare within my mind. Now we may battle those external forces that wish to push us outside our safe space, but that is just the outward expression of the battle being waged within. My truth has always been that when someone pokes at my internal fears the demons always rise to fight. My reaction to those who challenge me is often the reaction my mind has to it’s own journey.

Fear, as most of us know, can be one helluva ruthless bastard. It’s likely why many of us shrink from even the idea of challenging it. Especially the biggest beasts who we’ve ignored with such skill that they often need not even awake to defeat us.

Yet, if we truly wish to live, we must engage in warfare to beat back the beasts that keep us locked in our homes. We must fight them, defeat them, so that we can journey deeper into ourselves. That journey is not only the expression of life but opens up the trail toward living. When we no longer fear going outside our safe spaces we can unlock the door and journey to places beyond.

If life is warfare and a journey far from home, then living is the prize of victory. There is always a difference between life and living and that difference is usually expressed in the balance we must fine. Living can be both the swaddling under warms blankets and it can be the warfare we engage in to enter a winter’s landscape. Balance is in finding the right times for either.

Thoughts of my Dad

January 10, 2020 / Tom

My Dad and I had a complicated relationship. However, we did little to complicated it. Others, it seemed, sought to make it as complicated as they could..

Despite their best effort, he and I enjoyed a very good relationship. It was one that was all-too-brief.

My mother, a woman with many struggles and problems, kept me from my father after their divorce. I won’t get into details save to say her lies and betrayals caused me to hate him from the time I was around five through much of my adult life. He was, in her delusional description, a horrible man. I thought of him in the most terrible terms for the better part of 30 years.

She’d often tell me how much I was like my father, again in the most terrible terms. I thought I was doomed to a life of suffering all caused by a heredity I could not escape.

It was, however, all a lie. When I was finally told the truth about my father, I couldn’t tell if the lie or the unveiling of that truth was more devastating. It took a some time for me to reconcile the suddenness of the discovering that not only was my father a great guy, but he also suffered greatly in the loss of his children. I had to untangle decades of anger and the hurt of the lie that created it.

Finding Some Truth

Ten years ago I decided to find him. I searched in California first, where I was born. Nothing panned out. Then I learned that he was originally from Philadelphia, and my attention turned more local. Within a couple of days I had found him, and shortly after he came to my home in New Jersey.

It was a glorious meeting and something inside me changed. I suddenly hoped I could be more like him, that I wasn’t cursed by my father’s gene pool. There was so much to learn about my ancestry. We talked about my family medical history. He described the trials and pain he endured in losing his first marriage and his children. I discovered he had fought for us over the course of years but in 1970’s family court he stood little chance.

He also confirmed for me that memories I had of him, memories my mother had dispelled as delusions of a hopeful child, were true. The happy times I remembered spending with him and his parents were confirmed. I found myself saddened deeply that this wonderful and meaningful relationship had been ruined for no reason.

I discovered I had two younger brothers and that my Dad had been married to the same woman for decades. They’d lived in Philadelphia all that time. They were all so very close yet so very far away.

We decided that we would keep in touch, and we did. He helped me in some dark moments of my life, challenged me to rise above my thoughts, and taught me that I was so much like him even as I lived as my own man. I was so much different, yet so much alike, the father I barely knew.

This meeting, plus my work in finding my father, further estranged me from my family. My sister, and it seems the rest of them, were angry that I would want to find him. Apparently, such an effort was insulting to my stepfather and offensive to my sister regardless of why the man who was my father had not been permitted in our lives.

I had no desire to estrange myself from my father to comfort those who had never done much in love, honesty or compassion to comfort anyone but themselves. It seemed to be more than a fair trade.

Final Words

There would be no pursuit of a relationship with my brothers, or their mother. I was happy just getting to know my father on our terms in our time. I didn’t feel that I needed a father, but I loved him. We actually enjoyed being around each other despite our political differences and our long period of estrangement. We clicked, and we could talk for hours.

I have had, to date, no conversations with my brothers.

The last time I saw my father was on his birthday in January, 2019. We met at a diner in Philadelphia and talked over coffee that got cold. He seemed to know many people there, and they all sat and talked with us. It was an enjoyable time.

He told me that he had been to Colorado before on a hunting trip and would really try to get out to visit. I told him he could stay with me, and we could take our time on the trails. He said “What makes you think you’ll need to wait for me?” I replied, “What makes you think I not sensing that I’ll have to run to keep up?”

He had turned 81, still walked for miles every day and went to the gym several times a week. My Dad reminded me that I was “big like my Grandfather but tall like me.” It was hard to believe he was in his eighties. “Movement is key,” he told me. “Stagnation is the death of us all.”

“Don’t worry, Tom,” he continued. “You have good genes on my side of the family. We have longevity.”

I reminded him I had had a stroke a few years before.

“That’s something else you got from me and your Grandfather. Staying power. It takes more than some bad health to keep us down for long.”

I laughed, but I got it.

A Final Call

The last time I spoke to my father was in the Summer of 2019. He called to tell me he had read what I wrote about my Grandfather, and to wish me a happy birthday.

“You nailed your Grandpop to a “tee”,” he said. “That’s the man I knew.”

“Thanks. I didn’t know you read my stuff.”

“All the time. You are a great writer. I enjoy it.”

We talked for a bit, and he told me something I don’t remember ever hearing from a parent.

“I’m proud of you Tom. You’re a good man. I love you, son.”

Today that memory brings me tears. Then, I could only muster a feeble “Thank you. I love you too.” I wasn’t used to hearing that from parents.

His 82nd birthday came on January 4, 2020. I texted him “Happy birthday young man!” He rarely texted back immediately, so I didn’t stress when I didn’t hear back from him that day. He had an old flip phone, and texting wasn’t easy for him. Calling wasn’t easy either for reasons private between the two of us. I expected he would text back or call as soon as he could.

A couple of days went by I had heard nothing. He was an early riser, so I went to bed believing I would hear from him by the time I woke up the next morning.

A Dream Goodbye

That night I had a dream. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember that he and I were walking by a stream in the woods somewhere. I think he was going to teach me how to fly fish, as I remember now we had waders on and were carrying poles with hooks dangling from our silly-looking hats. We shared a love of the outdoors, and we talked as we slowly walked along the trail. I don’t remember anything that was said but one word. One word that woke me from my sleep.

“Tommy.” He said it so clearly. It wasn’t loud. Rather it was like a crystal-clear whisper right into my ear.

I looked around in the darkness, half expecting to see him. That’s how clear his voice was to me. It was 5:14 am.

I grabbed my phone to check my texts. Still nothing. I went straight to Google and typed in my father’s name.

There, I found his obituary.

Sadness hit me like a truck. In the fractured way we lived our lives as father and son I was not there to say goodbye.

He did, though, say goodbye to me. I felt the dream I had was his way of saying “Goodbye, but not really.” We’d still walk the trails together and maybe even fly fish together someday. He no longer had anything holding him back and, for some reason, he knew I’d understand that.

Thoughts

I have daily thoughts about my Dad since our reunion. Happy thoughts. There were limitations to honor, yet I consider meeting him and our brief time together as some of the best moments of my life. I got to honor him, know him, and see him for the man he truly was. In turn, I was able to understand myself and know me through the eyes of someone more like me than not. Years of pain were erased from my life.

We were imperfect men who met each other on unusual terms and made the most of our remaining time. Men who understood each other as two closely related human beings who were together not because we had to be but because we wanted to be. We finally had a choice, and we made it, together respecting each other’s boundaries.

I understood that those who had hidden the truth were angry with me for pursuing it. They can go fuck themselves.

I know that those who cannot understand the importance of a son knowing his father don’t understand my need to know my own. They seem to have been hurt in my undertaking. I don’t apologize, not even for a second. Their not understanding me is none of my concern.

I am grateful that before my father passed I got a few years with him. Those years uncovered a truth and burned the box of lies I was given to ash. I got to see my smile in his, hear stories about his childhood and get to know our ancestry through his eyes. When we sat together I grew to understand that we sat as two men hurt by the delusion and poor character of others but who had decided that would not be enough to defeat us.

Mostly what I got from my Dad was an understanding of our potential. Despite all that had forced us apart we were there, talking and sharing. There was something wonderful between us, and there always would be. It is something I will carry with me for the rest of my days.

I didn’t get to enjoy a lifetime of memories with my father. What I did get was a lifetime of healing. In him I had found a man who understood me and who would not lie to me to make life prettier than it was. I trusted him to tell me the truth even if that truth did not paint him with the prettiest colors. He never violated that trust.

Today, I am proud to say I am my Dad’s son and to say “Goodbye, but not really.”

Goodbye to my Father

January 9, 2020 / Tom

People around us can be so shallow
Hollow, absent a core.
Guided by fear, lost to the voices of their own discontent.

Yet time and truth brought us together,
Our time. Our truth. Not theirs.
We shared laughs scattered between decades.
You challenged me to break the cycle.
I accepted.
You told me things that showed me who I was.
A child of living,
Your son in this life,
Different yet the same somehow.

I heard a whisper in my heart this morning,
And I knew that you were gone.
I am so saddened by your passing,
Of the lost time, the insanity that put a valley between us.
I will miss not knowing more of you.

I accept the sword,
As I am now the oldest generation of my birth,
Free to do it differently,
Your first born was not made to be like them.
You gave life to a fighter, a warrior of light and truth,
Honor and character birthed from the fires of my own destruction.
As you said, it’s my time to change everything.

The tears I shed this morning are for you and I,
For us,
Father and son, son and father,
The tears, our Holy Ghost.
The laughs our sacred memory.
Sadness will not be the legacy we share.
Defeat not an option to our undertaking.

Goodbye my father, I will see you often on the road that lies ahead.

Random Thoughts

January 7, 2020 / Tom

Today, a moment in time.

Tomorrow is just a dream.

Yesterday only happened in my mind.

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s yesterday. Yesterday, today was just a dream. Tomorrow, today will have happened only in my mind. I realized just now I need to stop wasting time thinking about such things. Today is too important to squander, tomorrow never comes and yesterday cannot be changed.

Cliches…ugh. Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees (see what I did there?).

I want to hug you. I feel you beside me but when I turn to touch you my fingertips find only dust. Perhaps this is my mind playing tricks on me, tormenting me for wanting something beyond my control, or teaching me to let go of wants and replace them with reality. What I want is out there, what I have is right beside me.

Now, how to make what I want all that is right here.

Dammit. I’m back to yesterday.

So much I would change. Not because I want to change yesterday but because I want to change today. I wish things were different. I wish life was easier and that I was aware of the luster in the treasures I had found.

Actually, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been blessed with the wisdom of a wild experience and know I can rise above just about any challenge thrown my way. Life does not become easier in the absence of challenge. It becomes easier in surviving them.

Thinking about yesterday creates such confusion. That confusion, however, guides us to a clarity of truth.

There is nothing like knowing someone who is the beautiful mixture of heart, soul and humanness. It’s even better when you love that someone and you get to quickly forgive their imperfections because of how fucking perfect they are. They toil, they quake and they are afraid but mostly they are loving, supportive and more courageous than they will ever likely know.

Treasure those moments when you can just sit back and watch. Those tears clouding your eyes and the joy in your heart are often all you ever will need to know about life. It’s not pride you feel in those moments of clarity; it’s pure admiration.

Use your imagination for a moment.

Imagine you are watching TV. Who do you want next to you keeping you warm? Where are you? That’s the person you should be with and that is the place you should be sharing.

I wrote an entire chapter to my new book while in the shower this morning. I love when that happens, and it’s even better when I finally have the chance to write it down. Someday.