Tag: death (Page 2 of 3)

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.

Sirens (Finding the Light in the Darkness)

January 2, 2020 / Tom

I have heard the sirens.

As a firefighter and EMT, they were part of the job. They were part of the adrenaline rush. Like the bugles announcing the pending arrival of a cavalry, the sirens let those who had called know we were coming. I have always loved the sounds of the sirens for that reason.

Then one day the sirens came for me.

I was blinded by a brain injury so I could not see them. I could only hear them, and I knew what story they were telling. In all the times I had ridden in the back of an ambulance with a patient I had always wondered when it would be my turn. That time had come.

Some I had ridden with were taking their last ride in the back of the “bus”. I watched some take their last breaths. I heard some whisper unintelligible prayers just before the end. I always had wondered if the language of the afterlife was something none of us were meant to understand. Even when those final words were words I knew, they always seemed to have some meaning I could not fathom.

Sometimes I would hold their hand at the end and feel the energy drain from their flesh.

I felt that their energy was not gone, it was just not there. It had traveled somewhere else, somewhere I had been before and would see again. As I took my ride in the bus, listening to the sirens play their bugle call, I insisted I was not ready to go. This would not be my last ride and this would not be the end of my story.

Fear and Focus

I was, however, afraid. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I had decided a short time before they arrived that I would take this ride to its fullest, but something about being on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance unnerved me. Each time I had been in the back of a bus I was the strong one, the one who was there to help. Now I was the patient, blind and weakened in my condition. Yet in that numbing darkness I could still see a tiny flame that pulsed with the rhythm of the siren. I focused on that fire, the tiny glimmer of hope of survival.

That flame was tiny, but it was mighty.

The paramedics were asking me questions and offering me reassurance. I told them I knew the drill and that I had lied to many people in the back of a bus. They answered that they weren’t lying, and I believed them. The little flame suggested that they were telling the truth. I just had to believe.

Things to Say

I knew I had things yet to say. There were the visions of my children that flashed across the darkness. My eyes had failed but my heart had perfect vision. The eyes are not the only parts of me that could see and I was learning that with each passing second. In my heart I was telling them how loved and admired they were. Had I told them that before, I wondered? Of course I had but this time seemed different. It wasn’t my mouth talking, it was my heart.

I hugged them too, a hug that felt more powerful then it ever had. I wasn’t hugging them with my arms, I was was hugging them with my heart. There was such a vast difference between the two.

I saw the Sun rise in my vision and I heard a poem recited in the wails of the siren. The vivid colors of the dawn and the beautiful rhythm of the prose rose from someplace new. My heart was painting on a new canvas and the words flowed from a place I had once only small glimpses of. I still had things to say, stories to tell, but they would not come from my head. They would come from a new and mostly uncharted territory.

I would let my heart tell the story. My heart would be the artist. I would surrender thought to feeling and let instinct be my guide.

Lessons in the Darkness

There were so many lessons learned that night. Time is short. Our moments are fleeting. Bad things happen to good people. The sirens and those sounding those bugles are heroes.

There were some, however, not so cliche.

When my mind is the guide, I see things through clouded and cracked glass. However, when my heart is guiding me my vision is much clearer. In doing something heart-centered I do it with a clear purpose. Mindfulness is not a practice worth much time for me, heartfulness is.

“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” My mind will always be burdened by scars and the traumas of living, but my heart sheds them in the purity of forgiveness. Scars and scabs cannot stain a heart that is pure; such anomalies cannot exist there. What I learned on that autumn night was that my task has always been to reduce the focus on my brain and let my heart lead the way.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

The barriers I had built against love resided in my mind and all its traumas. It was time to tear them down and burn them to ash in that little flame I saw in the darkness.

(Coming soon, a short story based on finding the flame in the darkness. Follow my Amazon page here.)

To Touch the Torch of Freedom (An Immigrant Tale)

December 27, 2019 / Tom

He kept low in the bush, waiting for the Sun to set. Every so often he’d lift his head, checking to his left to see how far the Sun had moved. He had watched the Sun rise from this spot, and now was hoping this was the final sunset he’d see from this side of the line.

On the other side was the torch of freedom. All he wanted to do was carry it and share it with his little girl.

She had been amazing during this journey. Now she snuggled close to him, keeping quiet and low, barely making a sound. She had even urinated in her pants rather than tell her father she had to pee. It seemed she fully understood the gravity of the situation, realizing the hope that lay just a bit further north and a few hours away.

The Decision

Two weeks before his wife had been raped and murdered the local gang. The gang was in control of his neighborhood, having bribed the authorities and intimidated local politicians. Well-armed and well-funded, they were more of a militia than a street gang. They sold drugs and they killed rivals. Police officers who didn’t fall in line where found murdered in their patrol cars. The gang’s response to opposition was swift and deadly.

The villagers were poor and powerless, and often the gang would beat them, rape the woman and children, and murder anyone who stood up to them. The government was useless. The police were either bribed or killed for opposing them. It was a very dark time.

To the north, however, was a light of hope. Symbolized by a strong woman raising a burning torch, many had hoped to find the opportunity and liberation they had heard so much about. They only needed to make the journey. They only needed to risk life and limb to get there.

Legal channels were useless, and they all knew it. They neither had the money nor the understanding to navigate those waters. What they had, though, were two legs and the desire to get there. Few understood laws in their lawless land, but they understood suffering, the intense desire to escape and the value of freedom and opportunity.

The man had no choice but to stay. His wife was too sick, having nearly died giving birth to their 5-year old daughter. One day, his wife went to the market and was attacked by some members of the gang. They held her down, taking turns brutalizing her. When finished, they slit her throat and left her to die in the weeds, where her husband found her that night.

Through his anger, he decided to leave. He knew vengeance would be certain death for him, and he would not intentionally orphan his daughter. Instead, he set his sights on that torch to the north, a light that promised freedom, opportunity, and rest for the huddled masses like them. He threw their few clothes and a picture of his wife in a backpack and began walking north. They had nothing left to lose.

The Journey

The journey to their hiding spot in the desert had been difficult. They’d walked for days and slept little under the rainy nighttime sky. He had blisters on his feet and his lips were cracked with thirst. He gave most of the water he had to his daughter, and had carried her most of the way. The rain at night would wash the caked dirt from their skin, though the cold night air kept him awake. He would cover his daughter the best he could, trying desperately to keep her warm and dry.

A few days into their journey he had been beaten. People like him were targets for local thugs who believed they’d be carrying money for their escape, money he certainly did not have. They only owned the clothes they wore and the meager belongings stuffed into his backpack. They were so meager, in fact, that the thugs who’d beaten him didn’t want them, and they tossed the bag back untouched as he laid bloodied and submissive in the dirt. He had nothing anyone wanted.

He had heart, however, and that would see him through. That, and knowing his daughter was safe. At least for now.

To Touch the Torch of Freedom

The Sun was nearly at the horizon. The man whispered to his daughter that they would be moving soon.

“Papa,” she whispered, “then we cross the river?”

“Yes, mija. Soon we cross the river.”

“Then we touch the torch?”

“Then we touch the torch.”

“What does it look like Papa?”

He had told this story many times as they walked, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to tell it again. It had been a mantra they’d used through the danger and the exhaustion. It had gotten them to this point in their journey.

“First it looks like earth, much like where we are now. Then it looks like a good job in a safe neighborhood. Then it looks like good friends and good schools. It looks like being able to read, and write, and to know things. Good things, like how to help people and make your mother proud. It looks like making the most of the gift of freedom and of the opportunity God has given you.”

“Will we go to jail Papa?”

“Ah, mija,” said her father. “I hope not. We will just do our best, right?”

“Yes Papa.”

She hugged him. He could smell her mother on her and could see her mother smiling at him. This perilous journey was not just for him, but for his daughter as well. He could not let her live, or die, like her mother.

“Now let’s be quiet, mija. We have just a little way to go before we touch the torch for the first time.

She squeezed a bit tighter. She must have sense that the toughest part of this journey was yet to come.

The Destination

This story ends here, at that little line that separates the darkness from the light. It’s a line some wish to become a wall but I hope becomes a bridge.

I want to share the warm light of the torch I was blessed to be born under with those who were not so lucky; those who sacrifice and risk everything just for the chance to place their hand beside mine on its handle.

It would be easy for me to say that others must follow the legal path to enter this land. I just had to be born to be here so that statement would seem to be the purest form of privilege failing to understand its place. I fell from my mother’s womb right smack onto the destination and risked nothing to be here.

I am a human, as are those on the other side of the line. If I can’t reach my hand across that line to pull others over the wall of privilege what kind of human am I? If I can’t help others have the same chance I was born into, what kind of man would I be?

My torch is not just some beacon for others to strive for. It is also a flame that warms the cold places and lights the path I choose to follow. If I can’t share it then perhaps it’s time the torch be extinguished as the meaningless symbol it is. To give it meaning would be to give it breath and to give it breath would mean to share it with whomever seeks it. Otherwise, it’s a waste.

The Ghost Beside Me

December 18, 2019 / Tom

A ghost sat beside me, rocking slowly on the small, wooden chair. In the steely silence I could hear only two things; the rhythmic beating of my heart and the creaking of that chair. I hear no breaths, no gusts of wind howling just outside my room nor sounds of discarded leaves being thrown about by autumn’s fury. I can only here Death sitting in that chair, slowly waiting for it to be my time.

My eyes had been blinded by the rage of life, my brain injured by the loss of blood. I needed to see, to stand, to walk among my loved ones again. In my blindness I could hear so many things once forgotten. I could hear the smile of my children. I could hear the laughter that came from deep within them. I could hear the sight of a flower blooming in the sunlight, and I could hear the sounds of winter thawing. I could hear the sound of a smile, of a loving glance, and the rising tide of an ocean a thousand miles away.

My body could no longer steady itself against the invisible strings of gravity. The sense of touch I had taken for granted had now changed and, with it a truth I had always depended. The security of all I had known vanished in a breath, replaced by something I was told was “a new reality”. It was a reality I had never requested but had no choice in accepting.

On an opposite side of the room sat another ghost rocking slowly on another chair. There was a warm light pulsing rhythmically with each movement, and a sweet melody vibrating in a heavenly tempo. I could feel the bliss of Life caressing those parts of me left darkened by the stroke, the want of life pulling me out of the numbness. There was, in this moment, a choice to be made and a path to be taken.

I felt no fear in this choice, only a surrender to the reality, swimming in the knowledge that had no control over my circumstance. In that surrender, though, rose a feeling in the numbness, a truth that shouted to me that while control had been lost, I could regain it. I could control my choices from that moment on. I could choose Death, or I could choose Life, and I could ride the wave toward either end. Death offered me a final surrender. Life offered me the challenge I was born to accept. Death seemed easy. Life seemed all-too-difficult.

I chose life, and in the shadows of that night I found my vision. In that unsteadiness I found true balance. In that challenge I found a love of Life, of living, and asked Death to wait his turn. He seemed to smile in return having played his part in the dance of Life.

Death knows, though, that my choice is a temporary one, and that one day he will extend his hand and I will have no option but to take it. Life, however, knows something too. She knows that circumstances arrive, and within them comes a litany of choices. Life knows that she exists in the choices we make within the experience, and she knows that those choices determine to which degree we can enjoy her company. We can either make choices that have us dancing with Life, of we can make choices that have us existing until the hand of Death grabs us in a grip from which we cannot break free.

I have discovered in my own time that Life offers us liberation in the choices we make. Liberation is born in the struggles of our time, and Life is realized in the sweat and blood of our liberation. True living is liberation, and liberation exposes us to the glory of true living. They go together like yin and yang, important ingredients that cannot be separated and are as necessary for one other as the beating heart is to breath and breath is to the beating heart. Fear is but a shackle we have placed upon ourselves, and love is the key that can set us upon a gratitude spawned from great Living. There is great liberation in appreciating the Sunrise whose memory may be all I have one day. Loss shows us the way to gratitude, and gratitude shows us a way from loss. We can be so liberated in sharing gratitude not just in what we have, but for what we have lost.

So whether it is struggling to keep upright when your brain is unable to keep control, or hiking a trail among the beasts of wild and untamed nature, or just getting out of bed to face another day, the challenge itself offers great opportunity for liberation. We can liberate ourselves from the confines of a bed in our dizziness. We can liberate our bodies from the delusion of safety within our unnatural box. We can liberate ourselves from the dread created in the lack of fulfillment. We are the choosers of our own path.

If you like this post, please subscribe by adding your email address to the right! Thank you!

The Door to Eternity

December 5, 2019 / Tom

I felt she was ready. For all the clinging of those who loved her, she needed to leave. It was her time, and when the door opened she looked back, smiled, and passed through the threshold.

Behind her was the anguish of her humanity, in front was something more. Before the door had closed she paused to glimpse one last time as the path that was. She saw the joys of her life planted neatly along the way, and relived the laughter and the smiles and the intimate moments where love had swaddled her soul. She also saw the pains, the suffering, the anguish and the rush of fear that being human had created. In joy she was so mindless yet in fear the mind was all she had.

The look back, it seems, is something all souls do. When they look back at their lives most know it is time to move on. Those who are not ready, though few they be, they return to their humanity to be celebrated for their unpreparedness. Yet that door is something we shall all see, and it is something we shall all pass through. She was ready to pass through before she had actually seen it. She had felt it before she saw it, and it’s pull began to build as her pain increased.

As she reached the end of her humanity she recognized something. While her body was wracked with pain, her heart had jumped for joy. As she neared that door she ceased being completely human and became a part of her divinity. At the end she was ready to let go of being human and open the door. It was time.

She felt the tears of those she loved and the pain of those who wished she’d stay. This was, finally, her journey alone and she could no longer submit to the whims of others. Her soul called for home, her heart begged for love, her humanity desperately wanted to know its divinity. And so, with a final view of the forest she had planted, he closed the door and walked into eternity.

There would be sadness left behind, but joy would return. That’s the thing about both, the return in our human experience with equal vigor. Yet, what lies on the other side of that door leaves one of those behind.

One Pane of Glass

November 26, 2019 / Tom

Outside, a blizzard rages. Inside, I am comfortable, nestled nicely on a sofa beside her warm body, watching the driven flakes of snow head to meet others that have fallen before them. There is but one pane of glass that separates me from the wilds out there. Just one pane of glass between the me found in this comfortable place and the me begging to be in the place that calls me.

The slow drum and dribbles of the washing machine fills this space, a rhythmic, modern tune hummed inside while the wild, ancient song of winter whips outside. Still, in this comfort and safety my mind wonders out there, to the place where deep snow has buried the earth, where the winter winds blow hard in autumn, where the parts of me that existed well before my flesh was formed once played. I can feel the discomfort of the cold air on my skin. I can feel the challenge of moving in deep snow. I can feel the desire for survival well up inside me. It is a fire I’ve known well, built in the moments of darkness where no light was assured, kindled in those times when I was frozen to the bone.

The wild part of me wants to be challenged. The hunter in me wants to stalk his prey. The hunted in me wants to dare the hunter out from behind his tree. The beast in me wants to prove I can survive. The coward in me wants to push the beast out of his cave. Nothing brings me to life like answering the call of the wild, and nothing says home to me like the wilds themselves.

I once believed I had surrendered to fear. That was a lie told by fear itself. I had but given myself pause to regroup so that I could move forward a little bit more. Sometimes victories are not measured in miles but in inches, and sometimes victory looks like defeat. Defeat cannot, however, stain the soul that moves past the fear within him. Defeat cannot pierce the heart of the warrior who stands firm against the onslaught of the demonic hoards born inside his mind.

I fear heights, so I’ve climbed tall ladders to protect my brothers facing fire below. I’ve feared death, so life brought me to its doorstep to show me a truth. I feared sharing myself with others, so I tore off my veils and became a naked warrior ready to just be me. More fear comes, and I challenge it, often discovering what I will do and won’t do now has little to do with fear, but more with desire. While I fear skydiving, I answer less to that fear and more to the fact that I simply have little desire to jump out of an airplane.

If that desire grows, I will jump with a wild yell. That truth I learned, the one I mentioned before, was that a fear of death is a fear of life. I choose life, living as fully as I can in any moment even in those times when victory looks exactly like defeat. I will not let panes of glass get in my way, instead honoring the oath sworn on my lifebed. I will splinter any walls that get in my way, and step over the shards of windows shattered in answering the calls within.

I wonder if there are others, those intrepid souls who hear the calls of life lived before this one, and answer with all the might their hearts can muster. I wonder if there are souls out there now trudging through the deepest snow just for the challenge of it. I wonder if there are warriors out there who hear the call of hunter and prey, beast and coward, sinner and saint simultaneously and who, like me, feel at home in the forests that echo those calls. I wonder if we speak one voice, hear one song, and peer at hope through the same, lonely pane of glass.

Life is what we are given as a promise of our birth. Love helps us overcome the obstacles to life we are blessed to have fallen across our path. Truth is what binds life and love to a single, simple calling. Find life, discover love. Discover love, know truth. Love life in truth and never die again. Even as your final breath is drawn, it is the one who has discovered life who can never truly die.

52 Years (A Warrior’s Lament)

November 8, 2019 / Tom

I met a man recently. He was a strong-looking older man, a Vietnam Veteran, a warrior, a man who’s had his own sense of loss and of struggle yet somehow survived. He had cancer twice, an illness he says was due to Agent Orange exposure during the war. He lost friends in battle, a lost even more in the years since. Yet I could sense in his struggle he had something that got him through it, something that prompted a man who had been beaten to rise, who had been nearly defeated to turn his chest to the demons and beat them into submission.

It didn’t take long before I found out what that something was.

“My wife died last month. After 52 years of marriage she’s gone.,” he said with a tear in his eye. I could feel the pain ripple across the room. I could see his agony restrained in tired eyes. I could hear his prayer for just one more kiss, for one more word from her whispered in his ear, for just one more minute with the woman he loved.

Nothing, it seems, can make a strong warrior crumble like the loss of half his heart. He seemed completely unwilling to surrender to age or to an enemy. But I could sense this old and wise man was completely ready to surrender to the loss of his great love. I could sense that no battle he’s ever waged was as fierce as the one he was in now. It seemed he knew that he had no part in this outcome, and that a broken heart could do what no bullet, no struggle, could.

He had married her before he was sent into combat, something not unique to the time. He loved her right away, and when faced with the likelihood of his death they decided to commit to the love they felt. If he died in combat he would die her husband, and she his wife.

He survived the war and the effects it had on his mind and his health. In their life she had often said that she had been married to two men, once to the man she knew before the war, and again to the same man after the war. He shared that she had been the reason he fought hard to survive many battles, but fought even harder to survive the long one that came when he got home. She had been there, always, his partner and his love, and he honored her as his wife each day of their life together. It was an honor that gave him life, even after he was certain his life would be over.

“She was quite a babe,” he said. “The guys in my platoon were always asking me about her. I think they loved her too. Here, look.”

He pulled out his wallet and showed me a picture of a stunning woman. The picture was black and white, but looked brand new, and I couldn’t help but understand his admiration for her. She looked like a pin-up model, even if the picture was 52 years old.

“She took this so I could take it to Nam with me. I carried it with me every minute of every day, and I have ever since. It has never left me, and I’ll be buried with it.”

“She is beautiful,” I replied. “Let’s be honest though, you had to be quite the catch to have her marry you.”

“I wasn’t bad, but I was better with her. That’s the thing about us men. We know we are good on our own, but we also know we are great with the right woman by our side. Even if she’s not there, she’s there. You know?”

I agreed with him, thinking of my partner who was over a thousand miles away doing her thing. I thought about how much I missed her and wished she was near. I hate distance, and I hate weeks of separation, but I realize that there is a good reason for the displeasure I feel in the separation.

I offered him my condolences, and though the words were heartfelt they seemed hollow in the space between us. He accepted with the graciousness of a man who was searching for any comfort he could find, even if it came from a stranger. The weeks since her passing may have helped him restrain the streams of his tears, but they seemed to do little to lessen the lake of emotion that gave them breath. I shook his hand and he thanked me while I issued a prayer that this would not be the last time I got to see this man.

“Namaskar,” I whispered to the ether. A part of me recognized this man and I believe a part of him recognized me. Though strangers until this moment, we were brought together to share a bit of wisdom, he to show me something and me to offer my gratitude in return. Perhaps I offered him some comfort but I know he offered me some perspective. In this brief interlude I remembered my grandfather and grandmother as well as the love I have inside me.

What a gift, and one I’m happy to share.

The Fragility of My Mortality

November 4, 2019 / Tom

It was bedtime and, as often the case, I went in to sit with my 13-year old son to end the day. Being a parent can be hard and sometimes the lessons we need to teach our children can be tough, but at the end of the day I like to reinforce to my kids the truth that I love them and that I am their Dad. That means that I am not just a teacher, but a role model and a man who will always do the best I can. For me, being a Dad isn’t just about teaching hard life lessons and preaching a certain kind of virtue. It is also about being vulnerable and exhibiting strength in that vulnerability.

After our talk, I ended with a “Good night, my son. I love you. You are my favorite boy in the entire Universe.” That had been my agreement with my son since he was born, and I’ve stated it so many times I could not hope to count the recitations. Despite our familiarity with that mantra, it never seems old to me. Each time I say it brings a certain amount of truth, newness and commitment into the space we share. I know soon, if he still allows me, the word boy will change to “man”. The one thing that won’t change is that he is my favorite man ever born.

The conversation used to go like this:

“I love you, bud. You are my favorite boy in the entire Universe.”

“And you are my favorite Daddy in the entire Universe.”

“I’m your only Daddy.”

“And I’m your only son.”

He has an advantage over his sisters. My middle child is currently my favorite 15-year old in the Universe, and my oldest is currently my favorite 25-year old. My son is simply my favorite boy, young man, male, whatever. He need share that favoritism with no other in his gender. He is the only one of his kind, the “man” of the house when I’m not around although his sisters have no need for a “man” of the house. They’re quite easily the strongest, most able and most independent people I know.

“Dad, give me a big hug.”

I certainly don’t say “no” to those opportunities. I assume, with some wisdom gained through the experiences I’ve had with his sisters, that those hug requests will diminish in time. This was the first year I wasn’t invited to walk with him on Halloween, that privilege being extended to his friends alone. My middle daughter didn’t even dress up this year, deciding to attend a high school haunted house with her friends instead. My oldest gave up doing those things that remind parents that they have children. Now, I have adults, and with them nothing but memories of smiles coming through princess makeup and GI Joe camouflage. I can still see each of my kids in my memory, their bags and plastic pumpkins in hand, running in dresses and scary costumes, enjoying that holiday as only kids can.

I used to be Daddy. Now, I am Dad. I used carry them on my shoulders, now I can barely lift them. They used to rely on me for so much, now I am barely tolerated (even when they rely on me). So I will never say “no” to a hug request, and I will put all my energy into that hug while it lasts.

Last night’s hug filled me with great joy, but also with great sadness. I could feel the fragility of my mortality looking over my shoulder. I could feel the moments fading. I could sense my end, although with that sense came an intense focus on the moment I was in with my favorite boy in the entire Universe.

I realized in that split second that I would not be around to see much of my son’s triumphs, or be there to help him in his tribulations. I would not be there to hug him when he needed one, or talk him through a question that entered his mind. I would not see so much of this young man’s life. I could feel a tear being born in my soul, but he would not see it. For now he would just be hugging his Dad, oblivious to the fragility of mortality that plagues us all. I could give him the gift of presence, knowing full well that one day he would fully understand the burden that mortality brings all of us who love someone deeply. The way I love my son, and my daughters, who will one day need me only to find I am gone.

That is where my “fuck” comes from. That fuck I give in this life, that fuck that says I want to be there for them, see their lives unfold, experience their joys and help shoulder their sadness. Mostly though, I know the sadness they will feel in my passing and I want to spare them from that burden. I know, however, that is a wish that will never be granted.

I woke up this morning understanding what this experience means. It means that I can’t be wasting time on the mundane, the meaningless drivel that often permeates our lives. Instead, I need to focus on the remarkable, and sharing that remarkable with those I share a love with. I need to leave a legacy of love, of words, of lessons and of memories because one day those things are all that will be left of me. I have spent a lot of my life focused on nonsense and I’ve wasted my energy on plenty of endeavors that have little meaning to those parts of me I will leave behind. I cannot build my memorial on fiction, I must build it in truth.

Perhaps that is what being a parent teaches us. Perhaps it need not be so much about “raising” our children but more about leaving them a legacy. Not a legacy of wealth and comfort, but a legacy that they can lean on when times get tough. Perhaps our role is not just to warm them, but teach them how to warm themselves and not leaving them to wander on their own, but to share with them a compass of morality, of character, and of love. That way, when they call for me and I can’t come they can still hear my voice, feel my hug, and know that I have never, ever, left them.

And I will always be their Dad.