You never really believe you will outlive your parent. You know it makes sense at every level of understanding but there is a deep , primal feeling in your gut that they will always be here (warts and all), like they always have been since your earliest memory.. So for the half dozen or so of you, my faithful blog viewers (who have probably been thinking they outlived me, given my 10 month silence here), we are now going to delve ever so briefly into the seminal topic for a blog about facing your fears: the fear of losing your parent realized. So the memorial is over, Dad's ashes are on an express route out to sea, and..what was learnt from this experience, this final wrap on the Big Cinematic Experience that was my father's life? Welll, it's brought unexpected vision and ..inspiration. In-spir-ation:the breathing in of air, or the breathing in of someone or something else's belief about What Is Possible. For you, for them..for who they were and now are, and for who you are and now could be. (Ok, now even I'm confused.) But the oxygen that fills our lungs with life is no less resuscitating than the sight we are bestowed with through another person's eyes focussed on the potential in ..us. The point is that in reflecting about the life (youth, school, work, family, decline to a ripe old age, and ultimate Ocean Nap) of a VERY Significant Other, we discover that, inevitably, we are going to be reaching out for -at maximum stretch- and gripping tightly on to whatever nugget of a baton they passed on to us to live our lives differently after their passing (and um, I mean that literally).
And that brings a whole MESS of yaHAHH! to how this Big Ol' Game of Snakes and Ladders looks after you dad he be gone. I kinda think my job is to continue to emanate the essence of Dad's best moment by incorporating it into a billion more of the best moments yet to be in my own life, moments that will preferably be well-intentioned, altruistic, fearless, selfless, noteworthy...Or, at the very least, moments that will keep me from losing my safe driver's discount before my insurance is up next November.
So, there you have it. Another fear realized and converted into a maze of words meant to lead me to a greater understanding by going through the writing of them. I know that it feels very verrry good to wake up , breathing (they do kind of go hand in hand), still have a shot at Life, to have it just poised and ready there for the taking, aw c'mon, let's say the GRABBING....eyes wide open, and by the kahunas. Obituaries tend to perpetuate the tone of a funeral durge, summoning our collective palpable sigh with how the departed one is 'survived' by family, friends etc etc, but I say let's kick it up a notch , put a more positive spin on all this death stuff and pronounce that person is now resonating in their loved ones, the reverberations of that life lost creating ever-growing concentric circles of influence paying forward into the little coves of our lives where still waters may perhaps have otherwise run abit too deep...
* Respiro-Italian for 'breath'
