Dead.

Dad was stretched out on his back with his head propped on a pillow, the bed sheet pulled up snug just below his neck.

The two of us sat by his side, looking quietly ahead. The time for words and weeping had mostly passed for the night. The rest of the family had gone, and it had fallen to us to make ready for the transport of Dad’s body.

It had been a long day.

Mom called that morning to tell me something was up. Dad was acting strange. When I arrived at their house with my wife and kids, he was barely responsive.

Our toddler son waddled to the couch and placed his hand on Dad’s chest. Dad smiled and puckered his lips for a kiss. That was all we got out of him before the ambulance arrived.

We followed him to the Hospice center, where they made him as comfortable as possible. Not his first visit. The afternoon and evening saw family and friends come and go, saying their goodbyes and offering their sympathy.

Small comfort, but comfort, nonetheless.

The only time I left the room was once before the others arrived, so that Mom could have her time alone with Dad. Afterward, she was kind enough to return the favor. I closed the door softly and walked to his bedside.

Standing alone over my father’s dying body, I wept.

Leaning in close to whisper in his ear, I thanked him. For all that he was and all that he did for me. I told him that it was ok to go, and promised that everything would be alright, that I would look after Mom and hold the family together.

His chin raised ever so slightly, and a gentle sound rose from his throat. The subtle tremors of a dying man, perhaps, but a father’s response to his son, no less. I took what meaning I could from the gesture and wiped the tears from my eyes. It was time.

One by the one the others filed through, all except for my brother, who remained in the lobby until the final moments. When at last he came into the room, he stood to the side and gazed out the window.

Someone suggested that we sing, so we did, one of Dad’s favorite hymns.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

We finished. The room grew still.

Dad’s nurse, who had returned to his bedside when it started to look like he was nearing the end, placed her stethoscope over his lungs. His breathing was shallow now, so faint that the rise and fall of his chest could hardly be seen.

One second. Two seconds. Three. An eternity passed in that moment. Smiling softly, the nurse nodded at my mother.

And together, we wept.

I turned to my brother, who was still looking out the window.

“Come on, man,” I said. “We have to face this.”

Clasping his shoulder, I pulled his body close to mine and we embraced, as we never had before and never have since. Something unspoken passed between us in that moment, and to this day I still do not know what it was.

When the others finally left, he and I returned to the room together. Sitting down on opposite sides of the bed, we looked not at each other and not at our father but at the blank T.V. screen on the wall in front of us, almost as if we were kids again, sitting at home with Dad watching a ballgame together.

I said a few words — feeling it my duty as the older brother to do so — but the words did not matter. What mattered was the legacy of the man who lay between us, and the fact that he was gone.

It had been over three years since Dad’s cancer diagnosis, yet all the chemo in the world could not save him, and no amount of time was enough to prepare us for his departure. There was nothing yet to be said, and nothing to do but witness it.

So, we did.

I had already left home, married, and started a family of my own. But it was in that moment, sitting alongside my brother in the shadow of our father’s passing, that I began to grow up.

~Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Writing

I have a funny relationship with writing. I’m not particularly fond of the craft itself. What I mean is, I don’t necessarily love writing for its own sake. I do enjoy expressing myself and I do feel good about giving birth to literature when it is well done. But I think I understand what Dorothy Parker was getting at when she said, “I hate writing; I love having written.”

That being said, I am still a writer. When I think about it, it does seem to be the case that I can’t not write. I’m not a great writer, but I have gotten better over time. Writing for me is a medium of personal expression combined with a tool for teaching. In other words, I write mostly to express myself and to teach. Furthermore, my best teaching usually occurs in the context of personal narrative.

Writing is also therapeutic for me in that it helps me sort through my thoughts and experiences. As Elie Wiesel said, “I write to understand as much as to be understood.” And that is what I intend to do with this series. I’d like to use these posts to create a framework for understanding the inner work I’ve been doing over the past few years. We all have to re-write our personal narratives from time to time as we grow and come to see our experiences differently. In that sense, I’m due for an update.

Sure, maybe I should be doing this in my personal journal. You don’t know me and therefore you probably don’t care about what’s going on in my life. Fair enough. But I believe my life has something to teach, just as I believe all lives have something to teach. This is why I’ve never been shy about sharing myself with people through my writing. At the end of the day, all I have to give the world is my own personal story.

So, if you’d like to join me for this inward journey then I invite you to pull up a chair. You’re welcome here. I hope my act of putting pen to paper (so to speak) will help you as much as it does me.

Memory

Psychoanalyst James Hollis believes that most people are living in “memory’s unmade bed.” I think what he means by this is that there’s a lot of unexplored shit going on down in the basement of our unconscious lives, and that these hidden forces (which are rooted in the past) are unknowingly dictating our lives in the present.

If this is true, then it’s kind of a big deal. I happen to believe it is true; at least, I’ve found it to be true in my own life. Thus the value I place in memory work.

Here is what I mean: What I’ve discovered over the last few years is that my memories say as much about what’s going on inside of me today as they do about what happened to me in the past (you might want to tweet that).

In fact, the memories I hold from my most formative life experiences more accurately reflect my current state of being than they do the actual facts of my personal history. Like it or not, this is one of those areas where the old Talmudic maxim seems to be true: “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

I suppose this realization can be disheartening at first (after all, how much of what I recall is even accurate?), but I’ve learned to make it work for me by using it re-evaluate and re-author my life story. You’ll see a little of that work in the pages to come.

I’ve also learned that such a project is not for the faint of heart. Most people don’t bother with it unless they are driven to it out of desperation. In some ways, that’s how it happened for me.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

~Carl Jung

I believe it was E.B. White, author of The Elements of Style, who said that he arose each morning torn between a desire to change the world and a desire to enjoy it, and that this made it very hard to plan his day. I feel the man’s pain. The tension between personal responsibility and social concern pulls at me daily, and it is this unresolved tension that forms the basis for a great deal of my work.

What I strive to do, then, is create written works of art that challenge and inspire people toward both personal and social transformation. I write in order to cast vision of the world as it could be, all the while urging people to be their best selves now, regardless of the mess in which they live.

Consequently, my interests lie in many different fields. I move freely between philosophy, labor, religion, psychology, and history in a bold attempt to integrate all the truth I can find from any legitimate source. As a result, I am constantly re-drawing my inner map of the world, and because of this you probably won’t like everything I have to say. Hopefully, though, you will never fail to be challenged or inspired in some fundamentally useful way that makes the journey, and perhaps even your support, worthwhile.

All the best,

Josh

So your big day has arrived. You’ve waited long and hard for so many things as you’ve watched your brother take first place, but now your time has come.

Kindergarten. Day one.

I was so proud of you when you asked to walk to class on your own (your brother wasn’t even up to that challenge on his first day, you know). Proud, but hesitant. Already I can see you breaking away, becoming independent, blazing your own path.

It scares me, sweetie. It really does. Not because I doubt you’ll be up for the challenge, for you are more than capable. But because I love you so much. I know the world a little better than you do at this point, and I know it doesn’t always look out for its own the way I look out for you.

That is what I hate the most. I hate that I won’t always be able to protect you. When your heart is broken… when you are sad and feeling rejected… when life doesn’t go your way and you struggle to understand why.

All I want is to wrap you in my arms and shelter you from this cold, unforgiving world in which we live. To tell you it will be alright, and make it so with every fiber of my being. But the more you pull away, the less I’ll be able to do that.

You’ll make it, I know. And I’ll be proud to watch you go. But I have to fight myself to let you leave. Try to understand that as you grow older, would you? I’m sure I will annoy you, but I mean well.

No matter how old you grow, how far you go, or what mistakes you (or I) make along the way, you’ll always be my princess. Remember that.

Forever yours,

Dad

p.s. By the way, you sparkled in your new outfit. It was an excellent choice.