This Is What It Might Look Like
Okay then maybe not a quill! It’s not that ‘old school’. But the kind of writing I have in mind is very specific.
When my Dad passed away it was the beginning of a painful emotional journey. I couldn’t get past the anger I felt toward him. All of us in the family knew for a long time that Dad wasn’t going to get better and it was just a matter of time, so his death was not unexpected. To be honest I thought I’d done a lot of my grieving during the time he had left to us. I was shocked to learn how wrong I was.
I couldn’t get past the anger. I was stuck fast in it. I was so angry: he’d died and left me – I was furious.
It didn’t have to be like that.
It could’ve been different.
It should’ve been different.
But it wasn’t.
My Dad had open heart surgery and six blockages removed – and was given a clean bill of health. It was the answer we had all been looking for, after his heart attack had come out of the blue. So once he recovered from the operation we were all relieved and delighted. We had our Dad back again!
This is a photo of my Dad as a young man in the RAF.
But my Dad being the person he was, meant he didn’t like boundaries on his actions. He couldn’t change and he carried on doing things he’d been doing for years. For example instead of using the services of a tree surgeon to cut down diseased trees – My Dad would do it, open heart surgery or not. Tiled the bathroom, tiled the kitchen – you name it, he did it.
Inevitably he had another heart-attack and was resuscitated 11 times in one night. He survived. To go on another another five years after that. This time he had little quality of life and wasn’t happy.
When he did pass on – I was relieved to know his suffering was finished and grateful to get the funeral over so we could all try to get our life back to ‘normal’.
But that didn’t happen either because as the weeks, months went by I couldn’t put my Dad to rest. I was stuck in the anger. I was angry that he hadn’t used his second chance properly. Why did he have to do those stupid things he did?
Why could he not be like other people; sit back, relax and enjoy his retirement.
Why did he have to slog along like a work-horse?
Those questions went round and round my mind. Over and over again. Until I was sick of it.
About then a thought popped into my head like a text message: ‘Write to him. Write to your Dad’. I was shocked at first, it seemed, somehow, wrong to write to someone who had passed. But I thought about it and the more I did the more I remembered other people who had spoken to me during their grief and they’d said something similar. One wife spoke to her dead husband constantly, it gave her comfort and she believed he heard her and was with her all the time.
Comforted by this, I sat down to write to my Father.
Writing To Someone Who Has Passed
It was therapeutic – for me it was therapeutic. Not only was it therapeutic. It brought healing.
As I wrote my letter and began getting into it, I started asking my normal questions of Why? Strangely answers popped into my head.
As the dialogue progressed it revealed more and more of my Dad’s personality to me, through the answers.
I don’t believe for a second that my Dad communicated with me. That was not what I was looking for – Dad deserved his peace and rest after his long years of suffering – I’d pestered him quite enough when he was alive with my endless questions, he certainly didn’t need anymore now he had passed.
What I do believe is: by committing myself to write I created a little oasis of peace and quiet and trusted in that peace and quiet.
I wrote my letter and trusted in the dialogue that emerged.
The dialogue was me, entering into the known realms of my Dad’s personality, according to how I knew him over the years. I became aware of all the years he had enjoyed good health, and in that time, one thing stood out. In all things Dad was not a person of half-measures. He never did things by halves. He was an all, or nothing, sort of person. That’s who he was. More than that possibly is, without being that way, he would never be the person we all loved so much.
In truth then Dad died as he had lived.
When I realised that truth it liberated me from the anger burning through my soul and my heart. I was free! Finally – I laid my Dad to rest in my heart.
A Liberating Experience – I Felt At Peace
I use the word liberating deliberately. As it truly was exactly that. Not only did it liberate me from the pain of my own Father’s passing. It transformed the way I looked at death itself. I learned that all of us die the way we live. We cannot do other than that. We can’t live in one way and then because we’re dying we suddenly become somebody else. My Dad couldn’t – he was always true to himself, no matter what the consequences.
That experience transformed me and I felt freer to look at death. Things that had bothered me before now viewed in this new light, now could be understood.
We shroud death with mystery and erect barriers around it. We separate it from life. Which it isn’t. It’s a part of life.
Our ancestors never treated death in this way. Whenever a family member died, the body would lie in state in a room within the house. Household members along with members from the community would prepare the body for burial. It was done like it was the last thing that could be done for that family member who had been loved and part of that community. It was an act of simple kindness. It was a necessary part of community life.
We don’t have that so much anymore. We don’t want our elders living with us when they become older. When they become ill we send them away to die in a hospital where we don’t have anything to do with it.
And I’m not judging that. It’s easy to do and doesn’t serve any purpose. Besides living circumstances have changed so much since our elders were on this planet, that for the most part it’s not even physically possible to house our elders. I mention it only to show how much we’ve changed as a community and moved away from traditional values. Again through no fault of our own. As humans we tend to migrate where there is work and the things we need in order to stay alive. In doing so we’ve left so much behind us.
So we shouldn’t be afraid to write to someone in our life who has passed. We don’t need to shroud it in mystery and secrecy and treat those people as if they never existed in our world. They might have gone from this planet, but who is really to say that they’re not alive and well, living very nicely thank you in another world, somewhere beyond our wildest dreams. Write your letter – it doesn’t matter of the circumstance, or what you want to say. You may even wish to be rude. You may wish to say loving, tender, gentle things – things you never could speak of when they were alive.
It doesn’t matter what the subject.
You need to write your way through it. Let your writing lead you to transformation and peace.
Until next time – take care.