10. The Things We Carry

This is an ode to everything unexpected.  

It's a celebration of Life's ethereal and expansive wisdom. It's a poem about the necessity of collapse and a ballad about how what we find ourselves buried under is the same thing that fortifies our resolve to emerge from beneath it. It's a prayer for everything we had to lose before finding the courage to look inside ourselves and claim what was promised would be found.  This is a tribute to you.

This is the moment of clarity that transforms a lifetime of pain into joy so pure it ends you. It's the insight that opens unexpectedly, like a hole in the ground so wide and without warning that your mind is left empty when it closes. This is the decision to reject the idea that anything was ever a burden. It's the choice that's always been our own to make. This is the letting go of ego and the unceremonious bow that's made when we offer the space we take to what waits, and follows. This is the relief of surrender. 

This is the confession we make when we're ready to be seen. It's the confession we make without the words we chose for the sole purpose of hiding behind. This is what it looks like when we admit to what we are embarrassed for having done. 

This is an invitation to the forgiveness we were denied, or denied others. It's the arrival of what we tried so desperately to avoid. It's the sliver of undying light emanating from what awaits. it's the annihilation of self-righteous certainty that comes with the authentic expression of humility.

The older I get the clearer it becomes. I never really knew my way. There is a stark obviousness now to the vacancy in almost everything I wanted for myself and carelessly pursued. The way you find out what kept you upright is to be still and engage in reflection.  Stillness settles the dust we stir up with rampant self-destruction.  It exposes what never wavered.  It exposes all that remains.  I find myself in the company of everything I cast aside, or had determined to be useless. My Father is among those things.  As is the love some people offered, and I rejected.

I spent my life trying to 'find myself' in the selfish pursuit of undeserved attention. Now, as I compose the final verse of whatever legacy I might have written, I do so without weight of regret. I'm grateful to God for that. I'm grateful for three sons he gave me and the path of repentance he lay through them.

It's impossible to know if a solitary, individual's life mattered because life, as humans know it, is manifested through connections. I forgave my Father when it became a necessity for me to examine my own inadequacies as a man who became a father and raised sons.   That process taught me a few things.

I discovered I was the stronger man  between us, and that I lived in an era that offered space for male vulnerability.  He didn't.  I learned that when you express love and compassion to those who witheld them from you healing occurs in both parties.  

Most importantly, I learned there's no need for me to worry about who my own sons will be, or what they will become after I pass. I don't worry about there being a similar cost.  I'm stronger than my Father.  That's how I survived him. I'm stronger than I thought.  But I'm nothing compared to my sons. 

The strength they carry is mythological. They shouldered things they didn't have to and they shouldered them without a hint of blame.  They shouldered the things that grew weak around them without resentment, or being asked.  They did those things because that's what real strength does.  It doesn't diminish what is in need of propping up.

Whatever Grace I found was found in the Grace they showed me. That's a debt I can't repay. So please, allow me to say this:

I'm grateful for all you've done for me and for the invitation to participate in your life. There is nothing left for you to carry now, but if you still feel the need to, I hope instead you put things down. Please put down whatever bent you over. Put down the things you carried. 

I promise that if there's a way for me to be near you when I'm gone I'll carry all I'm capable of carrying. I'll pray that you allow a small part of me to remain alive in you.  I'll ask that you be led in life the same way I was. I'll trust you to identify what no longer serves you.  I pray that you discover the spiritual renewal that occurs when you say good-bye to what weighs you down.  I hope some day you shut your eyes and breathe a prolonged exhale.  

I hope that when you learn to let go the best part of me, and the best of what was 'us', remains.  I hope that as you grow older you are able to forgive me.  I'm sorry for the wounds I inflicted, and for the sting of any pain I caused.  I didn't understand the unavoidable necessity of each when I wished you into the world.  It wouldn't have changed anything if I had.  There was always a risk of unfathomable despair.  I knew that.  Still, I'd do it all again if I could.

I remember every moment we lived together.  I still occupy the observations I made of you when you weren't aware I was a witness.  I can't summon them from memory without fading into awe.  What a gift it was to love so deeply.  What a privilege to watch your growth.  What marvelous men you've become.  I'll carry that vision with me forever.