Today, it’s been a year since my dad died. It’s been a hard year. I miss you and love you.
Since dad died, I’ve been busy producing like an animal while in utter grief and floating through its stages. I subconsciously kept myself busy to ease the impact. If you’re a follower of mine, or read what I wrote about grief and depression in my last art post, then you’re aware it was a year of coming to terms with having no parents left, death of friends, a year of too many health issues and unsolvable chronic illness, more progression of my body and a series of neverending mishaps including the flooding of our entire home. And, by last October it got to the point where I couldn’t anymore. I'd been living under a fog of depression, and while I posted, was busier than ever with advocacy and projects, kept connected with my followers and did my best to fulfill what was expected of me professionally — I was really struggling and isolated myself in many ways, getting rid of all toxicity around me because my body just couldn’t handle it anymore.
The day after my mom died five years ago I visited Detroit’s Belle Isle Island Conservancy; a place I frequented for refuge when I lived in Detroit for college. It was Christmas in 2016 and after experiencing death, something about the warm glow of some modest life (nature) growing in the middle of a snowy city seemed beckoning to me. And, subconsciously I had the urge and did the same ritual the day after my dad died. A week ago I took Jason to this beautiful Lake Shrine near Malibu (photo), and without realizing it, I again sought garden and nature during a series of moments from last year mentally replaying this past week. I can’t emotionally relive that whole time for the purposes of writing today, but here’s this beautiful quote from Thích Nhất Hạnh that says so much of what I feel when it comes to death:
“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.” — Thích Nhất Hạnh
This is similar to something I say all the time. Whether you believe in the afterlife or not or agnostic or still searching — I don’t care. I’m not here to tell you how to believe or give indefinite answers to life’s biggest questions. This post isn’t about that. But regardless of our religious or non religious beliefs there is one thing we can all agree on and it’s that everlasting life also exists in the memories we’ve left others.
I think, at the very least, we live on in what we’ve done in our life, how we’ve treated others, and the memories created for others (bad and good) are proof of everlasting life. Everything we do affects someone else, including our children, and that influence affects the people they interact with and on and on in a cyclical nature. We pass sediments of ourselves onto others, and, I don’t know, that’s kind of cool to know you’re a collection of influences.
We often have this desire to get to this magical space beyond this time here on earth but what about this life? This isn’t a transitory point, and I don’t think its creator, however you see that fit, would want us to look at it as so. I think my parents’ death has given me a greater resolve to, in a sense, move on in my life. And that doesn’t mean don’t be sad or think about them. It means a natural cycle in life happened to significant people in my life, and I’m reminded of that cycle — and to move forward from, in a sense, my old life, and really go for it: find answers to my biological family, do more art, writing, and checking off more ambitions and curiosities. A chapter of family ended: two people adopted me and brought me over and tried their best to do what they were supposed to, and now it’s time to go off and explore even more of who and what I am in order to contribute the best aspects of myself to this world.
I’m constantly made aware of the ping of time through the progression of my body, so I’m living for today with the things I learned from my parents and those around me (good and bad), and hopefully positively influence into everlasting life here on earth. I don’t pretend my parents and I had perfect relationships, and they and my childhood weren’t flawed with things I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life (memories and emotions that come out from your childhood after both parents finally pass), but the non pretty sides of our parents (they’re human) or those around us are just as important to learn and reflect from so you know what not to do as well. Practice everlasting life here on this earth. It matters who you are and what you do.
Love you dad. Hope you’re resting in peace. ❤️