Anniversaries

{Grounded planes lined up at Tulsa airport March 30, 2020.}

This March, like last March, has been a strange, beautiful, bittersweet confluence of events. Milestones on top of breakthroughs, anniversaries on top of transitions. I keep envisioning sparkling waves of energy swirling all around me and my family, even though some of these landmark events are difficult. With every overlap, I am reminded that there are forces at play that I can trust and lean into. 

As most everyone was reflecting on the one-year anniversary of Covid in mid-March, I was thinking about the fact that I’d just arrived in Oklahoma on a one-way ticket, knowing my dad’s journey with cancer was nearing the end. When the lockdowns started and there was no toilet paper on the shelves, my awareness of Covid was peripheral at best. I had to think about it when I went grocery shopping, but as soon as I left the store all attention returned to my dad. By the time I got back home at the end of March, a few days after he died, I had to catch up with what everyone else had been trying to process for more than two weeks. 

I am going back to Oklahoma tomorrow. I will be there for the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death, which happens to fall on the weekend our family is having an estate sale that my dad’s wife has been preparing for for months. This wasn’t intentional—we didn’t set out to have the sale on that particular day—it just happened to line up that way for a number of reasons. As my dad’s wife and I have reflected on the timing of it, we have found a certain kind of peace about it. And although it will be a hectic time, there will be many of us happily under the same roof. We will be sharing stories. There will be plenty of laughter. Meals will be enjoyed in a large circle. My dad’s wife will be surrounded by those who love her, and who loved my dad. 

There is nowhere else on earth I would want to be at this time. 

The estate sale is being held at my grandparents’ house, which is the only house I have known my entire life. I have been back there a few times on my visits, and even though they have been gone for many years, the house still smells exactly the same. Whenever I walk into the house I take a deep inhalation, which unleashes a wave of memories that spans from my childhood all the way until my early forties, when I was helping my grandma get situated in a nursing home.

A few days after she moved, I had to go to her house to pick up a few things. As I collected each item on her list, I heard a strange noise in her furnace closet. I quickly realized the noise was coming from something that was alive. Not having any idea what I’d discover, I stood on a stool before opening the closet door to investigate. It turns out it was a small bird that had gotten in through an air vent. I managed to scoop it up in a towel, take it outside, and set it free. When I told my grandma about this she thought it was hilarious, especially the part about me standing on a stool for fear some rodent would jump out and attack me. My grandma wasn’t one to scare easily, so I’m pretty sure she was laughing at me a little more than she was laughing with me. It is, and always will be, one of my favorite memories. 

After the estate sale is finished and everything is cleared out, it will be time to say goodbye to that house, as it has already been sold. And then, a few days later, I will be flying back home almost exactly the same day as when I flew back home last year after my dad died. 

There have been other momentous events in our family that have landed on the same space in our calendar this month, and I look at all of these auspicious alignments the same way I always do—as evidence that I am exactly where I belong. All such strange coincidences and curious connections are not random; they are experiences I’ve collected and organized for as long as I can remember. I have an entire cabinet full of these stories, and I cherish them.

It doesn’t seem possible that an entire year has passed. My mind can’t grasp it. Perhaps it never will no matter how many years go by. At the moment, I don’t feel any particular emotional reaction to this impending anniversary. I don’t feel the need to recoil or lean in, to avoid or confront. I don’t know if I will be weepy or stoic or clear-headed or angry. It isn’t something I can plan for; I’m not packing a suitcase full of assumptions about what it is supposed to look like. All I can do is show up—in love and gratitude and the mystery of it all. 

Under a full moon, all kinds of magic happens.

The Dream

This is the dream:

I am walking in a space with high ceilings and an open floor plan. It is a warehouse kind of space but not quite as cavernous. There are a lot of people in the room, most of them seated, some lying down. I have the strong impression many of them have been injured in some way. They look at me with plaintive expressions on their faces and sad eyes. I sense that they have a longing, a need—for some kind of uplifting or healing or attention. No one is speaking. No one reaches out to me. But I know these are people who are wounded in some way.

As I walk through this maze of humanity, I am suddenly overcome by a singular thought. It is as if a clap of thunder cracked the sky wide open but I was the only one who heard it. I start sobbing uncontrollably as I look from one person to the next as I say the same thing to everyone, again and again: “Don’t you know how loved you are?”

I feel a desperation that is almost frenzied. These seven words are not a platitude or a curlicue script on a greeting card; these words are the difference between life and death. “Don’t you know? Don’t you know?” I keep saying these words, over and over, looking every person in the eye as I speak. There is so much energy inside me from this thunderclap of truth—too much for my body to contain—and the only way I can prevent it from consuming me is by trying to send it outward to everyone around me.

“Don’t you know how loved you are?”

I wake up the next morning feeling foggy and slightly disoriented, but those seven words still glow in my mind like neon.

~

During the last months of my dad’s life, every so often I would look at him and say, “What can I do for you?” Even though there was a mile-long list of potential responses to this question considering he was being forced to (try to) accomplish tasks that he thought he had plenty of time to tackle, he always answered the same way: “Just be you.”

My dad answered the same way every time I asked this question, but it still took me slightly aback. Lines of communication were not always so open and gentle between the two of us, so it would take me a second or two to adjust to this new reality, to hear him say, “Just be you,” and know he meant it.

It is an amazing thing to let yourself be surprised by someone—to let go of what used to be in order to experience the deep joy of unexpected new terrain in the here and now.

These exchanges between my dad and I weren’t anything I would have ever predicted, but each time they happened their essence sank deeper and deeper into my heart. They remained lodged there, and true to their original form, for a long time. But then, in the midst of my grief after he died, they became something else. It was as if my grief was the catalyst that broke down the raw material of those exchanges to reveal the deeper, more fundamental truth hidden within them, which was that my dad loved me and I had no idea how much. I’d never known. I probably still don’t know. How this knowledge managed to elude me for most of my life is an entirely different story, but once I saw it I understood it had been there all along. 

Don’t you know how loved you are?

I see now that “Just be you” was the egg that I held as delicately as I could in the months before my dad died, and it wasn’t until I was deep in a dream state, still mourning his absence, that the egg could crack open and reveal the beauty inside. The dream has been fluttering beneath my rib cage ever since, and I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to release it all this time. 

This is my first attempt to share this story, with another 100 postcards, each one with a message that has sprouted from the same core insight. If “Don’t you know how loved you are?” is the tree then these are 99 of its branches—a variation on my tried-and-true “You are…” messages, but with a bit more substance and maybe a bit more poetry. 

Perhaps one of them is meant for you. Fill out the form below if you’d like one.

The Soundtrack of My Dad

The Story Behind the Story

The Holy Wisdom Monastery is a retreat center and sacred space near Madison, Wisconsin. Less than a mile from Lake Mendota and adjacent to a wildlife preservation area, it is a place where those seeking solitude can tuck in for a few days, whether on their own or as part of other organized gatherings. I was there at the beginning of March in 2018 to participate in a three-day meditation retreat led by Karen Maezen Miller, my first such experience.

I’d registered for the retreat months earlier, and kept looking at the small block of dates as a time to drop in and be still after a whirlwind year that involved a cross-country move, my fiftieth birthday, and a trip to India. In between all that, something else happened: I received a Christmas card from my dad. It was the first time I’d heard from him in twelve years.

The arrival of that glittery Christmas card came after I’d reached out to my dad a few times via snail mail, all attempts to reconnect with him after we’d severed ties in 2006. It started with a letter, followed by a few cards, and then, not long after we got settled into our new home in Wisconsin, I sent my dad one more letter. It was written by hand on a snowy afternoon, and it was essentially a goodbye. Not a “screw you” kind of goodbye but a surrender. After my repeated efforts to make contact with him were not reciprocated, I could only surmise that my dad did not want to reconnect. Although this was a disappointing outcome, I still felt at peace. What I thought was to be my last letter to him was simply an acknowledgment of my acceptance that our relationship was complete. It was also a way for me to say, one more time, in my own handwriting, that I loved him. When I put that letter in my mailbox, I believed that was it. Chapter closed. Story over. 

After the initial shock of seeing my dad’s handwriting on an envelope addressed to me less than a month later, I didn’t actually know what to think about the Christmas card. There was no letter or specific invitation to talk. The only clue as to my dad’s mindset was a note at the bottom of the card: Don’t lose hope. I let the potential those three words contained hover lightly in my mind like dewdrops on a spider’s web. There was a certain kind of substance and form—and beauty—to it, but it wasn’t something I could grasp in any forceful way. I had to release expectations and sit with the uncertainty. So I slid the card into my desk drawer and I let those three words be enough.

The Story, as told in a journal entry from March 3, 2018, written at the Holy Wisdom Monastery:

What would the soundtrack of my dad be? 1970s folk music—The Kingston Trio, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot; “If I Had a Hammer”, “Tom Dooley”, the song about being 500 miles away from home. 

Here I am at a Zen meditation retreat, where there is much discussion about life, death, old age, and sickness. In between our seated meditations, Maezen talks about things like this. About releasing thoughts, releasing the past, releasing everything we know, except love. 

Today, on my way to lunch, I start to wonder where the main chapel of the monastery is. I walk beyond the stairs that lead me up to the second floor dining area, thinking maybe it is around the corner. But all I find is another hallway leading to a meeting room. So I go back the way I came and head up the stairs. As I take each step I begin to hear voices, which is strange since this is a silent retreat.

As I reach the top, both the mysteries are solved. The voices belong to a small group of people preparing for a memorial service, and the chapel has actually been here all along. It is at 10:00 as I face the dining room, but I’ve walked right past it every time I’ve had a meal. The doors have been closed, so it was easy to miss, but now I see it is a spacious room with white walls and lots of bright, natural light.

I see photo collages set up on nearby tables and flowers being taken into the chapel. Life, death, old age, and sickness. Right here in front of me. 

I begin to fill my plate with the day’s offerings for lunch—baked potatoes, salad, and sauteed vegetables. As I make my way to a table I hear music coming through the overhead speakers. It is music I know, music from my childhood. A few minutes later, I hear voices:

“Can you help me with this?”

“Testing, testing.”

Everything is muffled, as if in a dream, but it is apparent I am hearing snippets of the arrangements being made for the memorial service. Whoever is speaking is unaware they are being broadcast all over the entire floor. The volume is low, but clear enough that whenever music is played there is no mistaking what I am listening to—it is the soundtrack of my dad, and it is all I can do not to burst into tears in the middle of my lunch. 

After the first couple of songs, I have one searing thought: If they play ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ I might faint.

As if on cue, it begins.

My initial urge to cry becomes a compulsion to laugh—a full belly, howling laugh—because how can this be?

If I wanted to read into this, to look toward God and ask What does this mean?, I’d say it was about not losing sight of our impermanence, of the fact that our time together on earth, in this existence, is quickly draining; that there was once a time when my dad and I lived under the same roof and tried to love each other as best as we could; that my dad’s heart couldn’t have been totally armored, because how could someone like that love The Kingston Trio?

I think of happy afternoons when my mom and dad played records while our German Shepherd Charlie napped in the sun. I am reminded that the letters and cards I’ve sent to my dad over the last few years are not without purpose, and this would be true even if my dad hadn’t ever responded; when I felt an opening in my heart to reach out to him, I reached out. I see that his eventual response was actually beside the point—that reaching out in love is imperative for its own sake. It is its own universe, its own narrative, with a perfect beginning, middle, and end.

Today’s experience could have had me mired in guilt and regret for actions not taken and love withheld. But instead, it offered an affirmation that when I feel called to love, all I need to do is LOVE. Again and again and again.

Listen here

This is a Story About Love

What I really want to do is just come right out and say it, without an inflated or contrived sense of drama. Because it is a simple story at its essence, with a multitude of messy, human details piled on top of it. I have held this experience close for many months—determined to stay immersed in it for as long as possible. If I opened up about it too soon it would necessitate, to some degree, having to organize it into a cohesive narrative, which I knew would only end up diluting the potency of what was happening. And while it continues to unfold and evolve, as it most assuredly always will, the longing to bring this story to light has overtaken that initial pull inward. 

As to the idea of beginning by sharing what is at the core of all this, the essence, I will say this is a story of forgiveness and grace, miracles and moments. It is about the choices I made when faced with the most high-definition clarity I’d ever experienced in my life and about the way that clarity led me to a full-body, full-heart, full-everything YES. This is a story about love—about all the tiny, mundane ways it makes itself known, no matter the circumstances, as long as I’m committed to keeping my eyes open.

It will take a while to fully express what I’m talking about here, but for now what you need to know is that I was estranged from my dad for thirteen years. We reconciled at the end of 2018, and five months later he was diagnosed with advanced small cell carcinoma and given a prognosis of six to nine months. Last March, just as the Covid tidal wave was slamming into our world and shutting everything down, I was with him at his home in Oklahoma when he died.

There is so much to this story. I honestly don’t know where to go beyond this slightly absurd encapsulation; it is ludicrous in its brevity, preposterous in its austerity. I just aimed a telescope toward an entire universe within the space of three sentences. It feels almost miserly.

The point of this sharply-chiseled summary is not to withhold, but to lay down the first stone on a long and winding path that I am just beginning to construct. The experience was one thing; the process of unraveling it in order to piece it back together word by word is a journey I’ve barely begun. It is that creative calling that brings me here today—in your inbox, trying to find a way to tell this story.

My dad and I were estranged, and then we reconnected. Five months after that he was handed a horrific cancer diagnosis. Less than a year later he was gone. Before, after, and in between everything changed. Every single thing.