June 22, 2010

Goodbye

There is a map and I guess it’s pretty consistent. Humans lose interest in food. Our eyes lose focus. We stop talking. In the last stages, our bodies go hot and cold, our feet get splotchy and our breathing irregular.

Then, there is the territory where there is no map. Nothing can prepare us for the final parting. My family was lucky to have had time. We could tell our father how much we loved him, how much we’d miss him and how he was free to leave. Still, nothing is more absolute than when the body goes still. He’s not with us anymore and we lose our bearings.

We had an open house in memory of our father. More than 100 people came. Relatives and friends, distant neighbors and people we didn’t even know. Everone was radiant. They ate and talked and smiled and lingered. It was the singularly sunny day in a month of undependable weather.

It makes me think more about my own end. The amount of time left is a secret. Nobody can tell me the numbers, but I think of death like tent stakes that pull life up taught. It means that there is no slack. Someone told me that I still have at least ten more years of fully productive work. Doing books in Laos makes me weary these days, but that’s not an excuse.

I went through hundreds of photos of my father. He has a radiant and infectious smile in almost all of them that speaks of his spirit in life. He was clear sighted to all the reasons in the world why he shouldn’t smile, but he chose to smile. These days, more than a few people have said that I look like my father. Nobody in my family think there’s a resemblance, but if he could smile through adversity, I would surely like to be more like him.