Opening up about my Fathers Death

Since my father’s death I have talked a lot about the experience, shared some insights that I’ve had about the experience - some really fascinating realizations - but I have not yet written about the point. Oftentimes the application of putting self expression into written words can be of great assistance to more clearly see and reflect on points to gain a deeper understanding of self that may otherwise be overlooked.

I actually find it very difficult to really open myself up, to actually just put the way that I feel into words - to take a sense of a feeling, emotion or experience, and actually define it by giving it a name. Not that it is difficult to take the time to sit down and write and apply myself, but that it does not come naturally to just see and recognize directly “this is what I feel/am experiencing myself”.

When I first found my fathers body on the floor, and touched it to feel the coldness and realize he was gone, I actually experienced some sense of relief, of “finally, it is over”. Despite the image my father could project, despite all of the vitality that he seemed to have, despite him being such a vibrant and active person, he was indeed suffering. My father also had a very difficult time exposing his own perceived weaknesses, sufferings and hardships. I had even learned after the death from the coroner about some serious illnesses that my father was living with, which he had never shared with anyone in this world, not even me or any of his closest confidants.

Death is no simple thing - it is certainly not the automatic negative that we tend to define it and perceive it as. Death is truly a fascinating thing - a gift, and for this I am grateful.

Many were shocked and awed at the news of my fathers death, including myself, from the certain perspective that my father was so active, he was such a busy body - always anxiously moving onto the next thing and seeking out thrill and adventure in life. Yet I noticed a fascinating thing:

Prior to the death, I would say about 1-3 months leading up to the death, there were many moments that I shared/experienced with my father which I noticed in my awareness, but did not remember in my conscious memory as they were seemingly small and mundane moments. Little moments where certain words were said that stick with me in some way, and one moment in particular of eye contact with my father that stuck with me. I will elaborate.

One of my fathers biggest fears was to die slowly, to deteriorate and lose his quality of life and his ability to enjoy life to the fullest. He was always afraid that I would put him in an old age home, which I always found strange because it would not be in my character to do such a thing. He always said that he might just “drop dead” one day, and that is exactly what he did - in fact, the morning of the day he died, he took a road trip to the United States! According to the friend he was with on that morning, my father said that if he were to die on that day, he would be fine with it. In fact a few weeks earlier he told me that he was not afraid to die - I definitely questioned it at the time, and I do still question it now, but I could see there being a small hint of validity in that statement. According to everybody around my father, from what we could see on the outside, he was in “perfectly good health” (perfectly good hell?).

But what I and many may have not seen as clearly is that despite the vibrant personality and busy body, my father was suffering physically, always in a degree of pain that he had come to accept as normal and part of life. In personal conversations I could see that my father was coming into the realization that he was not necessarily happy in his work/job, and was realizing in his older age that despite the allure of security and the need to be able to take care of oneself, and maybe even for his child as well, that the system on which he depended and consequently believed in, was a system of enslavement, that him like to many other people were chasing the proverbial “carrot on the stick of success”, only to find there was no real pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. “All I do is work to pay bills” he said.

Another point of great difficulty and struggle for my father was in his personal relationships. He and I for instance were always at odds with regards to our views on the ‘establishment’ as one could call it, on the job economy, and the fallacies of societal belief that we come to adopt as tenets that we can live by and trust. Of course I could see that my father would push his way of living onto me, really out of a form of fear as “love” for his child, because he wanted to ensure that I would be OK in this world. Over the years, and towards the end of his life, as things became more difficult for him in the job economy, and my life began to change for the better despite not following the same conventional paths as him, he began to see and recognize that the ‘dangerous path of walking the road less traveled’ that I tended to gravitate towards was maybe not so dangerous after all. He was aware of “the golden cage” as we called it sometimes. He even began to see how such a way of living had an effect where it would compromise individuals and personal relationships extensively.

He understood to some degree, the gravity of what it means to empower people economically, and that this was sorely lacking in our world.

Much of the suffering that my father endured was not so much physical in nature as it was mental. As great as some of of his insights and understandings were, being effective in this world was extremely difficult from the perspective that my father carried with him a lot of mental and emotional baggage. He had endured quite a lot of physical abuse growing up from family, had parents who were alcoholics - things that have been difficult for me to understand, although I have been bullied at a young age, it was not to the same extent, and by the time I came into adolescence, I became more of a bully/alpha myself than a victim, so that could be difficult to understand. He also had the difficulty of being a gay man, or at the very least fluid in his sexuality and gender identity. Quite a difficult thing to live with in a CULTure like Canada, and something that may have never been fully valued, as to this day I find his perspective on sexuality and gender fluidity a fascinating one, and I ponder if there is some perspectives there that can be learned from.

My father was excommunicated by nearly all of his immediate family except for myself, and this excommunication was also a difficult thing for him. It was difficult for myself as well as I had obviously not followed suit with the rest of the family to judge him as evil, cast him out and excommunicate him, so I was always ‘caught in the middle’ in a way and this greatly affected me, because my father on many levels did truly love and support me, yet all I heard from the other side of the family in the wars was about how evil and fucked up he was and how essentially he didn’t love me and was a bad father. Living with the rest of the family who had excommunicated my father was extremely difficult because I as the youngest in the family always found myself at odds against 2 or more older people with more vocabulary and world experience, and always on the losing side of every argument - this affected my own confidence in myself greatly in life and resulted in serious issues of self-doubt. The strangest part of it all was that I never absolved my father of his mistakes - I had my share of conflicts and disagreements with him, and it was a very tumultuous relationship at times! But that is what happens in war - people go blind with bloodlust and the mentality becomes polarized to the extent where people either perceive you as being with them or against them.

In fact, about 5 months before my fathers death we nearly had a major falling out - and this was not the first time. I was extremely angry at my father over what I saw as some empty promises that were not lived up to. I wanted to be so angry and blame my father (and now I can se where such an inclination towards HATE was taught and impressed upon me as the influence of the rest of my family), but self honestly I could only go so far with my hate and blame. After some mean words were said and an uneasy lack of communication was set for a couple months, I one day decided to stop my bullshit, and pick up the phone and give my father a call and see how he was doing.

We proceeded to talk as if nothing ever happened. That was very much like my father - for better or worse, he had an ability to sweep the most brutal of experiences under the rug to simply be able to get on with life and make the best.

One week later, I had a horrible accident/injury - I mean, I had cut my hand wide open, spurting dark red blood, and at the time I didn’t realize what had happened but I had lacerated a nerve in my hand, there were pieces of porcelain glass that had cut deep and left in my hand. I was alone living in a house up in the forest, a very remote area that I had ran off to when I had the falling out with my father. It was actually my mothers home that I went running to, ironically enough.

I was in a desperate panic as I was alone late at night, I didn’t know what had happened and why I was in so much pain, and I was becoming faint due to the loss of blood. I was pretty scared. I called whoever I could think of, immediate family was the first. No one answered the phone except for my dad. In the middle of the night he drove 90 minutes up into the remote hills where I lived to find me.

Although I was grateful for the service of the doctor who eventually sewed up my hand, the staff of the hospital was greatly lacking in their ability to exercise basic compassion as common sense medical treatment. When my father showed up, it did not take the pain away, but there was actually someone there who cared about me enough to look out for me and communicate any of my needs with the hospital staff. Before he showed up I was in constant agony, to the point where at one point I was on the floor in a curled up in a ball screaming in agony for a good minute or two non-stop. The last thing I remember hearing in that moment was a hospital staffer closing the door behind me because I’m sure that my screams were too loud for them to hear.

He took me back to his home where I was able to rest. He assisted me by making food for me, and driving me to places like when I had to go back to the hospital or see a surgeon. Insane or not, good person or not, it was an act of love.

A couple days later, I was laying in bed one day and realized through social media that it was mothers day. Now, I am not very big on having ‘special days’ like holidays. Maybe birthdays are cool, because every person gets a birthday so it is a celebration of life that is based in equality, but other than that, it is my view that we should make EVERY day special, instead of having some days that are better than others, resulting in “good days’ and “bad days”.

I have tried to communicate and express this point to my family in hopes that they would love me enough to understand that although it may not be their way, this is who I am, and to spare me the burden of the awkwardness of participating in what I see as a very phony and artificial/forced form of celebration. Despite me voicing myself on this point and trying to explain myself, I had only ever been met with opposition and misunderstanding on this point. On the best of days, this was a contentious and difficult issue that I loathed having to ‘explain myself’ to my family over. But this was, ironically as I am speaking about this, “the worst of days” for me to deal with such an issue. (or was it?…)

When I got the call to go do the holiday thing from my family - I mean, I was insulted that this was still even being demanded of me - I was simply direct and straight to the point - I expressed that I do not really even necessarily trust my family, which turned out to be a "BIG DEAL" in their eyes....I mean for me it was just how I felt for years. I did not see that I was being nasty, callous, or doing anything that was about the other in spitefulness - I simply did not want to follow along with the herd and fake a self expression that was not mine.

The next thing I knew, the mother was in tears, and my sibling had gone out of her way to come and attack me, all verbal guns blazing. My sibling proceeded to tell me what a bad and ungrateful son I am, and let me know about each and every thing that was wrong with me and my life, that I didn’t have a real job, I was single, I was fat, I was on the verge of alienating myself from my family, that I have no friends, that I am a lost, that I am just a brainwashed victim of some cult - I mean, it was extensive.

I simply allowed it and took in the attack. I mean, if there are valid points there, I could learn! I did not go into retaliation or war, but I did point out what I saw as an obvious condition: that perhaps the reason my sibling was so angry at me for apparently being a bad and ungrateful son, was because my sibling had two fathers who had been excommunicated for decades.

Over the next couple months the dust had settled a bit, and on the day of my birthday, my mother wanted to take me out for lunch. I had no interest but for some reason I went. After we met, it was not a long time into the car ride that I had brought up that it was unfortunate how the feud between the family and my father was still lasting after so many years. This ended up turning into a long winded, very emotional conversation/argument where all kinds of past shit was brought up. It was almost as though I had forgotten/was not aware of this entire family history, as it had become such a taboo subject for me to challenge over the ears that such memories/circumstances were long suppressed.

After a bit of going in circles with emotionally charged debate, I simply insisted that everybody put an end to the feud and just find a way to get a long.

Of course, my words were not heard, and a week later, my father died. My anger, judgment and disdain towards the rest of my family shifted into a simpler expression of pity.

But the day after my birthday that this argument took place, I mentioned to my father what had taken place and that I had insisted on a truce. He expressed to me that he appreciated it, and although my father was not emphatic, I could feel the weight of his simple words in expressing that appreciation. Because I was so distraught and anxious from all the disagreement and family friction, my father also came to realize in that last week how much it had affected me over the years - it was as though he also did not fully remember/realize how such events affected me, and he said he was sorry to me that it caused me so much stress.

Now there is one more part to this story - as I’ve said, my father, like all of us, absolutely had his share of mental issues, and in his later years, I think everyone, even including him, could see that this mental state was really deteriorating. He was a very difficult person at times, to say the least! This strained our relationship greatly but most importantly, MY PART in all of this was that I had such a tendency to suppress, and to run away from my problems, I would get lost in addictions like smoking weed and chasing beautiful women, and I simply did not support myself, and thus others, as effectively as I could have. There was a very specific moment I remember soon before my father died where I came into the house one day, and I was in my usual funk, a state of kind of disdain and disenfranchisement with everything and all the people around me - but I remember, and I will never forget the way he was looking at me: it was with a kind of affectionate gaze, a kind of real adoration and reverence, like this joyous, gleeful little smile - I was probably high or something, I didn’t even get the chance in that moment to connect and see what was right in front of me.

Then he died and one of my greatest regrets that will take some time to live down was how much I suppressed myself when I could have maybe been so much more to myself and those around me. Sometimes I have to be careful not to burden myself and judge myself within this point, to not get lost in shame, because the truth is that EVERYONE PLAYED A PART IN ALL OF THIS AND IS THUS EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND SITUATIONS WE ALL FIND OURSELVES IN.
But I know that my father saw how unhappy I was, how burdened I was, that I had struggled a lot in life, and that money and the point of not having a stable position in this world was a big part of that. My father did look out for me with regards to that, he really put his money where his mouth was and could be extremely generous. He got a life insurance plan through his work to ensure that I would be taken care of when he was gone - he was actually very concerned with what he would leave behind when he died, which I see as a great thing because most people have a hard time even coming to grips with the reality of the fact that they will die yet the world will continue on, so there is only more responsibility within that point of death. He joked with me sometimes that he was worth to me dead than alive. He had a wickedly ‘dark’ sense of humour!

This has all been a very serendipitous experience. These are just a few of the moments, events and memories, that I noticed in time in my awareness, and kept these memories for whatever reason, which served in time as ‘pieces of the puzzle’. After the death, all of these small ‘pieces’ came together to the forefront of my mind to show the bigger picture of the puzzle, and the death was not such a surprise after all. It all began to make perfect sense, and from this perspective I can truly say the death is in fact a part of life, it is here to serve life as the greater whole, it may well be the greatest gift, not yet realized in a world where everything about the way we live is in REVERSE.

Despite my father being a very outspoken, emphatic and expressive person, even he had his points that he so much feared to express, that he never allowed himself to do so. He was never big on the love talk, he never professed feelings of love or what a good person he was - quite the opposite! And that kind of typical male expression, coupled with the rest of my family trying to convince me of what an evil person he was, made life very confusing. It made me truly question: WHAT THE FUCK IS LOVE, and with regards to what one could call 'acts of love', there were many points in which my father came through, where he put his money where his mouth was, where he did not talk but rather ACTED.

So to this day this is an ongoing process of self reflection - there are SO many lessons here for myself which, if fully realized, can further the realization of the statement “death is a gift”. That is why I am here writing this out today. There are still more things yet to be realized, and difficult memories/emotional experiences with regards to my fathers death and the feeling of missing my father still come up from time to time, seemingly out of nowhere, where I am surprised at myself that I will suddenly become very emotional over the point. Maybe a week or so after my fathers death I remember breaking down and crying hysterically like I haven’t for years. Fortunately I had the support of my incredible cat Suzy during this time who assisted me greatly to come back to myself.

The greatest lessons I see here are:

• TO NOT SUPPRESS ONESELF, to truly live and express oneself to the fullest, with no fear or self judgment, and take no moment/time on this earth for granted.

• To trust oneself within common sense, to not doubt oneself regardless of what the world throws at you, to TRUST COMMON SENSE NO MATTER WHAT THE WORLD TRIES TO CONVINCE YOU OF OTHERWISE - these are the tests of life and these are versions of ourself in another life who will challenge our journey and our process, and test our own underSTANDING and the point of self trust within such a standing.

• TO DISTINGUISH BETWEN EMPTY WORDS OF LOVE, AND ACTIONS OF LOVE WHICH HAVE AN ACCUMULATIVE EFFECT/OUTCOME THAT IS BEST IN PHYSICAL REALITY

• TO ALWAYS PUT MY MONEY WHERE MY MOUTH IS

• TO UNWAVERINGLY STAND BY THE PRINCIPLES OF ONENESS AND EQUALITY AND DO NOT BOTHER WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT WILLING TO HEAR AND WILL ATTACK THE SIMPLICITY OF SUCH A COMMON SENSE MESSAGE

• DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY AND RATHER STAND UP FOR WHAT IS BEST FOR ALL LIFE ALWAYS

• TO EMBRACE THE GIFTS THAT WERE SHARED TO ME WHICH I HAVE PREVIOUSLY TAKEN FOR GRANTED, in this case of the gifts that my father shared to were the points of COURAGE and A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOUR and MUSICALITY.

I will leave this post with a letter that my father wrote to his children to be found and read after his passing which I will share below. Thank you for sharing the time to read.

For more context on my Journey to Life, feel free to investigate the following links and resources.

Understanding Oneness and Equality

The Journey to Life Process of Self Honesty and Self Forgiveness

Self-Support resources on virtually every topic imaginable

Feel free to connect with me on Facebook as well.