The Blue Fish Special

"Don't know where I'm going I just keep on rowing
I just keep on pulling, gotta row
Don't know where I'm going I just keep on rowing
I just keep on pulling, gotta row
Moving is breathing and breathing is life
Stopping is dying
You'll be alright
Life is a hammer waiting to drop
Adrift in the shallows and the rowing won't stop"

("Rowing", Soundgarden)

 

 

"He's dead.  He's dead.  He's dead.  He's gone.  He's not coming back.  He's dead.  No more visits.  No more smiles.  No more chuckles.  He's dead.  Dad's dead.  Dad's dead.  Dad's dead."
 

That's the shit that goes through my head a few times a day for the last two weeks.  It's like a littany, a chant of sorts, but a silent one.  It's not designed to steel me against a tide of fear or sadness the way the prayers of the faithful are intended.  This invocation is quite the opposite, it's meant to open a floodgate of emotion, to dive right into the swell and let myself drown a little.  But the congregation in my head remains unresponsive.  So I keep working.  I keep playing.  I keep vacuuming and dusting and fixing things around the house. 

I knew long before Dad died that it would not be as earthshaking for me as my mother's death some 20 years ago.  I was prepared this time.  Our relationship was different.  It would not be a surprise.  I understand mortality in a way I didn't at 21.  But I didn't know what it would or wouldn't feel like exactly.

"He's dead.  He's gone.  He's dead.  You're an 'orphan' now, right?  Isn't that what that word means?  Does that even mean anything when you're 41 or does it only apply to young children?  He's dead.  That's all it really means.  He's dead and he's gone and he's not coming back."

People keep asking how my family is doing.  I guess I appear to be doing fine.  Am I doing fine?  I guess I'm doing fine.  I'm at work.  I'm back to my routine, mostly, except in that I'm in an odd headspace I can't seem to punch my way out of.  I'm not sure I want to.  I do, I do want to.  I'm just not sure how to.  I'm listless.  Mostly I want solitude, to lose myself in video games or Netflix, or some quiet time with Liza-Ann and Olivia.  There is a comfort in Liza-Ann's presence, even when we're really not up to much.  Olivia made me laugh out loud yesterday.  "I heard a rumor...", I said.  "... from a girl named 'Mom'?", she replied with an impish grin.  It was a momentary reprieve.  It was catching your breath between strokes of the oars.  It is the immeasurable power that children have.  It is a reminder of something Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, about how life looks only forward, and so must we.  The day after Mom died was sunny.  The day after Dad died was also clear.

"Gone.  Dead.  No more conversations.  Did you say all you needed?  No more chances.  Gone."

Usually when I sit down to write, it's because I have something I feel is worth sharing.  Not so today.  There is no great moral lesson to be found, or even any useful advice.  That wasn't how I started out writing either.  Years ago, when I sat down to write, it was because I 'needed to exorcise the demons'.  Writing back then was about my own personal catharsis.  I guess today is a relapse back to that, driven by a need to get what's in my head out.

I wonder sometimes if half of what I wrote back then even needed to see the light of day, or if I'd have been better for typing it and then never hitting a publish button.  But I don't regret what I wrote.  Indeed, I regret none of it.  I regret accidentally deleting some of one of my blogs along the way, or losing track of a few obscure entries.  Sometimes I consider editing and reposting long lost entries.  I still have most of my previous blogs, stashed away on a backup disc, waiting to either rise again or be forgotten and lost.

As always, I am unashamed of who I am and how I feel.  I made peace with myself long ago.  Others should be so fortunate.  If ever there was one gift, one thought I could teach others, one worthy of sharing above all other lessons, it would be that: make peace with yourself and stop judging.  The war for your own soul takes too heavy a toll.

"Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Done.  Over.  Gone.  Dead."

Nowadays, I don't always feel the need to dig so deep as I did back then.  My heart no longer dwells unnecessarily in past unpleasantries, but instead lives in the contentment that comes from a happy life I've made for myself.

I have an awesome life.

I count and appreciate my blessings.

But I find myself wondering lately if, before I move on, perhaps one more short visit to the dark well is required, one more uncorking of an old, angry bottle, before past is past.  Perhaps.  But then, perhaps not.  That water vessel has a hole in it, and success is the sweetest revenge.  I don't know there's anything I could say my brother hasn't already.

I'm not satisfied with feeling nothing.  Despite all I've written in the past few weeks - much of it with blurry eyes - I still feel as though something is unfinished.  I feel stuck.  I don't feel the pain, but I don't feel the happiness again either.  Most of the time I feel... nothing.

And nothing is no way to feel.

"He's just... gone."
 

"Rowing is bleeding and bleeding is breathing
Breathing is feeling, burning, and freezing
Keep getting dirty but I started out clean
I keep on rowing, I keep on rowing
I keep on pulling, I keep on pulling
I keep on rowing, I keep on rowing"

("Rowing", Soundgarden)

The Measure of a Man

"Good-bye Max.
Good-bye Ma.
After the service when you're walking slowly to the car
And the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
You hear the tolling bell
And touch the silk in your lapel"

("Gunner's Dream", Pink Floyd)

 

As I walked briskly from the grave to the car, snow falling gently around me, there was a couple edging along just up ahead.  My footsteps muffled by the layer of thick white powder beneath my shoes, I silently approached and made my way to pass them.  They didn't notice me, but I heard them speaking.  I didn't look.  I can't tell you who they were, only that they were a couple and that she held tight to his arm to steady herself on the uneven ground.  The whole scene reminded me of that stanza from the song above.

 

But I heard what she said, and it was simple and it was true and it brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye.  I said nothing.  I walked on past.  Proud.

Over the last number of years, as I've become a step-parent and a homeowner, as I've started into my 40s and as I've gone from referring to my partner as my 'girlfriend' to referring to her as my 'wife', I've reflected a lot on what "being a man" really means.  What should be the measure of a man?  What should be the measure of a 'successful' lifetime?  What is a 'good life' exactly?

I could be called an atheist (by most definitions), and while I sometimes still describe myself as religious (in my own terms), most would think me quite the opposite.  I could explain, but this is a subject for another day.  Regardless, my particular beliefs don't include the promise or threat of an afterlife, nor do I susbscribe to any code of conduct passed down by an anthropomorphized divinity.  So my benchmarks for "what makes a man?" or "what makes a good life?" cannot find footing in any sort of otherworldly mandate.

Being an atheist - even if I accept that moniker - does not make me a nihilist either. Even after you've stripped away all religious belief, notions of goodness and morality still remain. While I do believe certain aspects of morality are relativistic to the culture and historic era in which we find them, "malum in se" is still a very real concept to me. Religion is not the foundation upon which morality is built; the opposite is true, or at least should be.  It is no coincidence that every major religion has at its centre some version of "The Golden Rule".

And while the works of men like Stephen Hawking have shown me how infintesimally small my role may be in the grand scheme of a monstrously large and utterly indifferent cosmos (dishearteningly, indeed), I still feel that my role within the smaller domain of my family, friends, and community remains worthwhile.

Common earthly pursuits don't find themselves on my list of personal priorities.  Wealth?  Power?  Fame?  I'm far more interested in a simple and comfortable existence, and that's not easily quantifiable.  Even if I did accept these as benchmarks, the inequity of starting positions lends itself to poor comparability.

I once heard it said that a man should be measured by the number of friends he keeps, but I've always preferred fewer, richer relationships to a large following of acquaintances.  Again, this doesn't quite meet the mark.

So like a sculptor who takes away clay until he finds what he's trying to create, after I discarded all the notions I felt did not work, I was left with a simple concept, a rule my mother passed on to me as a child:

Always leave things better than you found them.

It was a rule about borrowing.  But in our time here, are we not "borrowing"?  We take up a little of everyone's time, energy, and resources.  We "borrow" from the planet, do whatever it is that we do, and then depart, leaving both planet and people behind in whatever condition we do.

I think of the generations of man, of families, as much like a relay race.  Each generation, each person, takes the baton for the period of a lifetime and sees how much farther ahead they can move it.  The delta - how things were when you found them as opposed to when you left, how much you contributed positively to the lives of those around you minus whatever harm you caused - this is the "measure of a man" (or woman).

My brother said of my father 'he gave four children a much better life than he ever had'.  It resounded with me when I read that. 

I heard an unknown stranger say in a graveyard last week:

"He raised four beautiful children while taking care of his disabled wife.  You can't ask much more than that."

No.  No, you can't.

"All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say."

("Eclipse", Pink Floyd)

Terms of Disengagement

"I wanna race with the sundown
I want a last breath that I don't let out
Forgive every being
The bad feelings, it's just me
I won't wait for answers
You can't keep me here"

("Can't Keep", Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam))

My father had a quality of life with which (I believe) he was content up until he got pneumonia a few weeks ago.   And while he could have recovered, I suspect he thought that this new bed-ridden lifestyle was all that was left to him, and that wasn't something he was prepared to endure.  He refused to eat, and in a few days he was dead.  I believe he made this choice.  Some tell me it was not a choice, and that human instinct and illness and "time to go..." and blah blah blah...  but I believe it was a choice, and that it was his choice, and I trust in my own experience of the world.

I respect his choice.  In fact, I applaud it.  He met his fate with courage and acceptance.  We should all be so fortunate as to choose our own time and find the grace and strength to do so with dignity.

It's been a little over a week now, and the time between has gone by in a blur.  So many things happened so fast that I can't remember half of it.  I can tell you little bits about the weather because it reminded me of my mother's death.  It was all strangely appropriate.  And there are some things, both good and bad, that I know will stick with me:  the welcome comforts both offered and expected from true friends, the conspicuous silence from those I apparently held closer than they hold me, the pleasant surprises from those who held me closer than I'd held them.

Times like these tell you a lot about your life, and about the quality of the people with which you surround yourself.  I understand that many people, particularly those who've never felt such a loss themselves, don't know how to react.  I appreciate that we all know, on both sides of the equation, that words feel somewhat hollow when faced with the deep sadness such an event brings.  But nonetheless, just as I'm entitled to my grief at Dad's passing, I'm entitled to the happiness, anger, or disappointment that comes with the presence or absence of others in all this.

I won't name names but don't take this as a passive-aggressive outpouring.  The reality is that some of my relationships will be changed forever; they can't not be.  Cry fair or cry foul, but I cry "moment of clarity".  It was part of the silver lining of the dark cloud of my mother's passing.  It will be this time too.

Today, I'm mostly just tired.  I feel ok physically, but I feel exhausted emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  I'm numb and disconnected.  I can tell when my brain is not working at full capacity.  I know when I'm not as sharp or organized, or when I'm being forgetful about simple things I wouldn't otherwise miss.  I want my brain back.  Being unable to think straight, for any reason, makes me very vulnerable and uncomfortable.  I need to get back into my groove at work.  I need to get back to my normal home life.  I want my routine.  I want my day-to-day comforts.  I want my life back.

I want to get back to feeling like myself again, even if it's a sadder version for a while.

At the same time, I also feel like it just hasn't even hit me yet, but that it can't or won't until I'm back to that routine.  Without that routine, it's just a whole different life, and not the same life with a little piece missing, a hole that needs to be plugged or smoothed over.  Until I reach that point, I can't be sure it's really hit home with me.

Until I'm done falling apart, I can't put myself back together.

"You can’t go home, no I swear you never can
You can walk a million miles and get nowhere
I got no where to go and it seems I came back
Just filling in the lines for the holes, and the cracks"

 

("Been Away Too Long", Soundgarden)

 

A Simple Kind of Man

"And be a simple kind of man.
And maybe some day you'll love and understand.
Baby be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son,
If you can?"

("A Simple Kind of Man", Lynryd Skynyrd)

In my head, I've written this post many times over the last number of years.  I've reworded it just about every time I've visited my father.  It's different every time.  Some things remain the same.  Years ago, I think it would have come out a little more angry (at my father's peers) and included a quote from "The Noose" by A Perfect Circle.  But instead, today, as I sit to write this, thinking on the man, I don't feel angry at those who looked down their noses at my father; I feel sorry for them, for what they've missed.

A few years ago, I first noticed the song above at Scott and Nina's wedding, and asked what it was.  It made me think of my father immediately, and of things I'd written about him in the past.  It's stuck with me off and on ever since, and today, the day of his death, it's been running through my head on repeat.

I'm a Taoist, and while I've read the works of Lao Tse many times, I've seldom found much use for Chuang Tse.  Most of what he wrote was far more... ethereal.  It's meant to be soaked in, slowly, moreso than absorbed and interpreted quickly.  It's strange, nebulous material.  But there was one particular passage I came across a little while back that made an impression on me, also because it reminded me immediately of my father.  It comes from a Taoist ideal that happiness comes more often from forgetting than remembering, that simplicity, not sophistication, leads to a better understanding of our world, and the tranquility that comes with enlightenment.  I paraphrase it as follows:

When the rabbit is caught, the snare is discarded.

When the wolf is shot, the bow is discarded.

When the words are truly understood, they too must pass.

I would like to meet the man who has forgotten all the words.

My father didn't teach me much carpentry, or plumbing, or how to tie a tie or build a deck.  He didn't help me with my homework.  In most ways we had little in common and often very little to talk about, but not because we didn't love or respect one another, just because we were so different.  The lessons my father passed to me are not those spoken in words.  They are a more important kind, of a sort that can come only by example.

Without words, he taught me things like loyalty, determination, commitment, resilience, fairness, dependability, and the importance of family.  He taught me to find joy in life, in the simplest of things.  When he was unable to walk or even speak, he could still find the strength to smile, and a way to flirt with the ladies.

John Basil Constantine was a simple kind of man.

The older I get the more I understand him, and the more I appreciate both him and that simplicity.  And in the coming weeks, as people ask me "how are you doing?", I will say "fine" or "I'm ok".  It will be a half-truth, of course, but the lying won't come from the fact that it conceals a deep sadness, that's to be expected.  It will come from the fact that the best answers might require some explanation, and right now I feel I've only a few words left:

Enlightened.

Grateful.

Proud.

And the road
The old man paved
The broken seams along the way
The rusted signs, left just for me
He was guiding me, love, his own way
Now the man of the hour is taking his final bow 

("Man of the Hour", Pearl Jam)