Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now

Blog for May 17, 2009

Today is a raw, rainy afternoon in Petersburg. One year ago, on a day just like this, I flew into the airport on Martha’s Vineyard in a rattling little prop plane, shuddering to a stop on a wet airstrip, on the back of a Northeast wind.

I was flying back to bury my Dad. The Hospice Nurse had called a couple of days before to tell me the end was near. So I flew all night, feeling sandy and exhausted from traveling, writing Dad’s obituary in my head.

My friend Bill picked me up at the airport. He’s the kind of friend who would bring cold juice and a muffin, since he figured I had not eaten. I can remember so clearly riding in Bill’s truck, drinking ice-cold orange juice, and staring out the window at the blossoming Dogwood trees. I stopped to pick lilacs, as I gathered my strength and resolve.

The driveway to the family house was strewn with garbage. Raccoons had gotten into the cans and strewn diapers across the yard. The house was dark and still. Inside, it was cold, and filled with dirty dishes and unemptied urinals. I walked in the front door, filled with dread.

Dad was alive, but very weak. His face was waxy and swollen. I held the lilacs under his nose and he smiled. That was the first day of our last summer together. He lived for another four and a half months. I accompanied him from lilac season to “apple weather” in the fall. It was the trip of a lifetime.

The journey with my Dad started long before last May of course. I turned 52 last fall. He was my father all that time, but our relationship never acquired any depth until after my Moms’ passing, in 2001.

I remember the moment when our real journey began. I had returned to the island to put a stone on my mother’s grave. She had died in January. Dad had moved into her house, even though they had been divorced for years.

I was still angry at him, angry for the legacy of pain he had left behind when he left the family, when he divorced Mom. Too many angry things were said. I remembered his gigantic temper, and his apparent lack of interest in his children. My resentment was a well-banked fire.

I had not even planned to see him while I was on the island that fall. There was nothing to say, I thought. We had not spoken since a furious shouting match on the phone in January.

Then I found myself driving by the hardware store where he had found part-time work on the island. I was curious. My father was not a handy man. He was a world traveler, had worked as an educator and a consultant, a Director for the Peace Corps, an advertising executive. He had a Master’s Degree in Public Health, he knew a lot about design, but what he knew about hardware I could write on a bottle cap. So I stopped.

I did not recognize him at once. I was looking for another person. I was searching for the titanic man of my childhood, whose fury could blow through the house leaving a wake of curses and breakage. I thought I would find the sharply critical man whose dismissive and belittling remarks carved people into tiny caricatures of themselves. He was not there.

I found a man who looked just like my father, with a big, grateful smile on his face. He was dusting shelves, and dropped what he was doing when I walked in. “This is my daughter Julie,” he told his coworkers. “She comes all the way from Alaska.” He gave me a big hug.

Ok, I was disarmed by this. Still wary, still wondering who this version of Hy Hoffman was, I agreed to meet him for a walk at the dog park. On a golden October afternoon, with the brisk sea wind blowing bright leaves off the trees, I saw him walking towards me. He was a frail, older man walking two beloved dogs. He had just moved to the island a few months before. His second wife had left him. His retirement money was nearly gone. His prostate cancer had returned.

I looked at him without a lens of anger, without a legacy of pain. I saw his gratitude, and I saw our common history, and realized that sometimes forgiveness is just as simple as opening a window, and letting fresh air blow through.

That is where our journey began.

 

Last night I dreamed he was telling me goodbye, waving me off towards the airport. I was not ready to go, not packed, had lost my ticket, but he was adamant. “Go,” he kept telling me. “It is time you left”. It is the second dream I have had this spring where he has chased me off. Perhaps this is his way of telling me to move on. Obvious, isn’t it?

I am moving on, moving forward, living in the present with a grateful heart. I have more peace of mind now than I had before, less fear. That is because of the story of last summer, not in spite of it. So I visit it now and then, the story of my last summer with Dad, because it still informs me about how it is to live in the midst of dying, and what reconciliation means. It reminds me that mercy is a quality that fills the parched and thirsty places in our hearts.

The story of last summer tells me that we have no idea what lies ahead, but we have everything we need to face the journey. What we do not have, we will find along the way. There is such calm in knowing this. So I am grateful for each step of last summer, for the garbage and the flowers that were strewn across my path, and for every obstacle and every friend that cheered me on. Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now…