Teri was here. (Dad, this one's for you)

The mini family reunion.  

 

 

 

Existing in a state of surreality seems to be my new way of life.  Moving down here (to San Diego)  Meeting my dad after 27 years of silence, working through and hoping one day...Meeting the love of my life...and everything in between.  But no amount of surrealism could have braced me for the news I received one week ago tomorrow.  On Tuesday of last week my dad, his wife Teri and my half brother (who have only known about since August) came for a visit.  I met Teri and Devon at a family reunion on Tuesday and spent a bit of time with them Wednesday before they began their journey home to Idaho.  Friday night at work I received a call from My Aunt Cheryl.  Teri had suffered an anurism in the air somewhere between Los Angele and Oakland.  She was in a hospital in Oakland, but things did not look good. Aunt Cheryl was about to board a flight to Oakland to be with my dad, but would call me once she arrived and had more details. That night I got the second call.  Teri was on life support.  She was completely brain dead and unable to breath on her own.  The doctors were waiting for the words from my dad  to let her go. 

It took a while for me to grasp the reality that Teri was gone.  I had only just met her.  I hadn't even made it through my bratty 'step daughter' phase of thinking.  I was working on it.  I genuinely liked Teri, I was instantly thankful for the love she's shown my dad and the life they had together.  I know he would have made it through the last decade or so without her, but having her there beside him supporting him, encouraging, probably telling him when he behaved stuipidly, that I know was invaluable for my dad.  Not to mention the encouragement she gave him to seek out his family.  We needed Teri in his life as much as he did.  But even knowing that, knowing all she had done, I still could not escape the "I already have a mother" voice that whispered in the back of my mind, so quietly that I barely even noticed it, except for the way I watched her and listened to her, hoping something would happen to validate those unwanted thoughts...When  I got the news, deep sorrow for my dad and deep guilt for my stupidity were the foremost emotions...Anthony has this brilliant gift of often saying more than he should in a certain frame of time, but still being right.  He had called me out on the bratty child voice and the guilty feelings.  He told me I'm a human with human emotions and thoughts and reactions like that are pretty normal, but it's not normal to have such a huge event followed by tragedy. 

The next morning Dad called.  If I live a million years I don't think there will ever be a voice that breaks my heart as much as his did in that moment.  I wish that I could have put my arms around his neck and held him for a while.  I wish I could have found some beautiful words to let him know that it would all be okay...isn't that so us?  To want to somehow have this super power that takes away all of the pain and makes it all better...as if these feelings, these hurts we suffer were unnecessary. As if my dad didn't NEED the time to cry and hurt and feel it all...My dad is a very sweet, tender man.  He's had enough pain and hurt in his heart.  He had a lifetime of living in a self made hell, separated from the ones he loved, unable to pick himself up and seek freedom.  But through it he gained strength, he gained an ability to fight on, to survive, to love completely, because he understands better than most that love and grace is not something we have the ability to earn...we are good at self destruction, even unknowingly...and through our self destruction we lose sight of the havoc we wreck on others...but to survive such a thing, to come out the other side alive and liberated, the depth of understanding we gain is that love is such a precious thing...that kindness stretches further than we can ever fathom...that a whisper of grace can echo for eternity and touch the lives of thousands...From what I've experienced of my father he understands this truth...Teri was a living example in his life of that kind of love and grace.  She didn't care about his past, but she wanted him to find the peace it needed to live on...

My dad has a long road ahead of him, but at the beginning of this new journey he has hope.  He has his family.  He has the knowledge that the life of his wife was not limited by her death.  He knows that she is home and where she wants to be.  And he knows that through her death pieces of her have gone to save the lives of others.  The tears have not stopped, they won't for a while, but every tear cried over the life and the loss of such a beautiful person lends its self to remembering the love and the attitude with which she lived;  Life is fleeting and we will make mistakes, some of us will make terrible ones that seem unforgivable, but love is stronger.  Thank you Teri for the gift you gave my family, bringing my dad back, encouraging all of us to face our fears and find  way to mend the past.  I love you dad.

intigration

I feel it in my fingers...I feel it in my toes...and those are the opening words of a song I think we all know...but so fitting their words for where I am now...fully feeling everything...in every inch of me...Happiness, so transitory and fleeting...so risky to depend upon...the moment you give it a name and  make it yours it disappears...that's the way it has always seemed to operate...perhaps it's different this time...perhaps it's deeper this time...perhaps it has written itself on my heart and moved from mere 'happy' to joy...to lasting and complete...to the wait is over and now you may keep it...I fear holding it too tightly...possibly creating a stinging beast of it...but it seems now to be holding me...wrapping itself around my heart and giving me a name and a place to rest my head...There is still a risk...there is still a possibility of an end point...and for a while dread of it drove me...but some risks are worth taking...so headlong I walk into it...holding my breath...holding his hand...fearful but unafraid...illuminated with hope and the joy of discovery...every day far surpassing the last...and happiness wedging itself deeper into my heart...

Jungle

My heart is over flowing...a fountain of joy and wonder mingled together gushing forth with new eyes and a beautiful new take on the world at hand...always hoping, never expecting or imagining this...so grand in its structure...the glory of love and life and everything one heart could ever desire combined with a second like minded heart...wonder does not fully express it...nor bliss or rapture or sheer joy...no description exists that will serve to capture what is beating within me...elation...that has been the word of late...and even that in its well rounded beauty does little justice to the depth I crave to express...the world should know this...wars would cease and wrongs be righted and all the woes that man brings to man would disappear in its wake...I thought I understood love before now...I imagined I had some sort of grasp on what it meant...it was all rational and supposed...but never this...never this abyss of beauty growing like orchids in a desolate place...

and here I stand...no longer an 'I' but a 'we'...so unfamiliar that word...the journey ahead, so uncharted but so desired...no longer two legs but four, walking forward, one day and one step at a time...a beautiful place to be...walking through this jungle of life to whatever beautiful end...and "happy" means something completely new...

All That Glitters

It is an amazing thing to have ones perspective shifted so drastically...The view from where I stand is so different now than it was...I was happy before, in almost every area of my life, save one...and the happiness that has been added in these last few months, but especially these last few weeks, is beyond anything I ever imagined could be possible...My heart was already so full, and then this unexpected blinding burst of sunlight broke through and my heart was inundated with so much more than I conceived to be bearable for one heart...I have for years walked a path I thought was made of burning coals and scorching embers...but now I see it for what it was...the heat and the pressure and the fear that it would never work out transformed that path from the black and miserably dreary much loathed road to one sparkling and glittering like a thousand multifaceted stars...diamonds now pave it...priceless jewels that seemed mere stone before their true worth was revealed...and I cherish every step...as ugly and lonely and sad as they were...there were also times of joy unrecognized and promises made that this day would come, if only I would wait...haha...what choice did I have but to wait...after a certain length of time waiting is all that's left...and all the while my heart and his were being readied for the day our coal encrusted paths would meet...and that explosion of fire and light and truth and hope and love transformed the roads we walked...and now...the dark days behind us...life ahead...more life, better life...everything glittering and radiant...There is no where else I'd rather be...no other road I'd have wished to walk...and in the midst of waiting I hated the mantra "almost but not yet"...now I am so grateful for those days...and the words have changed to "this is why you waited"...and a heart this full cannot deny the beauty of such a thing...and it's no longer only mine...

2 Steps and a Free Fall

I have been walking this path for a very long time...it has been straight and narrow u\and until very recently quite alone...others have come and kept pace for a while, speaking words of forever and  filling me with hope that perhaps they would stay and continue on...only to unexpectedly an often without explanation veer away a leaving me limping for a while...and I fought the bitter weeds that attempted to entrench themselves in my heart...and I kept walking to shake them off...hoping and praying and aching all the way...and the path wound far from home and found me here...and immediately the path I walked was full...I was not alone...I had options...and options are not my favorite thing...especially when those options are attached to hearts that beat and break so easily...but each one came with something to offer and something to take...a first kiss...a raised bar...a kindred spirit...

First kiss...
so short the time we had together...and for the better...kissing you made me see what love is not meant to be...it is not hungry just to fill and does not look to steal and kill...willing as I was to be led to slaughter...thank God my heart screams louder and longs for more than filling voids with empty words and lusty pretenses...fire waited at the end of our road if it went any further...your disappearing act was the best thing I've ever seen, and I clutch my heart, thankful for a narrow escape... 

Raised Bar...
You were there early on, your gentle laugh and easy heart...so full of sweet and quite thoughts...though deeper down perhaps there's more storm than I've  yet seen...I thought it was you...I thought perhaps there would be no other ever to follow...and I was happy and so it seems were you...and the thought of hurting you kills me, but I know that it would hurt more if I were not true...so here now, walking with you, the horizon not so far away I have to smile and bid you adieu...no one is more surprised than I...and all the reasons why narrow down to one brilliant burst of sunlight that can't be hidden or talked away with the logic best employed in problem solving and decision making...for all of your pros...that list is infinite...the one con that stands against you is that you are not him...

And raised bar and first kiss never would have crossed my path if I had simply walked rather than doing something to" help" the process along...and it would have been easier to walk on without these two, but even in that I know they were for a reason...stepping stones to help me see...even knowing had I never met them, I still would have met him...

Kindred spirit...
And here's where it gets good...you were immediate...there from the start and instantly someone I knew I would love...though friendship was what I had in mind...but we talked...

and talked...

                      And Talked...
                                                   and talked...
                                                                                                and talked...
and we're talking still and your thoughts and your heart echo mine exactly...and everything I thought was just me is also so deep in you...the crazy, the fears, the hopes the tiny hidden moments that no one else sees or delights in...you see them you love them as I do...Talking to you I'm talking to the better part of my heart and I know that all of my hoping and striving and imagining, I never would have come up with you...because I could never imagine that you actually existed...and walls and ruins no longer exist...just a vast field with poetic trees and carpets of clover and wild flowers...and I knew without saying that my heart was yours and yours was mine...and tough it may not be what others see as wise, they will in time realize that there is and never could be anyone else...and all of the waiting and longing and hoping and crying and fighting and begging God and quitting, and starting up again and making it my job since he wasn't doing his, and all the while he was was doing more than I would any longer let myself believe...a single day sooner would have been the wrong timing entirely...but this...

And here's how it happened...we have spent our entire lives walking through the same dark haunted forest, though too far apart to know the other walked there beside us...we journeyed and toiled over sharp rocks and raging rivers...thickets of thorns, wild and ferocious beasts that thirsted for our blood...and years and years of stumbling along...striving to be happy and normal and what others saw as acceptable...but still, each of us carrying the burden of ALONE...vastly and infinitely so...with no real prospect of an end in sight...and then before our eyes...you where you walked and the path I now could barely stand on...a bright spot appeared...and I climbed to my feet and in the same breath we continued forward, unaware of one another...running now toward the light...hoping this end in sight was not some trick of the eye...you on your path and I...one last push, a branch slapped my face and then I was free...the imposing forest at my back...and I looked out around me...the path beneath my feet had disappeared as if I'd reached the end of he world...and out stretched before me was a wide field, golden and green...covered in flowers, the sun filtering through the clouds like spotlights...glittering the earth it touched...and not so far away to the left of me was a figure...and it moved toward me and I walked toward it...hoping it wasn't a trick, but so tired of the ALONE that I would risk my life to find out...and then without a word my hand was in yours and yours was in mine...your fingers dancing between mine...and we stood no longer alone, our backs to the forest... here in our open field of possibility...no longer alone...but free to build up whatever we desire...

And that's where I stand...no longer alone...though achingly apart...and there's no where else for me now...because there's no where else I'd rather be...and for the first time in my life I'm not wondering if I will always be alone...if there will ever really be someone out there who could handle me. haha...I always wanted to walk into a room and know...it wasn't exactly that, but almost...I know...

Warmth

My heart has been a heavy place as of late...I know it's not mine...this ache within me...but for days I've worn it like a scarf around my neck...I can't take it off, but fortunately it matches everything I wear...the black sorrow of it blending in like it was meant to be there always...It's so subtle and soft that I forget I wear it for hours at a time...but then once again I feel the weight of it...and struggling to breath seek the identity of its owner...Today the discovery was made...it doesn't belong to just one...there are many...all of them people I love, though the length of time I've had the opportunity to do so varies as greatly as the fabric the scarf is made of...

One a friend I've known for a good length of time...heart breaking over choices made and pasts colliding...the construction of a castle on the remains of a fortress not long before toppled...debris and ruin inadequately removed now litter the land scape where their two hearts hope to build...they instead tear down each other...their sorrow sullied with shades of gray...unable to define what they should be or how to proceed...so much wrapped in the hopes of healing that hasn't yet happened...the clearing of the littered landscape so desperately needed to anchor their worlds...the circle continues of fear and hurt and frustration and anger...the love that was and could be diminishing even as they strive to keep it...so alone even together...Charcoal gray, the weave of their fabric...so much unknown between the past and today and all that tomorrow holds...

Another I've known for mere weeks...My first day on the job he was there...my new friend immediately...European and sassy as hell...efiminant in a way ONLY a European male can get away with, without the backhanded whispers...

-is he...?
-Do you think maybe...?
-He might be...?
-No, he's just European.

It was his birthday...it was mid afternoon and he'd been at a bar for hours already when he called...asking me to join him...by the time I arrived he had a plate of hot wings and a bottle of Fantome half consumed from a Chamay glass...He was drunk and made me swear not to judge...He's one of my favorites here...funny and peculiar... melancholy drives him...wraps around him like a cloak...every inch of his body wears it like a tattoo etched in so deeply that no amount of laser removal surgery will ever take it away...this is how I find him...and his smile so pure...and begging that I not think less of him for the state in which I find him...as if I ever could...this tender heart dwelling in my new dear friend...we drink and laugh and chat with the assortment of good old boy regulars beside us at the bar...a few puffs of American Spirit then out the door...off to his favorite book store...to find music by his favorite composer...pros by his favorite poet...he reads a few to me...poems of love...and they move him...he clutches his heart and puts the small volume away...rushing in his whirlwind way to another shelf where Goethe waits silently...as if happening upon the remains of a beloved friend he removes the book from the shelf, touching the pages...his eyes consuming the words like a feast...'may I read you my favorite part?' and he does...and the words like songs...painful and true...drip from his tongue as he breathes them...though they are not from memory, they are written on his heart...the longing for this love...the ache of the end...when one knows that the love once given is not enough to live for if it does not grow and yield more life...and his eyes rimmed now with glittering moisture...'may I buy you this book?' he asks...on his birthday he buys me a book...the few lines he read were not enough...he needs me to know the words and love them as he does because it's the only way I will see this part of his heart...so I will read it, and we will talk about it...and all the while the shades of midnight blue that weave through the fabric of his wrapped around my neck...twisting between the charcoal gray...


Another I've known for years...so few days we've actually spent together, but still we are kindred spirits...quarky and perfectly matched in our love of all things untypical...we know each other well for the insufficient time together....we are so similar and so different and it makes us that much closer...but the sorrow I see in her brings an ache to my heart...I feel it as if it were mine...it has been so often...mossy green is her color, threading it's way silently between the others...unassuming but bold...she is there those who know her delight in her wit and love...we're all laughing at the jokes she tells with tears rolling down her face...so few see it...the cloud that she carries...she bears it well...but I've seen the umbrella-ella-ella...even that makes me smile...because it is so much a part of her and such a joyous thing to behold...she hides it from most, but not from me...and wrapped around my neck it rests...the truth, the underlying ache that shades her days...

The other I barely know...he's not even there now...not like he was...but I wear his still, and perhaps will for a long time yet...an unexpected twist in my life's story, but he was there...and at his core, my mirror image...perhaps why it's so easy for him to stay...my flaws were his...that sounds terrible...but he was the reflection of everything I'd rather not be...but know dwells deep within me...cynical and uncaring...hiding the truth...that under all of that piss and vinegar was a man aching for love and someone to be there...someone to take him for all that he was and is and has ever been...even the very people he drives away he longs to keep near...a scarlet strand woven through...just a tiny span of time...but such a bold detail laced into the fabric of this sorrow...

I feel them now...these friends I love...there are more...and in my joy I hold them tight...knowing that I can't give much...I can't say much or do much...but I can be...I can love and give what I have...the small thing that it is...I wear them around my neck so they know I cannot forget...that I'm not ashamed...that I am not afraid...that come what may I'll be here...and in turn, no matter the state they are a comfort to me...I find warmth in them even now...knowing that though the circumstances bear so much pain, they are real and they are every bit as much mine to hold as they are theirs...none of us should ever feel alone...life is meant to be worn this way...a comfort and a burden to keep close those we love...and some day they will wear mine as well...many of them have already...this is love...this is a reason we live...

Run Run as Fast as You Can...

I've never been good at pacing myself...all or nothing, now or never, life or death one extreme or another...he seems to be no exception, though I'm trying with everything inside me to just breath and take it one step and one day at a time...it seems I have no choice...the plight of life and the separation of different worlds, different jobs, different circles of friends...someday they may combine but for now his is his and mine is mine and there's no way to lace them together...He is there and I am here and we are both it seems thinking of the other perhaps more often than we realize...I think of him he lets me know...I like to think I catch him thinking of me as well...so new...so much to learn...so much to find...but how can one not love it...these maddening and precious days of discovery...whatever happens, this will only be a limited time offer...my knowledge will only be so small until it has either grown from a seed to a tree or been extinguished all together...dear GOD, please don't let it be the latter...I like this one!!!!  His heart and the sweetness and the gentle words...the way his lip curls just so and he tilts his head before he speaks...all the little things that make him up...so many I still don't know, but a few I've learned and already cherish...that's got to say something right...

of course this is me...I always fall too fast, too hard...too far...But this time, I feel it might be different...even that I've said before...but never with so much fear that it won't be the truth...One day, one step, one moment at a time...I hate being patient...but I'm striving for it...I've wrapped a corset around my heart to keep it sucked in...chains and fetters and cages and layers and layers of close fitting fabrics to keep it at bay...but still it oozes out the sides...the true shape of it...like leaks in a bucket that cannot be corked...maybe that's the way it should be...a dam breaking free...a river raging it's windy way to the vastness of the sea...all the days that pass that I don't see his face...I think they could sap my last ounce of sanity...Silence all day...draining the life from my limbs... then his name on my phone...and I know he thought of me today...maybe he's afraid that I'll forget as well...and everything reminds me of him which always sets me smiling...as if I didn't do that enough...

funny how for years I refused to be any longer a "romantic"...I put that word behind me and refused to even consider it...but it never went far...always, just waiting, laying low for the moment I could not refuse it again...I cannot fight it now...I might, much to my other less sappy self's great shame, watch every chick flick I own...sigh...I suppose I couldn't run forever...

And here I stand...terrified that IF I take too many more steps forward, and IF you do the same, and IF we find ourselves standing very close indeed...the world might stop turning and everything freeze in its place...what then if you change your mind...and I'm left standing alone in a frozen world that no longer turns?  I hate to think of such a scenario, but I will not survive it if I do not let it be a possibility now...at least here I can think it through and make myself remember that the world, if stopped once will start again...and you may wound me, but it won't be my death...I was raised to be stronger than that...but the thought of it now...with so much possibility so close at hand...I suppose I'd rather be a fool full of hope than let the fear of my heart torn to pieces stop me from walking toward you...