Queen of Swords

My dad grew up in Seattle, WA, and went to school in South Carolina. Every fall he would get on the train to Greenville and not come home again until summer. His favorite Christmas song, even into adulthood was "I'll Be Home for Christmas." For those not totally familiar with the song, the key lyric, at the very end of the song, is "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." It's a melancholy song, and I've never liked it much.

Since my dad's death three years ago, hearing it has been excruciatingly painful. Because it's not in my (seldom played) collection of holiday music, I only hear it when I'm in public, usually someplace like the grocery store. It makes me want to cover my ears and run. It makes all my pain about my dad's loss come crashing back, and I'm angry that he's no longer here.

Yesterday I was in the grocery store, shopping for food FoxGirl's and my Yule feast, and That Song came on. I winced. . . but then I felt I could hear my dad's voice. He reminded me that he had died from primarily natural causes at age 85, surrounded by his family, at the end of a good and happy life. It had been time for him go. His mind as well as his body had been breaking down, and it was a grace that he died when he did rather than lingering into full dementia or complete lack of mobility. He truly is in a better place now -- as I perceived shortly before his physical death when I got a sudden, powerful image of him doing cartwheels and shouting "Whoopee!" I can miss him, but I need to let go of my lingering grief and anger. 

I believed I heard his voice, and it gave me peace.

The grocery store soundtrack moved on to a brief advertising interval, and then the holiday music resumed: I'll Be Home For Christmas - again! - although by a different artist. And it was okay. I still don't like the song, but it didn't make me hurt. 

I may have found the spark and the path to bring me not just fully back to life, but upward to my next level of personal development.

A lot of small things have been quietly shifting and emerging, everything from a book given to me by a colleague at work to my conversation with Dad the other night to my spiritual practices to very old daydreams. Lohain's whisper in my mind during our morning connection ritual today was like a key turning, setting everything into a new pattern.

I'm not going to speak of the details yet, just request prayers for discernment as I test this to be sure it's actually a breakthrough and not just a flash-bang that never comes to anything.

But I feel energized this morning, the kind of engaged/project-energy I haven't felt in a very long time.

oakmouse just pointed out to me very nicely that while yes, last night's dream did indeed show an improvement in my comfort connecting with Water -- it also very strongly re-affirmed my role as Father's Daughter.


I don't mind the fact that changes like this will take some time to work their way through and fully integrate. It does kind of bug me that I hadn't noticed that element of the dream until she pointed it out.

I actually read this entry in my sister's journal after I posted my previous entry.

As most of you know, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson's last year. The symptoms are becoming more obvious now: a heaviness in his legs as he walks is the most obvious.

But he is visiting my sister right now, and she writes that he asked her 5 times in one day where her second dog came from.

Our father is a very bright man, someone who pays attention and remembers things. He has two Ph.D.'s and he is currently serving as chairman of the board of trustees for a major HMO. This is not like him. And because he is a man whose mental brilliance is so much a part of who he is -- or at least how we understand him -- it is especially unnerving.

Ok. Scary. Scary in the most primitive of ways.

Our maternal grandmother developed Alzheimer's when we were in high school, and she lived with us for a couple of years as the disease slowly consumed her. It affected both my sister and me very deeply, and I think that since then we both have always been afraid, deep in the backs of our minds, that it will happen again: to our parents, and then to us.

I'd like to ascribe his absent-mindedness about her dog to the fact that he has never been a fan of her pets, and that he simply doesn't care about where this one came from, not really. But there have been moments during the past few months when I've seen the same thing happen.

I don't want to lose my father. I particularly do not want to watch him decline into Alzheimer's.

I "dealt" with my grandmother's condition by ignoring her existence, insofar as was possible. But I'll be damned if I do that again. One of the reasons I am doing what I am in the career/vocational field is that I have had a deep, gut sense for several years now that my parents were going to need me right here, not off in the midwest or east coast pastoring one of the few congregations in my denomination. It was right and proper for my sister to move when and where she did. But I believe that part of my calling is to be the one who is here for my parents.

I don't feel any better than I did when I posted the Hamlet quote a few minutes ago. But I feel less lost than I did. Last night, I really was thinking that it wouldn't matter much if I died. There wasn't a lot of point to my life, and certainly no real joy to it. (This is not something I've felt for a very long time.) But this prospect of my father's illness getting much worse than I had been willing to contemplate at least gives me an "enemy" to fight, some purpose bigger than myself to focus on. My own life, which seems so small and gray and joyless right now, suddenly is being snapped back into proper perspective.

To those of you who pray: please remember my family and me right now. I think we're going to need it.
I know I need it right now. I just started to cry, and I feel very much alone.