Leslie Albert Taylor
Apr. 3rd, 2011 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
The whole of life has a power to soften and open us against our will, to irrigate our spirits, and in those moments, we discover that tears, the water from within, are a common blood, mysterious and clear.
As I write this I am at a very soft moment in my life. I've always been one to shed a ready tear, too often I think, sometimes, but in this instance, perfectly reasonably.
On Friday night, at 7:10pm my grandfather passed. It wasn't unexpected. We'd had a call a couple of days ago from the nursing home where he'd been staying that the medical staff there did not think he would not live for long, they said 48 hours. So Friday I honestly expected to come home from work and have dad tell me that he had already passed. I was both relieved and not so when that did not come to pass.
I took the call. Oh I passed the telephone to my father, but I knew as soon as the lady said she was calling from St. Augustines what the call was about... and just this once, I tried not to cry.
There's something very hard about seeing your parents cry. Even though you know they must, they're human after all, with feelings, but as their children, no matter how old they are, we expect them to be strong... not to cry. I know my dad was trying hard not to as well.
But it's not the tears that we each shed that are the river in this case - I don't think so. The weirdness of feeling is that, with Grandpa gone, the last of my grandparents, the flow of the river has shifted... or maybe we each have moved down or up the river...
Dad is now the patriarch of the family, Mum the matriarch... and we, the children are adults... we were before, but now it feels capitalised.
The river is now in me
The river's now in me.
The whole of life has a power to soften and open us against our will, to irrigate our spirits, and in those moments, we discover that tears, the water from within, are a common blood, mysterious and clear.
As I write this I am at a very soft moment in my life. I've always been one to shed a ready tear, too often I think, sometimes, but in this instance, perfectly reasonably.
On Friday night, at 7:10pm my grandfather passed. It wasn't unexpected. We'd had a call a couple of days ago from the nursing home where he'd been staying that the medical staff there did not think he would not live for long, they said 48 hours. So Friday I honestly expected to come home from work and have dad tell me that he had already passed. I was both relieved and not so when that did not come to pass.
I took the call. Oh I passed the telephone to my father, but I knew as soon as the lady said she was calling from St. Augustines what the call was about... and just this once, I tried not to cry.
There's something very hard about seeing your parents cry. Even though you know they must, they're human after all, with feelings, but as their children, no matter how old they are, we expect them to be strong... not to cry. I know my dad was trying hard not to as well.
But it's not the tears that we each shed that are the river in this case - I don't think so. The weirdness of feeling is that, with Grandpa gone, the last of my grandparents, the flow of the river has shifted... or maybe we each have moved down or up the river...
Dad is now the patriarch of the family, Mum the matriarch... and we, the children are adults... we were before, but now it feels capitalised.
The river is now in me
