RECEIVING THE NEWS THAT YOUR FATHER IS DYING

More musings on the loss of a parent...

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Image: Fine Arts Images ca 1950s

It’s strange how, once a loved one dies, our attitude toward those days or weeks or months or entire seasons can change, because those times become associated with “the time our loved one died.” Our lives change forever, and our bodies remember.  I, for instance, used to habitually get depressed in the months of January and February. One could say--without much argument--that this is because of seasonal depression, and because of the relentlessly cold weather in the Northeast, which forces our body into contracted, fetal-position states, thereby suggesting to our nervous system that we are going into shutdown, and thereby literally shutting us down. Or one could say that seasonal depression is due to sheer lack of light during the winter months. Indeed, back in the day, my most excellent doctor Richard P. Brown eventually encouraged me to simply go South for the winter, or move to California, and follow the sunlight, as it were.  But I digress.  

Over the past few years, I’ve started to wonder if my seasonal depressions were actually due to the fact that two of the most painful events in my life occurred near the end of January and early February. One was that I was born into this world on January 31--something that one of my “parts” still seems to be pissed about (more on this later).  The other is that my mother died on February 7, ten years after I took birth in this degenerate realm in the first place.  My mind--as many of you are aware--still does not remember anything about my mother, or her death, or her life.  But my body definitely remembers. (And if you don’t believe that, go read THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE or WHEN THE BODY SAYS NO.) I’ll be writing about this elsewhere--I have a whole book’s worth of material chronicling how my own body kept the score and how, when my world split in half, my spine followed suit. (And I’m going to leave that sentence deliberately vague for now.)  The main point I want to make is that my body still seemed to “remember” all my repressed grief even if my mind did not, and this grief always tried to arise in those winter months as the anniversary of my mother’s death drew near. And instead of simply facing the grief, and being with it, and truly processing it, and allowing the energy to transform, I would try to avoid it by driving down to Florida every winter.  And avoidance can seemingly work, but only up to a point.  I reached my limit of avoidance back in 2017, when I started to lose the ability to walk. But again, I digress, and that is the other story. I am trying to focus on my father’s story. I need to write his story down, so that I don’t suppress it and end up with some other crippling spinal disorder.  

Charles Francis Harrington--I will remember your name. I will speak your name to the winds.

I started working on this particular piece at the end of October, at Samhain--a time in which, according to my Celtic ancestors, the veils between the worlds are particularly thin.  A time in which we can honor and even access all those who have moved on to the other realms and shores. Samheim also happens to fall around the anniversary of father’s death (November 4, 2022) and for the past year I’ve been meaning to write about him, and of him, and around him (if that makes sense) so that I can truly honor him. And our ancestors.  

But I kept putting the writing off, telling myself that I needed to integrate all the experiences of his death (and his life, and our relationship) first. But seriously, who has time to integrate and/or process anything anymore?  We live in a world that--by nature of its too-fast, too-demanding pace--does not really allow us to reflect, or digest, or rest-and-replenish. So many of us are operating on auto-pilot, from a place of sheer overload. No wonder this world is wacked. Our nervous systems are completely overloaded.  I still haven’t even fully integrated my mother’s death yet, and almost fifty years have passed. Would that we could all go off onto three-years retreats and train our minds...