mta
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Love and Death Across a Chasm (very, very long)
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Sep 30 03:10 UTC 1998 |
The death of a loved one is perhaps always devastating, no matter how prepared
we think we are. It's made even more difficult when that love was carefully
built and nurtured across the chasm of cultural differences.
That was the case between my father and I. Dad was very conservative; a
devout, and perhaps even fundamentalist, Roman Catholic with a very old world
view of women and our place in the world. I am quite liberal and, of course,
I am pagan. I have a very different view than my father's of the place of
women in the world. This caused untold trouble and tension between us
throughout my childhood and young womanhood.
As we both grew older and more tolerant, we realized that each of us wanted
a better, closer relationship, I with the only father I'll ever have, and he
with his only daughter. So, slowly and carefully we built a suspension bridge
of tolerance and love, shared views on those few areas on which we could
agree, and on our shared devotion to family, across the chasm between our
worlds. Periodically we would crawl tentatively out onto that bridge to meet
in the middle, clinging precariously to what security we could find there.
We had both come to trust that bridge in the decade since our first tentative
attempts to build it, and so it was that we met there almost daily in long
telephone conversations about everything and, mostly, nothing. It was there
that he said "goodbye" in the weeks before he died. It was subtle, and I'm
not sure he knew he was leaving ... but things were different somehow. My
father, who had visited me only twice in the 22 years since I left home, when
he happened to be in the neighborhood, and who had not attended either of my
weddings, suddenly started to make plans to come to my home to put air
conditioners in my windows. (Not something I had planned to do.) When,
within a week of making those plans, he became too ill to travel, he sent me
the first and only "surprise gift for no special reason" that he ever sent
to me. It was small -- a bag of mesquite chips for our barbecues, because
I had mentioned that they're a bit expensive up here -- but it was a gift
specifically from my Dad. The day after I received them, I received word that
he had died.
I think the hardest part of my father's death was venturing out onto that
precarious bridge alone, to cross back over into his world one last time for
his funeral. I found myself very much alone in my father's world -- welcome,
but a stranger with strange views. I was surrounded by family and friends
remarkable in their devotion to one another and to their God. Although my
mother and brothers know who I am, everyone else assumed that I shared their
devotion to my father's faith. Since I didn't think religious arguments were
going to help anyone through that difficult time, I elected to keep my own
counsel for the ten days I was there.
Psychologists say that when a parent dies, we have a tendency to question
everything about our lives. When our lives are a secret to the people we've
grown up with, I think it redoubles the effect. My first challenge was
figuring out what one does when one is a very visible participant in a
religious ceremony where everyone assumes we share the faith, but we don't.
It seemed to me that even if my 25 years away hadn't removed any possibility
of pretending I was a Catholic, to pretend now would serve only to make a
farce of my family's faith. But to act like a complete alien to her faith
would be disrespectful and would hurt my mother. So, I compromised. I sat,
stood, and kneeled as the ceremony required and kept my head respectfully
bent, but I was silent during the prayers.
I thought I was doing OK -- until the priest, who had no doubt counseled my
parents about how to handle their only daughter's falling away from the faith,
make several cutting remarks about "faithless, hopeless pagans". The first
time, I couldn't believe what I'd heard. The second he looked right at me
as he made his remark. How little he knows about us.
Through the time I was with them, my immediate family was very, very welcoming
and loving. Believe it or not, that caused my second dilemma. I had tried
for many years to believe as they do and all my life I had felt an outsider
in my own birth family. I know the pain my "falling away" caused both my
parents.
After a few days of the loving and welcoming, and the constant salvation talk,
I found myself wondering, if I tried again now, whether I might be able to
"believe" this time. Not for myself, but for my mother and father. My return
to their church would have made my father so happy, and it would still bring
my mother and brothers great joy.
Cut off, as I was at this vulnerable time, from anyone who knows what I
believe and who shares my faith in the Goddess and the God and the wheel of
time, it began to seem "silly" and unreal. Prevented from sharing my real
understanding of what had happened between my father and myself in those last
weeks and my certainty that he would be back, perhaps in the small nephew who
was to be born just 5 weeks after his death, I began to question everything.
It was very painful. I knew I didn't (and probably couldn't) believe as they
do. I knew that religion isn't something you choose, like a party dress, to
please someone else. But I also couldn't feel my own faith. I felt that all
faith had been cut away from me, and that my soul was raw and bleeding.
Fortunately, I am a voracious reader on almost any topic, and I knew the
effects of mourning can have on one's soul, so I was able to observe these
feelings with a little objectivity. I resisted the urge to act on anything
until I was home, in my own world.
When I left for home, my mother sent with me a huge basket of flowers that
had been sent for my father's funeral. As I carried that glorious basket
through airports, people would stop me to comment on them and ask about them.
It gave me a chance to explain to complete strangers that my father was dead.
Everyone I met that way was extremely kind and the flight attendants were
attentive and caring on every flight. That was a great deal of comfort. This
time, as I crossed that bridge my father and I had built together for the last
time, I didn't feel so alone.
When I was finally home, I was still haunted by my feeling of having had all
faith cut away from me. For weeks I wasn't able to perform ritual, either
for my father, or for myself. In a sense, I felt he was always nearby and
would be hurt and perhaps insulted to have his beliefs disregarded by my doing
ritual for him. It made no logical sense. Since he'd passed through the
curtain, he now knows better than any of us alive, what Truth is. His soul
is unlikely to be as encumbered by prejudice as those of us who must
understand with our frail, limited little human brains. But the feeling
persisted; the effect, no doubt, of my own childish guilt at wanting to do
something that Daddy wouldn't approve of. (I have a very active inner
toddler.)
I reached out to all the wisest pagans I know to ask for thoughts and
reaffirmation. Many shared with me thoughts that brought me great comfort,
and one especially wise soul shared with me a ritual that could respect both
my father's beliefs and my own.
Gradually, as the moon waxed, I too, grew stronger. As the full moon
approached, I gathered the supplies I needed for what I had to do. On the
day after the full moon, I set up a memorial to my father on my altar. A
photograph of the man he was; a white pillar candle that burns as long as
anyone is in the house and awake; a beautiful little glass box containing a
few of the mesquite chips that were his last gift to me; and the basket of
now dried flowers from his funeral. Each time I light the candle, I tell my
father that I love him, and will miss him, but that it's now time to move on.
I send him the energy of the burning candle to find his way into his next
world, whether it be the heaven he so looked forward to, or a new life.
On the next full moon, I will do a ritual alone, commending my father's soul
to his God. I'll be asking my Gods and Goddesses for support in learning to
live without my father in the middle of that bridge we've built from the tears
and yearnings of two very different souls who wanted to love and understand.
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bjorn
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response 3 of 48:
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Sep 30 14:45 UTC 1998 |
Your statement about seperation of faith made me think of when my Mjolnir
pendant broke while I was working on July 3rd of this year. When I realized
that the pendant was missing from the chain, I felt not only the break in the
chain but a break in something spiritual. When I found where the pendant part
of the necklace was, I noticed it was broken right on the ring that goes
around the chain, allowing it to dangle. One of the times I went to the
bathroom that night, I asked my gods what I had done to offend them because
I had felt a spiritual rupture as well as lonliness and my theory about the
pointlessness of everything.
My faith is still weak, but it is coming back. However, since I am surrounded
by Islam at work, my faith is kept suppressed. Last night, however, I came
to the conclusion that the building I work in is devoring my soul. I also
remembered that I should fight to keep my faith, as my experience in Malaysia
left a scar on my soul that will never completely heal. I do think, however,
that part of Joanna's possession of me on a voluntary basis on my part helped
to heal my soul - much as her positive energy was painful to me the day of
her funeral, it made me feel better the next.
Still, in my state of weak faith, I continue to long for death (to be reuinted
with Joanna, mostly), but am afraid, because I think my very soul is being
weakend by the forces of the building where I work, as well as the probability
of me being the only pagan who works there.
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