Beyond the Will of the Soul

Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here.

-Nine Inch Nails, Hurt

..Tears from a Stone..

I am out of practice. This is the reality of the situation. I tell myself that I do not want to write because I have nothing left to say, but the constant nagging of thoughts suggests otherwise. Though there be atrophy, there is still will left to flex these emotions.

My father killed himself ten years ago today. Ten years seem so long that it is almost funny. How can someone just disappear for that long? Did he really exist, or was he just some elaborate fantasy? He seems like a fantasy, but perhaps only because my sole interactions with him these days take place in my mind, and in the deep places of my heart, that is, when my heart is unprepared.

I have willed my heart to be stone toward him. It isn’t an issue of malice against my father, but rather an act of survival- I simply cannot spend my days longing to see him. My heart grew a callus through continual thought and emotional stimulation. The callus thickened as the phantom persisted in agitating it. The feeling grew dull as the callus calcified to stone. Ten years of hard labor will turn hands into rock. Likewise, a decade of unrelenting, dissatisfied thoughts and desires turn emotions into brick. The itch cannot be scratched, and so I am done with feeling for him.

But I am not, not really.

Years of clutching a rock in your chest is wearisome, though I will tell you that it is less burdensome than attempting to fill the vacuum this rock entombs. I suppose writing this is an act of survival as well lest this rock in my chest grow to become my tombstone.

This is not fair. I did not ask for this. But that does not really matter. Reality often demonstrates its power over us by pushing aside those things we think unbreakable, including our own sense of justice or equity. So though I acknowledge that this situation is awful and not fair, I do not wish to harp on that. The time for lamenting these particular facts has passed and I have already reflected on them in other essays. This current work is not intended to be a repeat of previous works. There is another topic I wish to explore, though I am unsure of what it is or how to even start upon it. I merely see it from the corner of my mind.

I want to say that I will never forgive my father for killing himself, but I already have and absolutely would do again without question. Besides which I do not really want to say that- I just really want to be able to want that. I suppose that is the stone trying to crush him as it winds up crushing me instead.

I can no longer live with a heart of stone anymore. It will be impossible to love my wife as I should with a heart that can only operate to defend itself by suppressing my feelings. So I have to just deal with this:

Ten years of the lack of you…

The reality of future decades without you…

You will never meet my wife…

You will not attend my wedding…

You will not hold any grandchildren…

This is too much. I need to take a break.

..Mine Shaft..

Feeling for the edges- imaginary fingers tracing out the grooves of an imaginary hole that is sealed by an imaginary rock. Gaining a grip and sighing deeply. Lifting up the stone and peering into the hole. Empty as usual.

Empty, yet present all the same as I climb into the darkness and explore the mine shaft yet again. I explored this darkness for several years searching for answers. I didn’t really find any that satisfied my need to see my dad or to fight my dad or to hug my dad. Back then there was only wisdom to be found. Great, painful chunks of it. And here I am attempting to hoist more of it up.

..The Me in Me..

It has been weeks since I have last written anything, but this has been on my mind near constantly. Just staring into this hole, willing these words to manifest on their own or to have the burden of them go away. Neither option has availed itself so far. So here comes another attempt to manually execute this procedure, though really I am looking for any excuse to step away from the computer.

Sometimes I imagine just staring at you to see if I can remember what you looked like and how you acted. I imagine you staring back at me and I wonder what you would think of what you saw. And sometimes we will say mean things to each other, but then I realize that it’s just me saying mean things to myself in order to make a rift between us.

I cannot cope apparently. And I cannot imagine you saying kind or encouraging things to me. This is not because you were not kind or encouraging- I just cannot cope with those words or actions. I cannot cope with exploring the loss of your love and affection. To no longer have access to your love has been devastating. And I cannot imagine it because it was your unique and personal love. That is something that just cannot be synthesized in memory or imagination, no matter how long or well I knew you. It would involve encapsulating you, and you were just too big to take up permanent residence in my heart or mind.

I miss you and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Denial and silence are a delusion- you seep through any wall I build up. I want to love you, but I feel like I just collect that love in a bucket and pour it onto the ground where all it does is foster weeds.

I suppose that isn’t true, but sometimes it feels like it. I can be as dramatic as you were sometimes.

I feel like a ghost. Not in any sort of spectral or otherworldly way, but in the sense of being unnoticed. Of course, I know that people notice me, but they cannot see me wandering in my own head looking for you. That is what I mean. People see me, but they do not see the me in me. And now this is conflated because is this about my personality, or is this about you? More than likely it is both.

The me in me is at a loss for words. The me in me still misses you desperately and has not been okay just carrying on life without you. This is the me that is still sad about all the unresolved issues that will remain unresolved. This is who is encapsulated within me, not you. The conversations I have with you are really just conversations that I have with myself, or rather the person I remember you to be. In the end it is all still just me. You will never answer me and never comfort me, and that is the hard part about all of this: you did this terrible thing and now it is on me to not just deal with it, but to move past it. And that means moving past myself. Moving past the part of me that is tied up with you.

Is me in me still angry? Sure, sometimes.

Is me in me still sad? Absolutely.

Is me in me noticed? I do not allow him to be.

I do not know what to do about this but walk away for a while. This is not what I imagined.

..Glance..

I’m a keen observer, or rather, I try to be. I notice little things that typically go unseen because of their function. Droplets of water on a cobweb. The fine scales of a dragonfly’s wing. The pattern of sunlight that draws its way across my bedroom ceiling throughout the course of a day. Little things that call no attention to themselves, but just exist as a result of how the world works. And in these observations I attempt to draw greater meanings and motivations.

I apply this same principle with people. Especially with their facial expressions when they think they are unnoticed. People are wonderful when they are in a state of social ambiguity. They are their genuine selves in a system of lives and physics that makes everything seem insignificant except the greater whole of the total’s immensity. To notice a person’s small role in the greater machine is to take note of the craftsmanship of that machine and wonder at its goal. Furthermore, to see the subtleties that undergird that role reveals a person’s humanity. It lets you know that you are not alone in the immensity of this life, and that others are just as important and complex as you are.

I glance at people as they walk by me or wait in line or sip their coffee or take a break on a bench. Where do their eyes wander? Do they connect with mine? Do their lips form a hard line or are they smiling? Are they squinting?

From these details I try to discern what I can about them, or rather, about their experience in that given moment. Are they happy or sad or somewhere between? If I know them, does their expression add a layer of depth to their personhood, given what I know of their current or past circumstances? Are they revealing that they are more than what they let on to the world around them? Yes, undoubtedly, but beyond my ability to interpret. My understanding is finite and localized by the breadth of my limited experience and learning. Besides which, subtle winks, grunts, frowns, and hasty scratches are mere shadows of an individual’s identity. How can they do more than merely hint at what is going on in their owner’s mind?

If you were to glance at me, would you know that these words were stored up in my heart? When I stare at the void in my heart, the image I have to represent the absence of my father, what intentions lay behind it? What does the me in me think and experience? When I stare at the image of the void, or my father, or just myself I perceive my redounding ache for him. More than that I feel the weight caused by his absence. I feel the distance of time that separates me from the reality of being able to interact with him. I feel my mind attempting to create him again and again out of mere memory and failing and knowing it is failing. I feel the dissatisfaction of helplessness in not knowing where these feelings are coming from or what I can do about them.

But what beyond that? Mere shadow, thick as wool yet formless as night.

..Word Anvil..

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate, And though I oft have passed them by, A day will come at last when I, Shall take the hidden paths that run, West of the Moon, East of the Sun. -Tolkien

The thoughts do not make any more sense than previously- they just have words now. It is a great effort to wrench from the coalmine of grief logical materials that can be shaped into somewhat cohesive ideas. And they are weak ideas. My ability to comprehend these thoughts and thereby bend them into rationality is limited, and perhaps useless. These emotions and thoughts do not bend easily on the anvil of intellect, and therefore yield a somewhat weakened and incomplete product. My words will never describe what I feel, only the shadows and refractions thereof. I will only ever understand peripherally, and so will only be able to describe abstractly. I will only ever have a sideways glance at the thing that effects me body and soul. I will only be able to experience it and never able to verbalize the experience, not fully or directly anyway.

I must settle for the periphery. I must settle for never being able to fully understand. I must accept that the full understanding of my thoughts and feelings, though they be mine and though I feel the full brunt of their sway, is not mine to have. They are too great to fully know, at least for now. They are like the winds at sea. They cannot be controlled. They exert their power despite my opinions on their method or timing. All that can be done is to move with them. To maneuver with them so as to guide me rather than let them topple or drown me. So rather than attempting to bend the wind of thought with the iron of intellect, perhaps the better approach is to focus the wind into the sail of the heart till I reach the destination of the will of my soul.

..Will of the Soul..

And this is what I will. What I desire. What I see peripherally and feel fully, but will never experience in reality.

I wish my father knew my wife and I wish he could attend our wedding.

I wish my father knew that he was integral to me becoming friends with my wife, though he had passed on several years before I had even formally met her. I want to imagine his face light up as she and I told him how it was the books he gave me to read as a young adult that became the sort of foundation upon which she and I built a dialogue and eventual friendship. He played matchmaker without even knowing it. She and I love him for that. I wish you knew the love she has for you.

I wish you could meet and know my future father-in-law. He is a wonderful man, and he reminds me so much of you (so much sometimes that it hurts). He loves the same books you did, and has the same depth of thought. He reads as voraciously as you did and can converse on any number of subjects, just like you. I am sad that you will never meet him. Your bond to one another would have surpassed the mere obligation of family ties- you would have been friends. Great friends. You wouldn’t have to be lonely anymore.This, of course, creates a paradox in my mind. You died in your loneliness, and it would have been impossible for him to be friends with you before I even knew his daughter. Herein lies a tangle of thoughts and emotions that I make a note of, acknowledging that they will never be mollified in this life.

I wish I could have seen your life turned around. I wish you could have been happy, and that we could revel in our shared happiness together. I wish I could invite you to my home and I wish I could have meals with you again and I wish I could discuss books and ideas with you again and I wish I could watch stupid movies with you again and quote dumb movie lines with you again. I wish I could look forward to possibly placing grandchild after grandchild into your arms, and say, “See?! Can you believe it?! You were right!” I wish these things could take place in reality, and not just in my imagination. I wish I did not have to suppress these thoughts. I wish they didn’t have the power to overtake me and cast a pall upon reality.

I wish I could tell you sorry, or somehow take away the consequences of your actions. Ten years later and I still feel responsible for what you did. I am so sorry. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. I wish you could tell me it wasn’t my fault. I wish you could take back your last action and come out of hiding.

Herein reality flexes its dominance in the face of what I deem to be fully just desires. Though I will these things to be, they can never be. This is the will of my soul. This is the empty island the sail of my heart leads me to, and it hurts enough to crawl under a heart of stone.

..Isle of Stone..

Are you proud of me? Are you ashamed of me? Do you care that I still care about you? Do you feel the weight of my sorrow as I feel the weight of your absence?

I will never hear your answers with my waking ears, and the only responses I will ever have will be the ones I conjure on my own in the synthesis of memory and imagination. This is unfulfilling, and so I must cast it aside. It cannot matter what you think of me, not anymore.

I hope you would be proud of me, though.

..To be Heard..

I said earlier that I was talking to myself through all of this, but that is not entirely accurate. Obviously, there is you, the reader, who is receiving these thoughts, though you do so peripherally, and not directly. And this is to be expected and it is proper. All reading is a peripheral viewing of a writer’s thoughts. I acknowledge you from the periphery (that is, I acknowledge that you may exist and that you may be reading this), and I thank you for taking the time, whether you mention to me that you read this or not. Even if you happen to find this 100 or 200 years from now and cannot talk to me because I am long gone, I thank you. Around the invisible and unreachable corner connecting life and death I peek over with this written thought and I thank you. Though we only meet here at the juncture of my written thoughts and your reading eyes, I thank you. And that will have to be enough.

God has also been present. Though much of what I have written comes out as introspection and self-talk, it is not without Him peering in. More than that, I am talking to Him in all of it: like carrying on a conversation with one person within earshot of another. This is me peripherally communicating these issues to the Lord.

Why not directly? Maybe this is as direct as I can be with this subject. Being direct merely retreads old paths, and the thoughts expressed in this reflection could not be addressed by the old hikes. I only understand this so much, and I am limited in my ability to describe it. I am unsure how to even ask for help in it. I am hoping that I am communicating loudly enough for God to perceive that I need help, though I am unsure of what kind. And I believe He understands fully, even though I can only communicate abstractly about this to Him.

Though I will my thoughts to go in a certain direction, it is He that guides me beyond the inevitability of my unfulfilled and never-to-be-met desire to see my father in this life. And while He can understand fully and therefore address the issue perfectly, I continue to only understand peripherally, though I experience fully. The thoughts and feelings I can only loosely grab and make simple sense of, He knows in full. For though I stand peripherally to Him, He dwells fully in me. So my thoughts and feelings become His, and He makes them into more than broken dreams. Though I know them as broken, He has me experience them in their restoration.

No, this does not make any sense to me, but just as the feelings and thoughts of grief are greater than my ability to grasp them, so then must their restoration be. All I know is that I am heard and that I am known. I am known not peripherally, but in full. Though I only understand it dully, I experience it fully, and ever more fully. And that will also have to be enough.

..The Years of Mending..

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. -Psalm 139:6

These are all broken thoughts. The product of my writing is poor compared to the reality of the experience I feel, though I wish them not to be. Herein reality shows me how much I do not and cannot understand, though I think I have a right to.

What will it be like to be fully mended? To fully know and understand. Again, I only comprehend this peripherally. Oddly enough I only feel this peripherally as well. Words fail here. The only way I can think of describing it is like gaining a new ability, but only understanding that after the fact and not by your own doing.

There are aspects of my grief that I no longer endure, but I only found out in retrospect. I did not do anything to fix them, I merely received the repairs. I walked into them as they waited for me to acknowledge and pick them up. The process felt unbearable, but it made me ready to receive the mending. I pointed out the problems, but I did not fix them because I couldn’t. And yet they got fixed. Again, words fail here. I apologize.

I want this process to be over with, but it is ongoing. Each mending seems to be preparing me for the next issue, which will lead to the next mending. It seems there is no shortage of things to be fixed about me, and each fix seems like a minor bit of necessary preparation for the next big operation (which inevitably seems smaller than the one that comes after it).

To what end am I being mended? It is not enough that I get over my father’s death, apparently. That would have been good enough for me, but I only understand peripherally what is actually good. I am changed beyond who I was ten years ago. I did not ask for that, but here we are. I only see dimly the road ahead, but I hope to one day have mended eyes that can see as clear forward as they can reflect backward.

What will there be to see further down the road? Will the vision put to rest and explain the path that grows ever longer behind me? To what end am I being mended?

I daresay that I am being formed to turn the impossible corner, and finally see fully what I now only perceive the edges of. I hope that I am being made fit to jump the wall that divides the knowledge of my father’s continued existence with my inability to be with him in that new existence. I daresay that I am being fit to receive the gift of a seemingly impossible hope. That I am being made for a greater reality.

Dad, you took the shortcut, but I must take the long road. I hope that you are there at the end of it. I hope that my body is formed to overcome corporeality and finally be able to hug you again. That my ears are made to hear you beyond the silence of these intervening years. That new eyes will be able to pierce this dim reality and see you again.

Who knows what you will be like then? And who knows what our mending will look like after that? I do not understand what it is I feel or what the substance that produces that feeling looks like- I only glace at it peripherally as it tugs on my heart to carry on down the long road.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. -1 John 3:2

A More Honorable End

My father committed suicide seven years ago today. I was tempted to just let this anniversary pass without acknowledging it, but it did not feel right to do so, given that I have not been able to think of anything else since the start of January. So I find myself placing my fingers to the keyboard once again; not for too long- just long enough.

Suffice it to say that I have written extensively about this matter for quite some time now. At this point I do not believe that I can convey any other thoughts describing my sadness or anger or frustration, or even the loneliness of carrying around the memory of a ghost. And to manufacture more thoughts using slightly differing word tenses and stylistic phrasing seems disingenuous and an attempt to grab up attention for a matter that is important to me, but perhaps not overly remembered by others. At some point during grief it must be acknowledged that your burden is your own to carry and that summoning attention to it constantly transforms you into the image of your grief in the eyes of others (and, unfortunately, in your own eyes). One cannot live life as an animated monument to the deceased and expect to really live. These thoughts are not an attempt to do so.

Wishing is a futile exercise. It is hope with a sense of loss. But I do desire to just express this one void hope so that it can be acknowledged for what it is and what it can never be: I wish my father had a more honorable end. I wish that his exit was not so anticlimactic. I wish he had an end that was as big as he was, or, I should say, as big as I imagined him to be.

I wish that more of my friends could have known him so that they could realize how big a hole his exit left behind. I wish that I could look back at his death with the satisfaction of knowing that he truly lived to his potential, sad as it would be to see that legacy go.

I wish he didn’t die before I was ready for him to.

Herein we see the futility of the wish. I was not ready for him to die, and reflecting on his death will never ever bring a sense of satisfaction. I have only want and hurt out of it. I should remember the good times. I should remember his humor. I should remember his kindness. I should remember his deep mind and wisdom. I should remember just how big and strong he was. But all of those memories lead to an inevitable end that stains the whole. My father could not manufacture an honorable end for himself, and I cannot assemble one out of select bits and pieces of his life. His end is not his to change, nor is not mine to reinterpret.

Now I desire to express a hope. True hope is backed by the satisfaction of knowing that the object desired is inevitable, though in certain circumstances it cannot be explained why. I hope to one day no longer feel the need to justify my father’s life. I hope to let his end be what it is. I hope to let my father’s life stand on its own without the need to have my life act as a buttress for it. I hope to not depend on a sense of honor that is completely transitory and self-reliant. I hope that the meaning of my father’s life, and indeed the meaning of my own life, can lay outside of whatever thoughts I can muster concerning completeness and beauty. These things are hard to accept and embrace, but I have hope that they will be.

As of now, I only know a shadow of what should be. I only understand the immediate ugliness of wrong. I do not understand fully the true nature of restoration. I only know the shade of it and the closed bud if its being simply because I know that it should be there, though in truth I do not fully comprehend its form. I do not understand why it waits or why the story carries on the way it does. I only know that its existence points to what is wrong while simultaneously promising to what will be right.

Really beyond this topic is beyond my scope, and so here is where I will end this reflection. I miss my father, I wish for better things, and more than that I hope for something greater than I can completely understand: a meaning that supersedes my own understanding of meaning. A hope devoid of wishing. Restoration and beauty and completeness beyond their shadows.

The Reflecting Pool

I’ve been writing about my father’s passing for six years now. I am out of words, but am not lacking for thoughts or emotions. I once wrote about “emotional constipation”, the idea that the emotional complex of grief was so great that finding words to describe the pain of it was akin to having a mental bolus that could only be pushed out through much exertion. This is not that. The state I find myself in now is more like being empty, only that is not quite accurate. It’s like a once soaking sponge that has been squeezed. The majority of the water is gone, but it is still damp. That’s more accurate: a damp state of being. It’s like a lake that has been fished in so much that all that remains are the little creatures that escape nets and hooks. I’m teaming with thoughts and emotions, but I cannot quite grasp what they mean or what possible importance they can be.

The word “death” is still hard.

The word “suicide” is still hard.

The word “dad” is still hard.

The phrase “Dad committed suicide a week before my birthday” is STILL HARD.

These and a million other thoughts and emotions are still hard, but I do not know the significance of any of them. All I know are what I have gained by catching the big fish over the years. I once wrote that grief is a mineshaft that you fall into. As you wander around looking for the exit you find chunks of gold- little pieces of wisdom and insight born from traversing the dark. Grief now seems to have morphed into a vast reflecting pond. A pool teaming with life, though what kind and how much is currently unknown.

Perhaps in time my thoughts will grow, as the small fish in a pond without larger predators seemingly do. Perhaps as I grow older and encounter new experiences I will understand more clearly the current thoughts and feelings that flit around my head. Perhaps they will grow large enough to capture and measure. Perhaps I will write more about this then.

But perhaps I will not. Perhaps what develops will not be made for words, but for reflecting. Perhaps they are better suited for conversations, or to simply dwell on with others. Perhaps they are here to comfort me in the sunset of a hard memory. Love without words, peace beyond comprehension.

Despite these Chains

I love banyan trees. As a child growing up in Miami, I was always amazed by the sheer size of them, and their veiny limbs and trunks made perfect handholds, thus solidifying them in my mind as the perfect climbing tree. Their size and presence always represented a sort of mysticism in my mind as a child: odd giants hiding among the steel and concrete of Miami. Even seeing them as an adult fills me with a strange sense of awe and admiration for these quietly powerful trees.

I was struck by something else today as I sat upon a crook of a smaller banyan. Perhaps it’s my own stage in life, but I imagined as I gazed at this magnificent tree that it was a creature writhing against a thousand chains strapped to its arms and torso. I saw the banyan tree as representing pain. Struggle. Fighting to live despite the burden of a thousand weights. Of course, I know this is not the case- the supposed chains are actually roots that drape down from the trunk and branches. These roots not only supply nourishment, but also structural support that allows the tree to grow even larger. And I thought about myself and my own struggles and the idea of struggle in general. Perhaps the things we perceive to be chains are actually roots. We speak about freeing ourselves and forgetting our troubles, but what if these things are the means by which we gain nourishment and are enabled to grow? I look at the tree, and its branches aren’t flailing against its roots, but rather they are held up by them. What if these things that we go through give us the strength to hold our arms up? To keep our head up? To become more firmly planted in our beliefs and values and to grow in them? What if they are the reasons we keep going despite the pain of it all? Though they seem like shackles now, in time they become our reasons for enduring.

Though we look like creatures in chains, maybe one day we’ll quit our writhing, as the things that weigh us down take root, and give our lives the support we desperately desire.

Shouts from the Dungeon

“…the accuser…who accuses…day and night…” -Revelation 12:10

Depression is like having an angry prisoner in the dungeon of your mind. He shouts loudly. He accuses you of unjust treatment. He says that he should be allowed to roam free within your mind. That he should have the same rights as all of your other thoughts. Sometimes his shouts are drowned out by the busyness of day-to-day business and life or by some excitement or social activity. Other times his shouts seem to echo throughout the hallways of your mind and seemingly bounce around and reverberate back from the inside of your skull. He is a maddening presence and an unwelcome guest, but somehow you feel as though you deserve his company. 

Sometimes he breaks free. Or perhaps he convinces you to let him out. Who knows, perhaps you think he’ll quit his screaming if you let him out of his cell. But that only makes things worse: he roams around your mind a silent stalker and begins to claim things as his. He grabs memories. He grabs skills. He grabs dreams (those that have yet to be realized and the broken ones). He gathers his case against you. He hurls memories at you to prove what he says he knows about you. He attempts to put you into the prison you held him in. And in all this you have nothing to say, because you know that he is right. 

So what do you do in this? What happens when an aberrant state of mind leads an insurrection against you in your own mind? How can you fight back? More than that, how can you fight back when the will to fight cannot be mustered? When depression takes your strength and makes it his own? What do you do when he’s backing you into the dungeon shouting, “All hope is lost!” and you are nodding in silent agreement?

“…they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony…” -Revelation 12:11

A reminder. A thought that depression cannot touch. One that oddly enough meets you at the door of the dungeon as you are being flung in. The grace of God incarnate in your mind. The remembrance of the love of Christ. The very thing depression would not bring up, but ironically leads you to in his insurrection. As Christ stands there with me He takes from depression the things that he claimed from me and gives them back to me. “I give you back your memories cleansed by my hand. Your dreams, even the broken ones, too. Your skills are now yours as is the whole of your mind. The accusations I keep for myself.” And then Christ takes the aberrant voice and leads him back into the dungeon. “Just call upon Me when he shouts again. I will remind you where the guilt and shame go.”

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” -Romans 5:1-8

It is easy to forget, but becomes less so with each failed coup inside my mind. 

I Have a Name

“…and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” -Revelation 2:17
In my experience, there are seasons of dragging my name through muck. I get down on myself. I get depressed. I shout insults at the mirror and say things I’d be afraid of anyone telling me. I remember loss and failure and they somehow eclipse any good in my life. These are heavy seasons, dark and lonely and not easily explained. They are times of waiting, as for a harvest in the midst of a famine. But the scant fruits I reap during these famines are sweeter and more satisfying than those gathered at the peak of life, because they sustain me and give me hope even when my own mind is against me. 
I remembered this verse while in the midst of seemingly futile thoughts and I wondered at it. And then I saw its necessity and its grace. 
I recall how many insults I’ve hurled at myself and the corrupt thoughts harbored by a hurting mind. How could my identity ever be made clean? How could I ever take back the nasty thoughts and the experiences that produced them? How could I ever scrub my name clean of all that it has picked up and all it has yet to encounter?
The Lord will give me a new name. One that no one knows, not even myself as of yet. And that mystery is important. It is important because while it remains unknown it cannot be thought ill of or insulted by myself or anyone else. It will never have attached to it any of the stigma or consequence of sin. It is an innocent name. A blameless and righteous identity that will be known only to me and the One who will gift it to me. And who knows how this will be? Perhaps it will be written in a language known only to me and my Creator. Perhaps He will write it down in an alphabet crafted by my life experience which of course only I would know because it is unique to me. Perhaps it will be obvious to me when He gives it to me, but not now because the alphabet of my life still has yet to be completely written. And that is good reason to keep going. 
What is important is that this name will remain good and pure because no one but He and I will know it and His thoughts concerning it will only be good and pure, and how could I ever deviate from the only other Person Who knows me? Who would I point to that would have a different opinion, since no one else will have any recollection or knowledge of this name?
I know the identity behind this name is being revealed in me even now, even in these hard times. I know it, but I will not fully know it until the day my new name is given to me and the identity attached to it fully blossoms into maturity in the life that is to come. 
I trust this will happen. I trust the One Who is to give me this name, because even the name which I drag through the mud now, even that name is filled with His promise to me, for Zack means “Remembered by God.”

A Dance with Grief

Intro
I hesitate writing this. The immediate fear is that I’m just going too far with this death thing. Becoming kind of impulsive or obsessive about it. Dad always looked down on such obsessions, and I’d hate to become like one of “those people” (especially about him). But I just can’t get passed the thought that I’m not necessarily writing for him, but for my own well being, and if I am being impulsive or obsessive about his death then it must be because it is still on my mind. So it would seem to be too late: I am one of “those people”. I do not think, however, that this is such a bad place to be in since I find myself processing and working through thoughts and feelings. Writing has become therapeutic as I make odds and ends of my feelings and experiences. The obsession cannot be helped nor avoided, however, whether I choose to live with it constantly banging around my brain, or to actually face it, understand it, and come to terms with it is a choice completely within my power. So it has been with written words, my arena of choice, that I face this obsession. This opponent. Again. 

Over the past few years I’ve tried to deal with the grief of dad’s suicide in a few ways. One was to just get through it as quickly as possible. To force myself to just bulldoze my way through the process. I remember locking myself in the small house I was living in during the winter of 2014 and just attempting to cry. More often than not I would just get bored during the process and wind up slipping into anger rather than sobbing (little did I realize that that is a part of the process). Three years has shown that mourning is a process, not an event, and it moves at the pace of your settling into it and adapting to its being in your life. Another way I’ve attempted to deal with this is to lock the grief away or to shelve it and put it away from me. This I long considered to be the “mature” way to handle grief, because afterall you don’t want to attract attention to yourself, right? Or to make your friends uncomfortable? So you just have to downplay the chaos going on in your head and tell people you’re doing just fine. Grief has this funny way of seeping through locked doors and falling off of high bookshelves though. It is a sort of haunting that remains despite your best efforts. So it has seeped through even my most resolute mindsets to shut it out, and that’s really been for the best. Part of the process of grief is learning humility. The truth is is that grief turns you into a wreck and you need to let people in to give you balance and love. I’ve come to value and love my friends and family all the more through this process simply because they didn’t freak out over my brokenness, but instead insisted on loving and knowing me better. Such relationships have astounded, inspired and, perhaps most importantly, humbled me.  They wanted to be in my life even when I felt the most empty and useless. I’ve also attempted to solve the problem of grief as if it were a math problem or a combination lock. If only I could figure out WHY I’m still grieving then I could get past it. So I have flipped through memories and revisited old events and questioned every belief. I’ve had conversations to better understand what happened and more conversations about how I felt about them and other conversations asking how I should feel about them. And I’ve repeated the process (in my head and with my mom and with friends). In bitter laughter I’ve concluded that the reason I’m still grieving is because I lost my father. The combination got solved, but it’s not the combination to a lock or equation but rather a Rubik’s Cube. I’m left with a solution I already knew, but wound up just scrambling all of the associated feelings and memories about that event until I came back to the same answer. An exercise in futility, perhaps, but I don’t think it can be avoided. 

I want to write one more thing about losing my father. For me now and for me in the future. For anyone who might read this. This is the long term solution to grief. This illustration will not get rid of grief nor dissolve its power, but rather this approach allows you to live your life without the necessity or impulse to dodge or lock up grief (hopefully). To partner with grief. To cry when you need to and to laugh and smile and live without the guilt and pressure of having to hide it from grief. To dance with grief. 

A Ballroom
The mind has been equated to many things in art and literature. A library. A warehouse. A canvas. And so on. 
This particular illustration reveals the mind as a ballroom dance floor. This, of course, is not the “correct” view of understanding the mind, but it is the necessary view if you are to understand my illustration.
The floor is made up of memories. To dance upon a certain part of the floor is to linger upon a memory. 
There are many dancers who grace the ballroom aside from yourself, namely emotions. Emotions tend to dance with like emotions and therefore certain parts of the dance floor are characterized by one dominant emotion. This more often than not leads you to avoid certain parts of the dance floor causing them to turn dark and dank and strange. Likewise this leads you to overindulge in other parts of the dance floor, which leads to them becoming perhaps brighter and more pleasant than they ought to be, to a sickening degree even (if not to you than certainly to others). That is until grief has her dance. 
Music is thought and pondering on a given part of the dance floor. How the music plays is determined by in large by the emotions. Not all emotions dance to the same music, so of course the style and songs change as you go from one side of the ballroom to the other and therefore the way you think about and process various memories is determined by the emotions attached to them.  In large part you are almost stuck thinking the same way about certain memories and having the same types of thoughts and ideas and goals and fantasies because rethinking ideas or revisiting and reevaluating memories does not come naturally nor is it something we think needs to be done . Again, that is until grief has her dance.

A Note on Grief

I do not consider grief to be an emotion. In my experience, grief has presented itself more like a form of chaos or disruption. Perhaps an even better way to view grief is as a rogue memory that shoves its way to the forefront of your attention. Something that should perhaps be a part of the dance floor, but somehow has the cognizance to move around the ballroom because within it is encapsulated moments that were once considered positive and moments that are considered negative (so for example, in my case my father occupied a hugely positive space in my mind and memories and many of my thoughts about him were overtly bent toward maintaining and strengthening our bond. When he killed himself these memories and thoughts and goals and dreams were suddenly bound to hugely negative thoughts and concerns and fears, which I would normally try to avoid or shove into a deep, dark corner of my mind, but which I could not because my father had become such a large part of my positive thinking processes). It is a reckoning of sorts. It demands the mind to re-sort emotions and to re-think memories in an attempt to make sense of the paradox of the positive past with the tragic present. 

Grief’s Dance
I am not a fan of dancing. 
Ok, I take that back. The more appropriate thing to say is that I’m not a fan of dancing just for the sake of dancing. Dancing is a wonderful thing with the right partner. I’ve had lots of fun dancing, but it was not for the dancing that I had fun. But with the wrong partner dancing is just, well, painful and awkward. An uncoordinated mess during which you’re begging the song to just end. And you have the fear in the back of your mind that your partner will want to dance again. 
When grief approaches you on the ballroom floor of your mind it is a wretched sight. She is the partner you dread having. She looks awful. She smells awful. She lacks grace and beauty and eloquence. You scream at her to leave you alone and find someone else to bother. You attempt to find another partner for yourself but no one else will have you. You avoid it as long as possible, but it is unavoidable: this next dance is her’s. 
She leads as you do everything in your power to pull away from her or give her any idea that you are having a good time and want to continue. You don’t talk to her. You avoid eye contact. You are rude. You are everything you shouldn’t be to a dance partner because, after all, this is not someone you want to dance with. You hate her. 

When it begins, you dance where you were most comfortable dancing. And that part of the floor is ruined by your estimation of things. Happy emotions flee from her presence and look on in shock as the music changes on the dance floor and new emotions flood in to dance upon memories they never dared dance on before. It is enraging to see bright parts of the dance floor suddenly turn morose. The suddenness of the change turns your face stony and unsure of the stability of any memory. 
After a while you steal cursory glances at her, more because you want to know how ugly she has to be in order for all happiness to flee from her.  You see that her makeup is runny and her hair is unkempt. Her dress is gray and frayed. She wears a deep frown. She is grief to a T. And yet she is undeniably familiar- encapsulating perhaps even a person you may have wanted to dance with in a different time. This familiarity blended with her overall glum presence breeds contempt for her and for yourself.   And you hate this dance all the more. 
The dance leads you everywhere across the ballroom of memory, scattering emotions and shifting the thought of music on various parts of the floor, though at times you prevent her from going to certain parts of the floor. She smiles as you at last participate in some way in the dance and that is enraging. You feel manipulated by her. It is as if she threatens you with the very idea of going to the dark places of the floor in order for you to participate in the dance. It is frightening that she has such control over you and that you can’t figure out how she got it or how to take it away from her. 
In time you grow sort of accustomed to your partner and the chaos she has seemingly caused on the dance floor. You give into the thought that you have no control over this dance and even less control than you thought over your own mind. So you begin to listen to what she has to say in the hopes that she has some sort of relief to the chaos. She whispers that it is ok that you don’t want to dance, but that you have to. Shocked at her understanding you look at her and see that she no longer wears a frown, but rather a compassionate sort of smile. As she repeats herself it becomes easier to look her in the face. Her makeup is gone- washed away by the deluge of tears that has swept across her face during the course of the dance. Tears which you assume were cause by your rejection of her. She no longer cries, but her eyes are watery, as if she could cry at any moment. 
You hate to admit it but you find yourself trusting her as a partner. Not because you like her or what her presence has caused, but because you know she has no delusions of your liking her or wanting to dance with her for longer than necessary. So you resolve to actually dance. You hate this, but nevertheless find yourself more cooperative in following her lead as you dance. 
She leads you to parts of the ballroom that frighten you. Places where you are afraid to be seen with her because in your pride you determined that the dark parts of the dance floor would be dealt with by you and you alone, although if you were honest with yourself you would admit that you would be just as fine not ever entering those spaces and dealing with the music of those memories. But now you must dance in these dark spaces with these low emotions and with her, the seemingly lowest of emotions. It feels as though you are relegating your life to the sadness that encompasses this part of the ballroom. She knows you are ashamed of her, but she does not show any sign of that hurting her. And that leads to your trusting her more. More than that you are intrigued by her and wonder her true motives. 
The dance goes on and on although the music stops sometimes and you separate from your partner, though at any moment she may approach and pick it right back up again. Sometimes it starts out the same way as it did in the beginning with the struggle and the hatred, but after each time it becomes easier to slip back into dancing. As time passes the ballroom floor becomes more diverse because of her. Happy emotions will not be relegated to the sidelines forever, and over time you find them dancing alongside emotions you normally would not find them with or in memories they would usually not wander over to. With her, struggling over memories becomes pondering over memories and avoiding emotions becomes facing them. And then you are reminiscing over memories and linking them to new emotions which produces new thoughts. She leads you to pass through the sorrow or to remember happy memories that can never be again or to dance through imaginings that will never come to be. To confront the fear and regret of memory, while simultaneously forcing you to see hope beyond the limitations you had bound it to in times before. To believe in the goodness of life despite the sorrow associated with it. To treasure your experiences rather than to trash or forget them. This new mingling of emotions produces new thoughts of appreciation and gratefulness along with new passions.
Each time you see her she changes. As your thoughts about her motives develop, her appearance becomes more beautiful. This is not because she necessarily changes in nature- she is still an agent of chaos- but because you realize that she dances this dance for you, not herself. It was all for you. Her initial appearance expressed the ugliness the moment caused to your mind and memories. Her bad makeup, the face you showed the world as you hid your pain from it. Her tattered dress, your disconnectedness from your own identity. Her stench, the obviousness of your sorrow to everyone around you and your need to be cleansed and refreshed. Her tears were not cried over your rejection, but rather over your loss. And as you dance with her the pain of loss revitalizes those tears and washes away the ugliness of sadness with the beauty of love. Grief is love expressed in loss. And she is a most lovely partner as the sadness about her changes into the beauty of remembering lost love. As you dance, the dimness of memory’s ballroom flares in a way it never did before as you remember and feel love in the uniqueness of loss. She is beautiful and singular in her devotion to you. 
You find that you desire her presence on specific parts of the dance floor at specific times. Sometimes she accommodates you and other times she insists upon dancing elsewhere or on another occasion. In either case, it becomes easier for you to lead in the dance as the music continues and she smiles as you take an interest in being with her. And her smile is lovely and well worth the pain of seeing. You cry at it. And she wipes away your tears with soft hands and a compassionate smile. She dances on with you without shame. 

And the Music Goes On

This was not a perfect illustration, but few are. I did not give any new or juicy information so to speak concerning my father’s death, because I already have laid out as much as I am willing to put out on the Internet in prior posts (My Heart Christ’s Battlefield, Light Beyond the Mountain of Shadow, A Jewel in the Dark, The Rage in the Cage, and Emotional Constipation to name a few). I wanted more to illustrate what this process has been like inside of my head. How new thoughts have formed by pondering memories while experiencing different emotional ranges (indeed I have written in great detail concerning these thoughts). How sorrow and joy have learned to commingle and how grief has helped me to claim back my memories and dreams. This I believe was God’s purpose for my grief and indeed this is how I want to proceed in my grieving.

That’s a hard thing to say, “[Proceed] in my grieving.” Of course, I don’t want to grieve anymore, but I’ve come to terms with the reality of the situation. This was not easy to write. The concept of this analogy came to me last year while writing Emotional Constipation, but the mechanations behind it have been going for years now. It’s hard to believe that it’s been years since I last saw my father alive. I guess I wanted to just offer some hope in writing this: you can be joyful and sad at the same time, or rather in time you can learn to be. These emotions are not mutually exclusive to one another and you do not have to define your entire being by them. That is what grief taught me. 

Grief can be your worst enemy or your most reliable ally in your process of mourning, but you have to choose. You can lock up the memories and thoughts and ideas that you associate with grief (and believe me, in time you can distill these) and avoid them, or you can endure the pain of keeping them and learn how to process and think differently about pain and loss. I did not want to be afraid of my own mind. I want to be able to wander around the corridors of my memories and to freely think and process through them, even if in the process I turn a corner and run into grief, ready to dance. I find the pain of the freedom worth it. Not pleasurable, but a cost I am willing to endure to not be afraid of my own mind.

I think grief is a process our mind uses to keep us from going insane when something tragic occurs. Our mind cannot live as if nothing happened, and yet it must go on living despite the tradgey. Grief confronts us with the dreadfulness of the event and gets our minds thinking about how to deal with it and how to move forward in our own lives. The alternative is to live out of touch with reality or to completely shut oneself away from reality in an attempt to defend memories and emotions you consider to be more precious than living itself. To live as madmen either without a care in the world because reality cannot effect it, or with cares that overwhelm your very will to live. These are certainly options, but I would not have myself be stripped of my hold on reality and my ability to live.

 I have written about the topic of my dad’s death for three years now, and I do believe I have reached the end of what is suitable to publish. I can talk freely about it now and the implications it has made upon my life. I am grateful though I bear it with tears sometimes. I hope my writings on this topic have been a blessing to all who have read them and to all who may yet read them. 

It was a Wednesday

It was a Wednesday three years ago today. The day before you took your life. 

I know this is a fruitless endeavor, but I find myself naturally drifting back to that day, to my memory of that day, to rehearse what I can of it. Did I do everything I could to stop you?

It was cold that week, at least in Tallahassee it was. The day started in the 20s and didn’t get much warmer than there. My little house didn’t warm very well or effectively; it was always damp. I was constantly cold, I remember that. I didn’t call that day because taking my hand out of my coat pocket in order to bring a phone to my ear would have been painful. 

I had work during the day. I volunteered with highschoolers that evening.  

I even checked my Facebook history for that day. I shared a couple of recipes and posted one of those stupid observations I’m want to do. I want to comment on my posts for that day:

“CALL YOUR FATHER INSTEAD OF WASTING TIME POSTING THESE STUPID POSTS! MAYBE YOU CAN STOP HIM!”

But I don’t. I know it won’t change my actions for that day. I know it will only make me feel worse. 

I wonder what you were doing that day. Did you already know that you were going to do it, or was it an idea that you were merely toying with? If I did call you back then and begged you not to do it, would you have listened? Would you have cried? Would you have denied it? Would you have done it sooner? Would you have thought I was crazy, because it was not even on your mind on this day three years ago?

Could I have stopped you?

It’s windy in Tallahassee today. I sit on my porch and await the storm that pushes the wind toward me. I mull over unanswered and unanswerable questions, not really expecting any answers, but perhaps hoping to run out of questions (or perhaps just the need to keep asking questions).  Today is Sunday and I am three years too late.

Going on an Adventure

I remember growing up my dad would get an itch to take me somewhere. He’d say something to the effect of, “Zack, you want to go on an adventure?” And no matter what response I would give we would be going on that adventure.

Now mind you these weren’t epics, so to speak. We didn’t scale Everest or backpack across the USA or even go camping in the Everglades. These were “local adventures”. Kinda like sight-seeing with an expert tour guide (I, of course, would be the tourist in these little outings). If Miami were hostile territory (well, I guess it is kinda), my dad would be the guy you’d want to get you outta there…on foot.

I think he called them “adventures” because of just how much walking we’d have to do just to get to our destination. Dad was legally blind, so he was not permitted to own or drive a car. Bad as his eyesight was, however, he could see well enough to walk around, read, watch movies and throw things at me. And he refused the charity the state and Feds offered to him on his own self-proclaimed claim that he wasn’t really blind, EXCEPT for his magic bus pass that let him get on any public transit vehicle without charge (I have distinct memories of my dad strolling through the handicapped door (complete with wheelchair symbol) that led to the MetroRail platform with this ID card/pass in his mouth ready to flash it at any guard who would attempt to make him go through the coin-activated turnstiles). So our adventures would usually involve a decent walk to the bus stop from our neighborhood and after that a bus ride to the MetroRail Station and then a train ride to the destination of dad’s choosing and then more walking (times two, of course, because we had to come back home, right?). Now, I couldn’t ride the bus for free, but luckily he would cover my travel cost (actually he covered those bus fares and MetroRail costs for quite some time, even into highschool and college when I would work downtown during the summers).

I always complained about going on these little excursions. As a young adult, I never had much grace for myself as a kid, and simply thought I didn’t want to go ’cause I was a little fat kid who didn’t want to leave the couch. That might be partially true, but I think it’s kind of an unfair assessment on my part. Dad would always defend his memory of me as a child whenever I would tear that child down as a teenager and young adult. “You were a child, Zack, stop being so hard on yourself! I thought you were adorable!” I think what’s fair to say is that it seemed like a lot of effort and I didn’t know what the purpose of the adventures were for aside from getting me out of the house.  That is, until we got to where we were going.

We went everywhere cool in Miami. Museums, mansions, parks and bays. We rode on water taxis and ate at cool locations. He took me to basketball games and the circus.

I’m very grateful for the memories of these adventures. Sometimes his temper would flare when he became frustrated with my complaining over all the walking we had to do. Sometimes the bus would be overcrowded or excessively late. Sometimes the train was full of idiots or a semi-deranged individual. Sometimes the heat of Miami’s sun was unbearable in the miles we walked. But these were quality times I got to spend with him that I’ll have etched into my memory forever.

I think my dad was ashamed over his inability to drive and he wanted to prove that he could do things with me that normally-sighted fathers could do. I know he felt bad that he and my mom’s visual disabilities prevented them from doing things for me that seem rather routine to other parents, and that these disabilities limited what activities I could participate in. I wish I could tell him he has nothing to be ashamed of and that he did fine. He introduced me to culture and the arts and history and he did so in a unique way. And he spent time with me. He loved me. If only I knew better back then. But I’m grateful I know now.

A Phone Call Away

I’ve been struggling with a profound sense of loneliness as of late. Not just loneliness, but also a sort of discontentment and dissatisfaction and even anger. I’ve kept it mostly to myself, but I’ve shared little bits and pieces of it with various friends. I don’t like being in this place. 

The past few weeks my church has been challenging the congregation on our prayer life. Our time spent with God. Not just quantity of time spent with Him, but quality and genuine and real sort of time spent with Him. Truth be told I’ve always had a difficult time having a consistent prayer time with Him. When I’m with others, I find it easy to pray, almost as if I’m piggybacking into a party through other invited guests. By myself, however, I find I lack the will to pray. Laziness isn’t the appropriate word for why, though surely the want to do something easier certainly comes into play. It’s almost as if opening up to Him were the equivalent of lifting a bolder straight over my head. I can recall times trying to pray and wondering if He were even listening, and then I’d resign myself to what I knew from Scripture and simply say, “At least I tried.” and check that off the list of my Christian duties, which, of course, is the completely wrong attitude and view to have. 

I know He listens. I have felt His presence in dark times and I have felt His comfort and His steady hand. But these times were hard and so perhaps I have equated closeness with God with heaviness of life. As if I gotta gather enough of a weight before I can have a proper audience with Him. Which is ridiculous. About as ridiculous as one who says they have to clean up their life a bit before they can give it to Jesus. But that’s almost the thought. Am I wasting both of our times if I come with trivial matters? This stems from my old view of the Lord as a sort of bureaucrat. In younger days this view made me feel useless to and unwanted by Him. It would seem as though since my walk has progressed with the Lord that this view has reclassified itself into a much more subtle, yet none-the-less vile, thought: you are accepted, Zack, but your thoughts and requests are trivial. They will fall on deaf ears as your Father Who knows better than you will instead give you what you need and guide you where you need to go. No need to communicate these pithy matters to Him. I’m just now seeing this. 

So where am I going with this? I started talking about loneliness and discontented-ness and then I transitioned with my issues with prayer. This isn’t a garbled mess, I promise you, but rather this thought came from a rather moving heart to heart with God. 

January 24th will mark three years since my dad passed away. There are a lot of ideas and struggles that   orbit that event that I have written about, but something I haven’t really thought of or written about is just how often I used to talk to him. I called him every day. Every single day. I loved talking to him.  Even if we had a heated argument over the phone he or I would always call the other person back after a little while. We talked about almost everything, and he was my key source for information and advice. Whenever I needed him he would pick up the phone, or call me back soon after missing my call. As far away as he was from me, he was always just a phone call away. 

And now three years have transpired since I last talked to him. That’s a big part of life that’s gone. I remember times where I would find myself with nothing pressing to get to, and almost automatically and instinctively picking up the phone to call him just to be with him…just to be with him. I didn’t have to need anything or have anything urgent to talk about- he was happy just to have me on the phone. And that connection is gone now. For three years. That’s over a thousand phone calls that haven’t happened because he is dead. That’s questions about life and advice and knowledge that have not been answered, and perhaps worse yet, were never asked. Quality time catching up on life and events and victories and jokes that did not happen. I’m seeing it now as quite a hole. A really big hole I find myself standing in the middle of with no one to really pass it onto or share with. 

I guess subconsciously I’ve just tried to fill the hole with other things. Or maybe just distract myself from it with other things. Afterall I’m a homeowner now and I have a good job and good friends and real responsibilities…still there’s this big hole. 

No one can replace my father, and perhaps that’s the thing that’s disappointing and angering. All the stuff of life I accumulate I can no longer share with and process over with him. I can’t ask his advice. I can’t make him laugh. I got nothing that can replicate what I had with him. 

But now I see the Lord calling my attention to that fact that He is my Father, and He is more than willing (eager even) to take the spot that my dad had. He confronts me: “How could you think I wouldn’t care? If your dad, as flawed as he was, looked forward to just hearing from you, than what makes you think I don’t? Zack, I want that time you spent with him. I want you to bring me all of your wants and desires and joys and victories and your heart aches and pains and everything. I’ll fill that hole. I promise.”

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” -Matthew 7:11