Feel things

What is it when we feel things? What do they mean? What do they tell us? What can we learn that might help us not die?

Recently I lost one of the most significant male role models in my life. But really I lost him seven years ago when I became divorced and I was expelled from the family of my ex. Shunned.

And in an instant this man who had become over the years the father that my own father had never been was ripped from me. Gone. Just gone.

There were a few brief moments of connection. I reached out to him here and there, but they were all temporary and ethereal. Those connections were based on a past that didn’t exist.

A few days ago it was shared with me, as we remembered his passing, that he missed me. That he had expressed this. And fortunately I was inebriated, for otherwise I might have cast myself into a fire in my grief. And I imagined that perhaps had I been there I might have saved him from his insanity. I might have saved the family from the consummation of the fire. Silly me.

But his absence these seven years? Sorely noted. It was not my desire. Far from it. And I share this now because it gnaws at me.

He was far from perfect. Just as my birth father. Far from it. But over a span of nearly thirty years i came to look to him for so much. 

His departure is a reminder.

I remember a simpler time. Simpler at so many levels. It is a warning to any that would heed it. Our time is fleeting. 

I’m not suggesting a different end. Rather I suggest that had I known… had I known I would have seized him and grabbed him and squeezed him with all of my might…

I will never seize you and grab you and squeeze you with all of my might again

And it is an unbearable sadness that envelops me knowing that you are gone from me, and I never told you….

Soon. Soon it will be my departure. And my departure perhaps will summon feelings such as these in another. I cannot say.

I will say only this. I love you all. I have felt so much. I have felt the cold. I have drawn in the scents. I have tingled. I have reveled. I have sweltered in the heat and humid. I have roughly caressed. 

I apologize for the hubris that marked my days.

My failures are my own. And to the extent that he missed me, well, I own that too. I should have been there these past several years. 

So what is my point? 

Think carefully. What is most important? Are you sure? Are you really sure?

And is the individual experience the most critical one?