Joy Express

Today would have been my nephew’s 21st birthday.  He died almost 6 months ago. Six hours after my father died.  Joel died after being hit by a car.  Dad died of  cancer.  Joel was 20.  Dad was 70.

I know a lot.  I know a lot about a few specific things.  David knows a lot.  He knows a lot about a lot of things.

What I didn’t know was just how hard living with your choices and decisions can be. 

I also didn’t know how amazing the feeling of Freedom would be.

I am free of all the constraints and shackles I have worn for 45 years of life.

It may not be the day to talk about it, given Joel’s birthday, but I am grateful that Joel and Dad ‘went’ together.  I am comforted by the scene in my mind which had a battered and crippled young man hobbling through into the light while supporting, and being supported by, an old man at the end of his life.  I like the harmony of that image.

Dad is now free.  Free of the challenges of living with a body which had been turned inside out and upside down after his cancer operation several years earlier.  He is in the ‘spirit’ world, fit and healthy ~ well, almost.    He’s looking out for his grandson, who is also healing and being healed. 

And, I am Free, too.

Thank God!

I am Free from distress and anxiety and anger and sadness and being controlled.  I am Free from feeling unsafe. My adult life has been filled with stuff, all connected to the choices and decisions I have made given the choices and decisions dad made with regards to me, and himself.  I don’t miss him at all.  His physical presence in my lifetime was all about controlling me, about me behaving in a way that he saw as appropriate.  It was about ‘do as I say’ rather than ‘do as I do’.

I feel like a helium balloon, floating on a long, long string.  It’s Blissful.  I am able to make choices and decisions which are All Mine.  They are not coloured by dad …

That sense of Freedom is so, so precious to me.  I am very grateful that Dad has died.  I am very grateful for the learning and awareness I have received as a result.  We have a much better relationship now.  I think of him often.  I remember the things he taught me.  And, I appreciate all those things which were ‘wrong’ about me (in Dad’s eyes) because they have made me who I am today.  I am Grateful because I Love Who I Am and I Love Where I Am At in my life.

It only took 45 years. 

And, finally, I am Free.