In my essays and comments, I often say some form of: the pain pockets of grief have infinite depth, that these chasms can cause tears at a moments notice no matter how much time as elapsed, yet as the pockets drain, their infinite depth leaves room for infinite amounts of Light to enter our lives.
I receive messages in non-traditional ways quite often. Sometimes I spot that a response to a story of mine that I know is a channeled message from a guide or the soul of a dearly departed.
While my father is still alive, and all the facts of our relationship don't line up with those of you and your dad, I still identified with much of what you wrote--people can share emotions, feelings and reactions even when the facts are different. Learning to listen/read like that is one of the positive things I took away from my time in the rooms of AA. https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-self-healing-power-of-learning-to-identify-with-the-feelings-of-others-113f7697cf7a
Your words about your tears, "They shook my body, and my body shook my car, yet I didn’t care if anyone should see," just brought me back to another one and the most profound and life-altering of my memories/experiences from which my pain pockets of grief description emanates:
"I have never experienced such gut-wrenching sorrow as I did on that cold rainy street,...The wailing on the street was a sound that I did not know I could, nor how to, produce. It has emanated from me one or two times since. It cannot be purposely replicated. It is the sound of my soul crying out in pain. No, crying does not begin to describe it; it is the sound of unrestrained grief without any concern about the spectacle that I was for onlookers for an hour or more. Imagine having open heart surgery performed with a jagged and rusted scalpel without a drop of anesthesia; further imagine that it was at a frequency and wavelength that ripped a hole in space time and was heard across all eleven or more dimensions of the universe, not just then, but at every point in time. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding my pain and my grief. And my Love, my Love, my Love."
That describes the moment of my instanteous spiritual awakening upon my discovery of Lindsey's passing, the proximate cause of which was her naively thinking that her dealer wouldn't be selling fentanyl laced pills. He might have been naive too. I firmly believe that dates of death are predestined but how we live and how we die result from the intersection of so many choices made with our own free will and the free will of others, https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/matters-of-life-and-death-bc9752a36bff
Your essay includes so many great messages. These words of yours so many need to hear: "Doing things just like your parents or doing what your parents say isn’t always what is best for you, your family, your society, or for humanity. Because life isn’t just about following instructions or living out the dreams of others. Life is about maintaining balance in a constantly changing world. And that’s okay. The world changing keeps life interesting, and what you’re doing as an individual may be more important than what the rest of the world is doing." That reminds me of Emerson: "What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
I cited that Emerson quote in my poem and extensive discussion, https://marcus17043.medium.com/nonconformists-are-not-rebels-fdacdb633a58 subtitled But we are evolutionaries. My 6-stanza poem starts with this stanza:
"Question bedevils many, conform not conform
Are you asking right question, or fooled by labels
Act with authenticity, that’s path of Spirit
Die integrity intact, Sacred epitaph"
Arthur, your essay is wonderful on so many levels. Thankfully, Mehmet Slack-messaged the link to me. I'm publishing this comment to my profile, and I hope that my subscribers will click the auto-generated box link around the words of your story that I highlighted to launch my comment, and read your story.
