Let Go To Hold On And Live Stronger By Zain Beyond Words

Nothing, I repeat nothing can ever prepare one for the initial brunt of losing a parent, but what this particular impromptu moment eventually did was predispose me to the healing process and bring clarity to the value of relationships with my loved ones. Prior to receiving notification of my father’s impending transition, I felt his heart merge with mine, but I still questioned my own mortality. In a vulnerable state, I wondered whom would I become as I continued to long for my father’s existence to define mine. My memory bank initiated security updates while guilt swirled me around the possibilities of how I could’ve acted differently on his behalf. Humility denied me the option of praying this moment away. The verdict was in…No breech of contract specifying our life expectancy; life isn’t too short; it simply is. No guarantee kept the promise that my father or anyone else I adored would live until I acquiesced to their ancestral transition. The allotment of time to create meaningful experiences with our loved ones should sync with what we choose to invest in them. Yet, some people still feel cheated of their entitlement to make more memories or to ease their conscience. Perhaps because they haven’t lived enough in the moment to value it as their time.

As so many people affirmed for me at my father’s funeral, I found solace in knowing that I am his heart. Through this spiritual connection, he deemed it necessary to implant his heart into mine, not to die, but to become one with me so together, we could continue on. This kind of spiritual bond transcends picking up the phone and debating a bad ref call during the NBA playoffs or accompanying baby girl to the mechanic so she doesn’t get ripped off or cheering boisterously at graduations. It doesn’t necessitate lengthy flights or long awaited phone messages; it simply entails a heart receptive enough to embrace the spirit of our loved ones. Of course if we could, many of us would, appreciate one last time to make up for all the other times. But maybe, the time we had with our so-called lost ones, was precisely what we were supposed to have. Without contract security, we are drafted to bond and believe… believe that love doesn’t have the capacity to die, nor the humility to flourish inconspicuously. Unlike death, love is life giving and bold like my father, true like my best friend and proud like my brother. Love, in its’ purest form, is forever. Some people have their own interpretation about life after death. Some, in their indifference, deny the existence of ancestral realms and powers yet, they find the audacity to presume other’s entitlement to heaven.

Love, especially the kind we share with our parents, stays with us spiritually. From conception, parents begin depositing a little bit of themselves into us. They start with fundamental DNA, and then over time they nourish us by modeling what we must do to evolve into our best selves. By default, they sometimes set examples through their mistakes that also redirect us to push forward. Physically, we cling to sentimental items like my brother’s worn Yankee shirt, the wedding ring my father gave my mother, letters from my best friend, or the box full of tissues from my father’s hospital bedside, because to do otherwise seems like a betrayal or some sort of unacceptable finality. We hold on as if that’s all we have left, but in essence, we have the best of them in our forever. Now, when faced with a difficult decision, I hear and use my father’s voice of reason. I have a set of standards on how I should be treated, renewed by a look in my father’s eyes when he last cried, “I love you to death.” I watch my daughter take each brush stroke of paint to her canvas and see my father’s influence on her gallery of eclectic artistry displayed in her room or the magic of laughter when his only great-grandson smiles a larger than life toothless grin.

When random challenges of self-doubt creep in to distract me from my purpose, my father’s repeated stories of family history, (misinterpreted as dementia), remind me of the sense of self etched in my psyche. With the same fervor, I press rewind to imbue that self-worth in my own children. My father, never left me…he never will, just as I will never leave my two children. Every day that I tell them I love them, that I pray with and for them, that I show up as the parent they need when privileged to do so, that I value our rich African traditions, I deposit a little bit of myself in them. We all have the power to love others so deeply that we, in our season, gradually transplant a bit of ourselves within them. Just like my father became one with me, he and I, will become one with my children so they too can let go to hold on and live stronger.