Monday #41: Father’s Day

I’m celebrating Father’s Day two Sundays early this year. I bring you this post from a bedside vigil I’ve been sharing with my mother and my sister. My father, pictured here with me just four weeks ago in what would be our last photograph together, was rushed to the hospital this past Thursday. With conditions that were not only irreversible but worsening, he was removed from all life support on Saturday morning as per his wishes.

If you have ever spent the hours watching over someone who is on their way to the next journey, you know there are many things to say, many tears to be shed, many stories to be told and many emotions to be navigated. It is a challenge, at this moment, to even attempt to articulate the importance of this man in my life… he has been my dad, my mentor, my confidant, my spiritual teacher, one of my best and most trusted friends, and, in many ways, my soulmate as an artist. The things I will miss with his departure from this life are too numerous for me to even understand right now and the ache in my heart is deep and intense.

This will also be my last post at 52 Mondays. While, I didn’t intend to announce these two things at once, it seems appropriate in a way considering that my dad was always my biggest fan here. Many of the posts, in fact, came directly from long, philosophical phone conversations my dad and I had over the almost four years I’ve been keeping this blog and, often, he would be the first to read and comment. As I posted last week, I have a new website (www.darsworld.com) and, in time, I will add a blog-ish section but I’ve decided that right now I need to move forward with some other parts of my life as an artist and put this on hold for a bit. It has not been an easy decision.

Thank you all for being a part of this experiment, for your beautiful comments and emails, and for all the ways you’ve told me you’ve been inspired, motivated or moved to thoughtfulness by my posts. I have grown so much as a human and a writer by keeping this blog and I am so grateful to you, my readers, for being a part of this. I have enjoyed becoming a blogger with you all.

I will leave the 52 Mondays blog up “forever,” whatever that means in cyberspace, and I will post any announcements about any new blog-ish thing here when it happens. Until then, I am wishing you all many more marvelous Mondays.

And as I spend these days beside one of the best human beings I have ever had the privilege to know and love, praying and hoping for his passage to be swift and painless, I will say this to you: Be kind. Always be kind to one another. Tell each other those important things when you feel them. Savor the little moments that, in our busy and hectic lives, are tempting to not notice. They will be the ones you cherish forever.

This photograph was taken just seconds before I left for the St. Louis airport to return to my life in New Jersey. The last thing my dad said to me is, “Dar, love is forever. It is the thing that remains.” Indeed.

Love, Peace & Blessings,

Dar