Walking My Father Home pt.5

Walking My Father Home pt.1 →
Walking My Father Home pt.2 →
Walking My Father Home pt.3 →
Walking My Father Home pt.4 →

It’s been almost four months since my father transitioned out of his physical body. I’m learning a lot about the grieving process. It’s not a moment or a chapter, it’s a new relationship with life.

I refer to death as a transition because I understand that while the physical body dies, our soul, our essence continues. It is a transition from form to formlessness. Buddhists refer to this as “dropping the body”, with the understanding that the person, the soul, is then freed into formlessness.

I continually experience my father’s presence, when I choose to tune into it. It’s certainly not the same, and I miss him so much, but I do recognize that he’s with me in a new way, now. And I’m growing increasingly grateful for his guidance and presence with me every day.

It’s an interesting feeling to recognize that I spent 46 years with my father in his physical form. Now, out of the blue, I’m faced with creating a new relationship with a new version of my father. He’s not the same. Nor am I.

I’ve grown more comfortable just talking to him out loud or in my mind. I often feel as though I’m in a full-on conversation with him. And I do feel he hears me, responds, and offers his guidance. The more I tune into him, the more I experience his presence.

I also realize that it is a choice to tune into his “frequency”, or not. I know I can lose him if I allow it. So I’ve begun to nurture this new relationship with him just as I did the one before. All relationships need our awareness and attention.

I’m just as devoted to our relationship now as I was prior to his transition. As I embrace this new relationship, I feel Dad working through me more each day. I feel his guidance in my writing and in my “way of being” as a father, guide, friend, and leader.

I experience my father as being right by my side, helping me sort out problems and manifest the future of my dreams. I’m working on it with him, just as I did before. He’s still my Chief Strategist, and my father, my guide.

I’m reading his book, An Understanding Heart, every morning. It’s profound how in tune each short chapter is with my present journey. I feel him guiding me each step of the way, almost as if he’d thoughtfully planned it all out.

I’ve devoted myself to my vision and to stepping out in faith with each giant leap, just as I watched him do time after time. He’s always encouraged and inspired me to do the same. His greatest dream is that my mother and all of us kids would believe in ourselves, follow our dreams, and “sour like eagles”.

There is a Hawaiian concept called, “kuleana”. It’s a role or responsibility you are honored to be blessed with. It’s something you are called to do that you devote yourself to. It’s not a burden, it’s a gift of honor. 

I feel it is my kuliana to follow my dreams and continue my self-actualization path that Dad and I were so committed to together. It’s not how I’d imagined us doing this, but I am grateful for our new journey together.

Dad’s transition wasn’t just his own, it was for all of us. Each of us, my mother, sister, brother, and I, are in the midst of reinventing ourselves. None of us wants to go “back to normal” or any sense of that. We are allowing this transition to move us and evolve us into who we were created to be.

It feels like that understanding gives it all more meaning. Dad’s transition incited all of this. We’re making these shifts because of our experience of losing the form of him that we knew. Now we’re faced with a new reality that has catapulted us into a deeper, more inspired way of being.

Dad’s transition was for all of us. Not just our family, but all the people touched not only by his life, but also his death. So many people have been inspired to follow through with their dreams in his honor. I know that’s what he wants, from all of us. Still.

Transitions like this aren’t contained to the person that dies. Everyone around the person is affected. And often, the journey is much more gruesome than what we experienced with Dad’s rather graceful transition. But there is always medicine in that journey if we choose to accept it.

Since this all began with Dad back in December, I’ve been saying, “This is a moment I want to steward well”. I’m committed to that. And I’m committed to staying attuned to Dad and his guidance, and to continually thanking him for his influence and devotion in my life.

Together, we have transitioned into a new relationship. A new way of being. This experience is teaching me a lot about my relationship with change and it’s affecting every aspect of my perspective. I see the world differently now.

My father and I both loved Wayne Dyer’s, “I Can See Clearly Now” book. And I certainly feel that my vision is clearer today than ever before. I feel a confidence and sense of wu wei (effortless action) that I was not able to access before. I feel inspired and guided in my thoughts and actions.

This is how I experience my father now. It’s as if we graduated out of one stage of our relationship and into a new one. And this one involves both of us going through rather dramatic state changes. Though Dad’s transition was clearly more obvious, I am not the same man I was before all of this, either. 

My journey as his Death Doula was profoundly life-changing. The experience of being so intimately woven into the death of my father is beyond my words. My time away (from work) with him resulted in a loss of all my income and forced a (now very welcomed) shift in my vocation. It has impacted my children and their mother greatly. We’ve been in what I call “the churn”.

I recently had a full-on emotional breakdown in the car while driving my kids to school. A song came on that we sang to Dad in his last few days. I didn’t know I still had all of that sorrow inside me. But it flowed. I shook. I couldn’t breathe.

I watched a film a few weeks ago where the character said, “A man doesn’t become a man until he loses his father”. Oh…I feel that so much. In that moment of anguish, as I sat with my children in the car, I felt the immense weight of knowing I’ll never hug him again or feel the magnitude of passion, joy, and love that radiated from him in the same way.

I felt the finality of it all. I often feel such deep sorrow that he won’t be here to see me become a man and manifest my dreams for my family. My heart aches at the thought of knowing my children don’t get to experience more of him as they grow older. I know he’s here with me in this new way, but it’s not the same. And that realization is part of my transition, into a new way of being.

But I got through my moment, and I tuned into him even more. I don’t want to tune him out so I can avoid the pain of the loss of him. I want to lean into the sorrow, feel it deeply, and embrace a new relationship with him. And that means I have to face the waves of paralyzing emotions that sometimes come with that, knowing they are stepping stones to my healing.

Ram Das says, “Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”. Dad was enamored with Ram Das, especially towards the end. He was one of our guides on Dad’s path Home.

I’ve learned to embrace this perspective of suffering. I see everything that causes me to suffer as an opportunity to allow that sandpaper to refine me, rather than weaken or destroy me. I see purpose in it all. Dad taught me that. He lived it.

We are defined largely by how we navigate transitions in life. And each one is interconnected to us all. We can see them as for, or against us. They can destroy us or give us wings and make us brave.

Dad and I are still on our journey together. I have so much more to learn from him. And he still has so much more love to shine on me. I feel it. And I’m grateful to receive it.

Mahalo,
Jared

Receive updates in your inbox.
Subscribe →

Visit my website.
JaredAngaza.com →

Work together.
Strategy & Brand Identity →
Wellbeing & Spiritual Path →
Philanthropy & Activism →
Sacred Parenting Path →