Category: Doing Something New

Having completed the letter to Natalie, I started to work on the one to my dad. This one hacked opened fresh wounds; removing the new skin was needed because the flesh didn’t close the cut with any precision. My brain / spirit had been put back together, but were held in place with the same sort of scripts that had held them together after Natalie’s death. The gratitude exercise was freeing and restarted the recovery journey.

When I saw Heather the next day I mentioned that I wasn’t sure we’d ever reconnect. This comment landed oddly. “Pat, you need to clear the space in your past to allow you to recreate a history that more closely resembles what you lived.” (Or something like that). “And it wasn’t completely selfless. If this [our relationship] is to be all that it can be, your past needs to be put away accurately.”

Hi Dad,

I know I said thank you and told you how grateful I was for having you as my father a few times during your last few weeks, but now that it’s a few months later, I’d like to let you know some other things.

The last 4 1/2 months have been a wild ride. February was a month to get wasted and forget, to feel victimized and create as much pain as I possibly could. But it was also the last month of the life I had been living because your death meant that I had no one else to blame for my place but myself and once I had to start blaming myself I found it a lot easier to change my behavior.

I miss you like crazy dad, but your dying meant that I could finally start my life. It’s weird to say, but your support and belief in me was something I used to keep me standing still. I’m grateful for it, very few other people in the world have supported and helped me the way you did, it made life less risky and dangerous and it allowed me to read, write, train and have fun knowing that nothing would ever go wrong. I don’t miss spending my time like that, but I’m really thankful that your life afforded me the opportunity to do it. It was a lot of fun, I expanded my mind and I was able to do a lot of things first hand that others can only read about or observe.

I’m grateful that you taught me how to love a partner! Your relationship with mom is special. She doesn’t cook very much anymore, she doesn’t see the point of it. I get that, I just didn’t realize that the two of your were so much a part of each others identity. I miss her cooking and knowing that there was an outlet for her love. I still think back on all the amazing food over the last 6 weeks of your life and am happy with the thought that maybe those will be the best meals I’ll ever eat. Anyway, I still like food and have stopped eating sugar for the most part because you warned me not to eat too much of it because I could end up like your dad. I’m kind of rambling because I’m sad. I haven’t been crying much recently. I burned a lot of it out and kind of blame the crying and grieving for why things didn’t go well with Sharyl. I sort of haven’t really opened up with Heather about you, and I think she’s noticed something incomplete about it. Heather is amazing dad, she’s everything I believed a partner could be, but never felt I deserved. All of this is to say thank you for modeling how to love your wife because I plan on being my version of those behaviors for Heather.

Thank you for being an amazing dad! I’ve told you this a bunch of times, but I have a greater understanding of it now. You were tolerant and understood things that you didn’t need to understand. You continued to learn so you would have stuff in common with Des and me and you deferred to us as experts when I noticed a lot of other peoples parents wouldn’t accept that their kids had developed skills that far exceeded anything their parents could possess. You never played small or made us feel bad for being the experts in these areas. You had a young spirit still, and you allowed us to mentor you. I know very feel parents like that and it is a quality that I am working hard
to maintain – that is to remain open to a changing world even when it becomes difficult to adjust to the newest trends and information.

Thank you for being an amazing friend to those you impacted. Your wake was a lot of fun, it was the kind of event you would have loved! 🙂 George from across the street told me and Des separately that he really liked you and that you never had a bad thing to say about anyone. It chocked me up because I am often a little quick to condemn others for their actions. Hearing him say it and then having Des tell me what that he had said it to him changed me. While I don’t really need people to say the same thing about me, I do need to mellow and accept others for doing the best they can. I remember you saying that to me once, that you do your best regardless of what comes of it. I didn’t really understand that so much until recently.

This is hard dad. I’m crying because I’d love to chat with you about how things have adjusted over the last few months, to tell you that I get it now and to talk to you about the world as I see it. The world is an amazing place full of wealth, possibilities and opportunities. It isn’t the scary place I was pretending it to be so I didn’t have to try. It is the world that you tackled so many years ago, the world that you taught Des and me to enjoy and the world that had you and mom move us to Canada, to give-up the familiar for the possibility of a better life.

Dad, you and mom were right, this is a better life than what Ireland would have been. Canada is amazing, the people are great, it’s a fantastic society and most of the people respect each-other. I will become everything that I have ever wanted here and that is because you created the possibility by giving-up what you were doing so Des and me could do what we wanted.

Thank you for showing me how to be a father. I may never become a dad and I’m okay with that, but if I do, I’ll be a lot like you. I’ll be honest and teach my children to be compassionate and loving. I’ll be fair to them, not a friend until they get old enough to know what a parent friend is, but not a jerk either.

Most of all dad I want to say thank you for putting up with me and helping me deal with the challenges life gave. For a lot of it I thought I knew better and didn’t really appreciate just what you knew and did. We did chat about this on the Saturday before you ended up in the hospital and I remember driving away thinking we were complete. I didn’t want it to be that way, I wanted there to be lots more chats, but under the circumstances, we both knew there wasn’t much time left. You were amazing, you were open and loving and you were my dad. You were so much of what I am and what I will become. I am so grateful for you. I’m half your dna and half your upbringing and I am 100% your son.

I knew we would eventually part ways, that life ends for everyone. You were open about this and you never avoided this reality. You were honest with me, even when it didn’t make me feel better. And I suppose that’s what I needed. You were trying to set me free from the demons of my past, from the meanings I created from the events that occurred. I not sure I ever thanked you for that part of it. Thank you.

I’m going to go now dad. I’ll close this with saying that I am becoming me for the first time in my life. I’m feeling the possibilities that I felt when we moved to Canada and I’m very aware that you have guided and helped me become so much through your life and in your death. Thank you for all of it.

No matter what becomes of life, I will always strive to be a man that you are proud of and to cultivate the compassion for other people that will have George say “you’re just like your father you are.”

I love you!
Pat

Heather seemed to tune into and then ask the question “what roll does Natalie’s death play in my life now?” I made a few jokes, effectively denied that there was any, accepted that there was some and should be and finally said that I wasn’t sure other than being sure that life was going to end some day. She continued to ask questions, tough questions that I didn’t want to answer and questions that made me feel like she didn’t want anything to do with me. But I trust her and tried to stay with the topic. It was hard because what I say about Natalie’s death is scripted, well rehearsed and automatic. Yet she continued and as I shrank, as I have made so many of my clients shrink, something began to occur.

When I realized that no matter what happened between Heather and me, I needed to clear the space in my past of these stories. She encouraged me to write a letter to Natalie and one to my father explaining the things I was grateful for having learned because of them. Below is the letter to Natalie.

Dear Natalie,

I am writing you this letter to let you know how grateful I am to have been in your life and for all of the experiences that our life together brought.

You were my first real girl friend so much of what I know about passionate love came from our time together. You gave so purely to me and you always talked about our relationship and our future in a way that made me feel amazing; the things is, I didn’t realize just how amazing that was at the time. There were times when I took you and your heart for granted because I believed love was easy and finding someone who was capable of giving it so freely wouldn’t be difficult. It has taken me a very long time to reach the same level of connection with anyone else. Now that I’m older and can see things more clearly I want to say thank you for sharing your love with me in a way that let me know that I was worth it.

I need to say thank you for being loyal, supportive and standing beside me when I needed to make the tough decisions. When I didn’t get to be a TA during my first year at Brock, you never made me feel bad about it, in fact, you explained why I didn’t get the job perfectly and I still use this description when coaching others about their view of a failure to get an opportunity. When I made the decision to overload my schedule and take on more classes, you stood beside me, proud that I was being fearless in my pursuit of academic success. You never made me choose between going out and having fun or doing my school work and you celebrated my good marks with me. Thank you for believing in my dream of getting a masters degree, a PhD and becoming a professor.

Okay, the things you may not know anything about.

I need to say thank you for the experiences that your death brought into my life. Some of these were really hard to live through and I made some potential limiting choices as a result of the thoughts and stories I told myself about them, but now that we’re almost 2 decades on, I’m able to see how they were neither right or wrong and were simply a part of my journey. I’m growing more confident that the stories I told myself were exactly the opposite of how the world is or was, so here you go.

I’m grateful for the sense of loss that I experienced because of you dying. There was a big hole left, while mostly a narrative, it came to represent what can happen when someone is gone. Leigh once told me that I felt as bad as I did because I loved you as much as I did, and I get that. People are important and I will always remember this because you left my life and the world so completely. Knowing this allowed me to connect with people in a way that has added so much value to my experience here and I think it has been useful to others. I learned to listen better because you never know when you are having your last conversation with someone. And everyone will always have their last conversation with us.

I’m grateful for the sense of meaninglessness in life that your death showed me because it allowed me to create a reason for being any time to suit the situation. There have been moments in the last 18 years that I was moved and performed fearless and great actions simply because I knew that there is no meaning to any of it. Through your death I learned to be of service to others who had been effected by death or were dying. I’ve never regarded them as victims, just fellow human being who have been rocked by the challenges of life. At worst they got a friendly ear to actual hear their words and at best they got a temporary partner to share and live their pain. Others were not alone because you taught me what is was like to exist in a state of grief, the one common emotion that all of us will eventually experience.

I am grateful for the escapist decisions I made to help manage life. There were moments that I regarded much of the last 18 years as a big waste of time, but presently I look at them as some of the greatest lessons that a human being is capable of acquiring. I didn’t die during any of those moments, I didn’t really suffer. There were times when I thought that I had lost my mind, but it always came back. I had fun running, I really did, but it got boring and I started to need more out of life. In fact, some of the escapist behaviors will go down as the most dangerous things that I will ever do; not strategic or calculated, just silly and dangerous. But I lived through all of them and now that I stand on my own two feet, clean and in control, I am forgiving myself for those things because I see how they have created the possibility for me to help others avoid some of them. I have a wisdom that many have but don’t ever share because they remain lost in the behavior.

I am grateful for the challenges of having to come to terms with your death and for how this impacted the analytical nature of my brain. This is what will make me most of what I will become because I needed to dig deep to manufacture an understanding that was compatible with someone as young and health dying one night without warning or purpose. It was tough, but my brain is good, my mind creative and my desire for answer strong enough to figure things out. The accuracy of what is created doesn’t matter because they are all stories, but the fact that there is something is what means the most. I’m rarely stuck for words or an explanation and what does come out of my mouth is a well processed and richly synthesized reason for whatever.

In life, you taught me how to love, you taught me that I am worth loving and you taught me that the right people will support and stand behind me. Thank you for those lessons!

In death, you taught me how to grieve, how to be of service to others and how to live a life based on the knowledge that everything will end eventually. I miss you and while I don’t know if we would still be in communication I believe that your life should not have been cut short. But it was, and the impact of your death changed and shaped me. I’m proud of who I have become, how I have grown and I am grateful for the lessons and the impact you have had on my life from the moment we meet.

Thank you Natalie! You will always remain a dear friend!