Gratitude for the slow approach ...

Okay - I've been pondering "Death" for this last year because of what is unfolding with my father currently.  I am sorry if the topic of "death" seems heavy... but there is nothing like death to lead us right smack into Gratitude.  

My dad and I a couple months ago - June 2017

I read a couple months ago that "death" can be one of our greatest teachers of how to live life.  I'm starting to "get it."  Death can loom, it can be scary, and it can trigger tons of patterns.   We can have such fear of loss around loosing someone we love.  We can have such terror about dying ourselves.  It IS the ultimate UNKNOWN.  We get to figure out if we can be at peace and trust the unknown in life and LIVING.  

Many years ago when I was a young mother, one of my neighbors (also a young mother in her late twenties or early thirties) was diagnosed with cancer, declined rapidly, and soon was approaching death.  She lived only two houses away and although I didn't know her well at all, I knew inside that a part of me wanted to visit her before she died.  But sadly, I couldn't.  I couldn't bring myself to face death.  Yes, I was young, terrified of death and trapped in the belief that I could just turn the other way and not see it.  Looking back, I know that if I am "terrified" of death... then quite likely I am terrified of life and living life fully - (which I was at the time).  

My dad is dying presently or perhaps more accurately is in the "process of the slow approach to death."  I love him and the waves of grief have come and gone over the months.  He is a man with his "own" pace.  Like everything he has done in life, he is doing it slowly and methodically.  I appreciate that about him now.  When I was young and I would ask him for help with my math homework (he has a Math PhD), he would drive me freakin crazy because I felt he moved SOOooo slow.  "Just tell me the answer, Dad!" I'd scream in frustration.  (And often stomp off without waiting for that to happen).   

Well, I don't get the luxury of stomping off now.  I just have to be present to the process of ending a lifetime.  I get to be patient with how it unfolds.  I get to watch as things flow and then seem to not flow for a while.  I get to sink into gratitude for the present.  Death, like Life, is irregular, unpredictable, having it's own pace.  I appreciate my Dad's pace now.   I get to really be WITH this process instead of just wanting the "end" or the "answer."  

I won't get the "answer" ... ever...  at least while I'm alive.  That's okay.  "Thank you, Dad", for making me wait, for making me sit in the "unknown," for making me more tolerable, patient, and courageous towards life.