On My Father's Death, February 24, 2005

This morning I woke up early and found myself sitting up, aligning my spine, and dropping into the rhythm of my breath to meditate. I stayed there for two hours, much longer than I usually sit, because I found myself wrapped in a strange and wonderful sensation. I felt the essential personality of my father, but not in a way I'd ever experienced him in person. It was as though I'd been listening for years to a broken stereo that wheezed out a distorted rendition of an exquisitely beautiful symphony, but suddenly the stereo was gone. Suddenly, I was sitting in the center of the orchestra.

A few hours later, my sister Rebecca called to tell me our father had died this morning.

The last time I spoke to family members about my father's health, they told me he faded in and out of clarity as his ninety-fifth birthday approached, sometimes having luminous moments, other times trying to pack for journeys only he seemed to have planned. And according to my sister Becky's account, my father also said that he loved me very much. I don't know how cognizant he was of his surroundings these past weeks. I was told that his body had all but failed him, and his brain, that gorgeous, astonishing brain, was failing too. I was told it let his soul shine more brightly, and for that I am very glad.

The last time I spoke to my father we ended a long and challenging conversation by talking about forgiveness. Because we have always spoken through literary allusions, we were specifically discussing Shakespeare's King Lear and The Tempest. I suggested that the two plays are the same play about kings in exile and out in huge storms. Both Prospero and Lear have daughters they want to protect, but Lear is incapable of doing it and destroys what he loves. I said I thought there is one reason The Tempest has a happy ending. My father replied that it might be because Prospero has the magic of a sorcerer, but then he paused before he said, "Prospero forgives."

In our conversation that day, I had explained to him how I had come to forgive him, never having lost the love I bore him through all our difficulties. We parted with an embrace, a kiss, and a feeling of peaceful sadness.

It is one thing to be loved; it is another, rarer thing to be understood. I think I understood my father and that he understood me. In giving voice to my experience of him I honor him in my own way, just as talking about alcoholism and challenging the alcoholic honors that person more truly--while protecting dysfunction with polite lies and closely guarded secrets honors only the problem, not the person who has it. The reason I agreed to face the vitriol and aggression that are presently directed at me is because I value my father over my fear of his supporters.

Recently, my son Adam, who is now sixteen, mentioned the death of his Grandma Beck, which occurred when he was five, still sub-verbal, and apparently uncomprehending. We were amazed that he remembered her passing. " Was it sad?" we asked. "Yes," he said matter-of-factly, "until she found me." As though that were the most natural, unremarkable thing in the world.

I think perhaps my father found me this morning. For the past few remarkable hours, I have felt the singular and unprecedented sensation of being near my father as he really is: a man beautiful in body, mind, and heart, an unbound soul free from all fear and sorrow, a shining spirit, a symphony. I have always loved him from my DNA outward, and I always will.

Martha Beck

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