A Year Later

Not quite a year ago, my Dad died.

Just wanted to re-visit some perspective on it, which I still hold to. Lots of my friends seem to have been going through similar circumstances, so I wanted to plunk this down.

From January 8, 2007

It is a strange thing to lose a parent – to see your father die. All the family is here at home making funeral arrangements for a man who we half expect to come walking down the steps at any moment to join us. It is the finality of the parting that feels most strange. As I write, I recall that exactly one week ago we were all together celebrating the new year and a delayed Christmas. How different the gathering in the living room feels on this Monday.

My Dad began to take his faith more seriously during the last 5 years. I had no doubts as to where he is. I also had the honor or writing him a tribute letter before his open heart surgery in May. There have been many things leading up to this week that provided some closure for all the family. Still – we feel the loss.

People will often say (and I’ve probably been guilty of it in the past) that “death is natural – it’s a part of life.” It is not true. We were not meant to die, to leave work undone and part company with those we love. Death is most un-natural. We are made for eternity and for relationship. And so, right now despite our pain and grief, we see Jesus’ gifts of life, eternity and future reunions as all the more amazing and beautiful. The finality of death and separation has been revoked for those that know God. We feel it now, but I will see my Dad again. We will have a very happy reunion and an eternity of relationship. That is what awaits us. How gracious our God is!

But for now, I will cry. Quite a bit.

Fuzzy Lines

I recently rented and watched Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, and despite the bloodiness of it, rather enjoyed it. Very well done. But this isn't a movie review entry.

Here's what is interesting to me in this - the viewpoints and reactions that I've read about the film. Let me zoom in on one that made me laugh out loud.

If you look up Apocalypto on iTunes and read reviews, you'll find an entry by Baern titled "Decent movie. Highly misrepresents the Mayans though" What I want to pick on is one of his comments. I'll quote it...

"Another issue is how the sacrifice ritual is seriously misrepresented and exaggerated. Mayans didn't sacrifice a bunch of people all in one day; they sacrificed one person every couple weeks or so. The movie makes them look like bloody monsters!"

The movie makes them look like monsters!? I had to laugh at the absurdity of it. Here's the logic:

Gibson portrayed Mayans as monstrous. How?
He depicted them as performing multiple human sacrifices in one day.
Baern says this is unfair: They are not bloody monsters. Why?
In reality, they only sacrifice about 2 human beings each month.

!?!

That's what I call a fuzzy line. (Granted, this was probably an off the cuff, not too thought out review, but whoa!) Baern is saying that the Mayans were not really monstrous, they didn't kill large numbers of people to appease their gods, they killed them at a much lower rate - only one every 2 weeks or so.

Baern seems to think that what makes a human-sacrificing culture egregious is found in the quantity of human sacrifices, not in the fact that human sacrifices are taking place. C'mon Mel - I can't believe you depicted Mayans as cruel people. It's not like the killed people every day! Just some days. Jeez! For Baern, Mel crossed a line he'd drawn.

We get what I call a fuzzy line when we begin making moral distinctions based on subjective opinions of "appropriateness." The lines seem to revolve around numbers, severity, or frequency of some kind of behavior and what I think is too many, too much or too often - it's fuzzy because people draw the line of right and wrong so differently.

I think it's human nature that, much of the time, we'll draw our own lines of "here is where too far, too much begins" but we base the moral location of those lines just below where we perceive ourselves on the continuum of morality.

In other words - when we decide for ourselves what is right or wrong, we rarely will self-condemn. We consider ourselves pretty good, and "wrong" must be something less than our own personal goodness.

The problem with that is that we all have different perspective on what's too far. If we base right and wrong simply on personal preference, should we condemn perverts, or violent men or financial scammers?

You could, and people do, argue that what we do is go with the good old American majority system. That would counter "obviously" egregious behavior. Let the voice of the people determine what's right. We're call something normative if there's a majority that agree it's ok. Of course, this thinking breaks down when the majority is wrong. (which, I suspect is a lot more often than we care to admit - consider 80's hairstyles) If we based our laws and morality on such a system, we'd have no such thing as speed limits. We might also have a problem when it comes to slavery. The majority thought it was good. The majority was wrong.

What we need are non-subjectives in terms of right and wrong. We need someone outside of ourselves to establish objective rules, truth, right and wrong. We need a standard to measure by.

I recently installed baseboards in a bedroom of my house. If I had a guy making cuts for me on the compound miter saw and I was telling him how many inches and at what angles I need the cuts, I would in no way want to have subjectivity about how long an inch is. I was us to operate on the same system, with the same establishment of standards. Otherwise, I would probably get some rather useless pieces of baseboard.

I think the same is true for those fuzzy lines of morality. Baern's complaint about Apacolypto was in terms of how many human sacrifices made a culture barbaric. Two per month, to him, didn't seem that horrible.

The presence of human sacrifices makes the society barbaric. The conversation about how many they make falls under the heading of frequecy, not in the debate of whether it is monstrous or not.

The conversation about whether we are, as human beings, good and righteous seems (in my mind at least) to be pretty clearly answered. (look at history!) When I compare myself to others, I think I'm talking about he wrong issue. Complicity and comparison are two different things. I think we would be better served if we talked a little bit less about comparitive morals, and talked a little bit more about the fact that we're all in the same camp and don't measure up to the standard of Good and Rightous and Whole. Those are more productive and more interesting conversations.

Murk

Oh murky heart:
What lurking monsters lie
twisted and billowing
beneath your solemn surface?

Only to me faintly known.

Still they seem;
Unseen and poised.
Until unbid perturbants disturb
their tulmultuous serenity,
and extract a toothy toll!

Cooling, clearing water come!
That these muddy monsters,
plain made, may be speared!
By some Fisherman of men.

And I'll be fully known!

30

I think this is my 30th post.

If this were my job, it would only be about a month's worth at 1/day. Perhaps I don't have much to say - or perhaps in each blog I say too much. Long-windedness. Ugh.

Right now I'm in Colorado. (which, incidentally, some native Coloradans will emphatically insist that you should pronounce incorrectly. Why anyone would want to take a nice, open and pleasant Ahh sound [as in Avocado] and replace it with a hyper-nasal American Eah [as in yeah] is beyond me. Good night! We make such gross vocalizations in the US as it is!)

Ok - shorter John, shorter.

Right now I'm in Colorado. Been here most of the summer. One of the things I think I like most isn't really attached to the state. It's the sky.

Perhaps I've had more time to notice. Perhaps the flatness just before the mountains makes it more accessible to the eye. Perhaps it's better here? (altitude?)

In any case, the sky just seems to beckon me to look - and snap a few photos now and again. I've seen many spectacular sunsets, rainbows, storm systems, billowing clouds, cobalt skies... it's been pretty soul-satisfying.



I remember a bunch of years ago, again in Color(eah)do, I was camping in a local river canyon with some friends. I've been in the country before, but never quite this remote - far, far from any other lights. It was the first time I fully grasped what the term "milky way" pertained to. (other than the chocolate encased fluffy whatever-it-is) I had no idea that there were that many stars visible to us. It really was a creamy swathe in the sky. I was DAZZLED by the heavens above. Innumerable, Incredible, and sadly - Invisible, at least for most of us, most of the time.

Doesn't it seem ironic that the little lights that man makes, so obscure the great lights of the heavens above? The garish eclipses the glorious?

It's been a refreshment for me to again lift up my eyes and look to the heavens this summer - day or night. Our little lights, our little glories just don't have the awe-ing power that a breathtaking sunset has. Or the sensory feast of a fast moving evening thunderstorm. Or the canopy of glimmering, exploding stars - stretched and spinning and the farthest reaches of my eyes.

When's the last time you stopped, looked up and took it in? We're walking around on a Master's canvas, and we so infrequently take a moment to absorb the inexhaustible brilliance in which we are enveloped. Oh - sad, sad we.

Bird in Hand

I'm writing this from Colorado. (whoo-hoo!)

Every two years or so I travel to Colorado for work, staying there for a significant amount of time. I love it here. If you've never visited, you should. I'll leave it at that, because Colorado is only the context for my comments, not the subject.

Two years ago here in Colorado I was sitting about 15 feet up in a tree. I had some time during a training session where I was challenged to go reflect on my personal life and how I was doing; spiritually, emotionally, relationally...etc. There was a beautiful and climbable tree nearby and I figured that was just as nice a place to think about myself than any. I was wrong.

What happened was that I wound up just soaking in the natural world around me. I couldn't quite stay focused on personal inventory. I was too absorbed in the tree, the sound of the wind, the dappled heat of the sun. The front door of my mind was locked, and my (often odd and meandering) internal dialogue just wasn't happening. What I would discover later is that the lessons that day (and I think, most days) come better through the back door of our minds - informally and somewhat unexpectedly, like an old friend popping in for a visit. My lesson that day would come, rather oddly, through two birds - the first of which landed just above me in the tree.

Very Large Tangential Aside: I like the idea of back door paradigm change. I like the analogy and I like the mechanisms of the uncontested entrance. What I mean is that when we want to challenge someone else's thinking and viewpoint, with the intent of changing their minds about some subject, we who are not so shrewd (especially Christians) tend to approach people at the front door. By this I mean, we come formally and directly - on topic with our best argument forward.

The problem? Door to door salesmanship is dead. Growing up at my parent's house, if people came knocking on the front door, we put our guards up. It would invariably be someone selling something, or wanting something, or a Jehovah's Witness. (there's a whole 'nuther blog topic!) Our goal when we answered the door was generally to dismiss them. (if we answered the door!)

Friends came to the back door. It was never locked. It was just a screen door - not a huge formal front. When someone showed up at the back door, we weren't guarded or defensive - we were ourselves. Maybe you didn't have a home like this, but I did.

If you really want someone to change their thinking it will generally happen incrementally, and you need to sneak in the new view around back - through a joke, a story, a movie, a comment - some vehicle that carries within it a different world-view. Rather like a Trojan horse, but not in a "let's decimate the city" way. Something appealing which has, implicit within it, a viewpoint or moral or message.

Stories do that. Movies do that. I think many people don't look at what they watch on TV or in theaters and ask the questions: What is the moral? The point? The Worldview. The fact is that all stories contain one, in one fashion or another. And there is the back door teaching and shift. When you or I watch or listen to or hear something without discerning what it teaches us, we are unconsciously hearing, at least in part, the viewpoint and beliefs of another. They are making their argument through the backdoor, where we are not consciously holding up our viewpoint to theirs and evaluating. It's coming in, albeit by increments, uncontested.

I'm not saying this is bad necessarily. What I'm saying is that it's shrewd and effective - over the long term. What I do think is bad is when you or I never give thought to this effect. I'm more likely to actually think about the viewpoint of, let's say, a Jehovah's Witness if it's given to me in a creative and gentle manner, rather than through a front door assault which makes put up defenses. I DO want to hear another person's viewpoint and worldview, but I don't want it to be forced and awkward and assaultive. I also don't want someone sneaking it in with zero awareness on my part. That feels like brainwashing and manipulation.

I guess what I'm saying is for real communication and life change to happen in the realm of how we understand the world, we're overly guarded to directness and underly aware of subtlety. What I need to do if I want to communicate effectively is knock on the back door. I need to communicate in a way that doesn't raise walls on the hearer's part, but also doesn't skulk about not showing my intent.

Maybe I'm nuts, but this is what I would most like to do. How? That's the real issue. At any rate, back to the tree I was in (it relates)....

So, a small bird (a sparrow, if you care) landed just above me in some of the branches. The first thing that popped into my head was "wouldn't it be cool if that bird would just come and land on my finger or hand - just for a few moments." So, on a whim, I said, out loud "God, it would be so cool if a bird would land in my hand - just a silly little selfish request." And I held out my hand - in an act of faith.

What happened next was unremarkable: My arm got tired.

Or maybe the bird took off. I can't really remember. Oh well, guess the answer was 'no.' A few minutes later I went back to the session I was a part of, having enjoyed the stay in the tree, but with little in terms of front door reflection on my life and what I need to work on.

The back door lesson came later, and I didn't even realize it right away.

That afternoon I rode my bike to pick up a rental car - I couldn't get a ride. The crazy thing is that it was well over 100 degrees that afternoon and in Colorado where there's much less atmosphere between you and the sun, it's intense.

Riding down a small side road I saw a bird in the middle of the street - another sparrow. As I approached I expected her to fly away. She didn't. As I passed I got a closer look - this little bird was probably overheated. It sat almost motionless with its mouth agape, baking on the asphalt. I kept riding another few seconds when compassion got the better of me.

There was no traffic so I went back. The bird never protested or fled as I approached, I scooped it up and place it in the coolness of some dense bushes at the side of the road. She never struggled or seemed afraid. She just hopped off, almost gratefully, into the shadows.

Probably a full 60 seconds later I answered the knock at the back door of my mind. "Hi!" said the friendly visitor, "Just stopping by to ask you a few things real quick: Didn't you pray a little while ago that you'd hold a bird in your hand? Hmm. Well, what's it tell you about yourself and about God (to whom you made this request) that your desire to experience something you thought would be neat for you was answered, a little different than you expected, and was used to secure the benefit of another?"

There were more lessons I learned from that little back-door experience than hours of front door contemplation could have yielded. And those lessons stick.

Stoicism, Blame, Speculation, Blindness, Absurdity and the News

Virginia Tech just happened a week ago. April 16, 2007.

For my part, I am shocked - but not surprised. This sort of thing fits right into my world view, so I am not taken off guard by these events, but I am horrified and wounded by them.
I've cried a bit, even more so because I have friends who work there - friends who personally knew students that were killed.

Since this has dominated the news media for the past week, I've about had it with a few characteristics of the networks and news mills as they drone on and on. Yes, I need to know that it happened. Yes, I want to know more fully the details of these events. Yes, it is all worthy of commentary and processing. Yes. But...

There are a few things about the news media that have been the passing of the kidney stone for me this week, and I guess (to push the simile too far) that this is the place where the stone hits the water for me. This will be where I get them out of my system. Relief at last! Some you will think unfair, irrelevant or unlikely to change - but this is my blog. Go write your own.

So - as per the title of this installment....

Stoicism. When I first began to realize just how gigantically tragic this shooting spree was, not to mention the methodical manner in which is was carried out, I realized this was a horror we've not yet known - well, we have, but to a scale we've not yet experienced. In this case, what I wished for was someone on the TV to shout "Oh no! This is unbelievable! There is something terribly wrong with this world! This is horrible, absolutely horrible! Oh God, please help them." and weep. Or have an expression of anguish, or tears, or be visibly sickened - something - anything.

I could see some emotion, or hear it. But for news like this I just wish there was a value for empathy, expression and appall. The anchors were so controlled and composed. The soundbites so polished and formal. When there is a tragedy, I want someone who will feel it with me, I want someone to weep for that which is unjust and terrible. I don't want a composed professional. I want someone who will be human and feel it deeply.

That one is all me, and I know this isn't something that will likely change. I just hate that the rawness and emotion of it gets filtered into a news blurb. Unfair you say? - maybe.

Blame. That's really the point - right? At least that's what comes out of the gates pretty early. The shooter killed himself, so whom shall we blame?

Within hours I heard/read/saw reports on things like: The inferior-to-other-schools' security on campus. The lack of an immediate lockdown orders. The ease of purchasing weapons in Virginia. The mother, the father. That he wasn't expelled for previous issues. The mental health system not confining him. His fellow students lack of interaction with him....on and on.

Message: It's about who we can blame.

A friend and co-worker of mine said it well. He mentioned that the news, and many people, seem to take the view that the world is not messed up, and for the few things that seem to be amiss, if we just have the right systems in place it can be perfect. No it can't. No way. We live in a corrupted world, and systems of control and safety are good, but they can't change the very nature of the world. We need something beyond us for that.

But - it's much more convenient to blame someone or some thing - or better yet: some system for screwing up in this case. It's not that this world is fallen, it's just that X screwed up. And now, back to our illusions of goodness. Perhaps this is more of an American bubble. We don't really know pain and chaos like many other places in the world.

Speculation. I'll keep it short. It seemed like, in an effort to fill space, that the media is willing to throw any speculations it can out there to keep you roped in. After all, the news really is about having the latest, greatest news, so they can have the most viewership, so their sponsors (and more sponsors) will generate more revenue.

So, since it's a business and the business is selling (semi-sensationalized) information (sometimes true information) the model seems to be 1. report what you know 2. Make lots of show-stopping speculations and leaps about what you don't and 3. buttress correct (or close) speculations with later facts as they arise, ignoring your ridiculous guesses.

I'd rather have truth, undressed-up. But that doesn't seem to be sufficient anymore.

Blindness. See above a bit. Let's face it, right up there with journalistic integrity and the noble desire to disperse truth the the world, there is the need for ratings. Perhaps for some that is really the greatest commandment. To be most watched. (sponsored, payed, profitable - it's the same ball of wax)

So - to show the tapes the killer made? Are you blind? Don't you understand? Those tapes legitimize him. They encourage others. They validate his actions (not condone, but validate) and give him a voice to the masses. He was crazy, he was mentally unstable. To show that was - I hope - an act of blindness on the part of the networks.

I hope it was lack of wisdom. I really do, because the alternative is that they knew it would have a legitimizing and validating effect for other unstable people, but the value of sensationalism bringing ratings and viewership was a value higher than social responsibility and safety. I hope it was just stupidity and ignorance and blindness. But I have a feeling it was "let's show it anyway."

And that is not a good sign.

Absurdity. This is my biggest one, personally. I watched these horrible reports about bloodshed and death and tragedy - which were immediately followed up with.... a commercial. Whatever they were. A car ad, a food ad, a vacation ad...insert just about anything.

The contrast was startling. One moment I'm peering into madness, violence, loss and suffering... and then moments later I have some dulcet voice telling me that my life will be so much more fulfilling and worthy if I just have this kind of car, or eat these kind of cheese puffs, or use the makeup, this hair gel.....etc.

Anyone else see the absurdity of this? What's really important? It certainly comes out in an event like Virginia Tech: Love. Relationships. Courage. Health. Safety. Faith. Family. Life.

Pardon me, but who the hell cares about what shaving cream I used this morning? It doesn't matter. Half the stuff that is advertised is successful because people are overfed, under-challenged and bored to death. They've lost sight of what's really of value and buy the lines (carefully crafted) that "this is what you need to be fulfilled, happy, and have sexy partners dangling from your arms."

Never has our self-indulgent consumerism seemed more crass and absurd than in the midst of the news last week. What brand of toilet paper I use doesn't matter. It really doesn't, but we're constantly being pushed to believe that it actually makes a difference in the quality of our lives. What a sham. It's a lie.

So for my part, I'm remembering that...

• We should know about recent events - but we need not make vast speculations about the unknown.
  

• Finding someone to blame only ignores the real problem - the world really is broken.

• Truth is satisfactory - in the order and portions that it comes, and sensationalism is more theater than fact.

• Blindness about our actions is sad, but preferable to knowledgeable disregard for their impact.

• What's really important probably has little to do with what is advertised as being so.

For my part, I'm also praying for everyone at Virginia Tech - including the news-media, who will just move on to the next sensational something.

Nudity on my Xbox

People get naked with me on my Xbox.

I'm baiting you with that - what I mean is that they are being who they really are. And that's what really disturbs me - sort of.

I have joyfully wasted many an hour playing video games online via my Xbox Live account. For any theoretical readers out there who theoretically don't know what that means, here's the super brief explanation. (sorry gamers) Basically, you hook your Xbox up to the Internet, then you can find other people playing the same game and play with/against them. The service that provides this arena is called Xbox Live through bungie.net, and I think I recently read that there are more than six million subscribers.

Anyhow, here's what I find sociologically and psychologically interesting: besides gaming, the online environment gives an arena for people to be who they really are.

I play Halo 2 mostly, and most people have a headset that allows them to speak and hear others speaking. (I can only listen) If you ever go online for any time I think you will be shocked by what you will hear - by what people say to each other.

I'm not talking about good old bad language and cursing. Shoot - you can go hear that in most places. (cable, for instance) What I'm appalled by is the content and intent of their speech. Slanderous, racially charged language. Threats and harassment that is sexual, mocking and vicious. Words bristling with ego and the debasement of others. On and on. Some people open their mouths and utter horrible, horrible things toward other human beings - willful malice and attempts to wound them.

Some might argue that this arena, this environment, provides a venue that encourages that sort of thing. I think this suggestion doesn't go far enough. I think that this online venue doesn't cause anything - it just removes something.

What it removes is the normal sense of public shame. There are no social repercussions for anything that is said there. I could use racial slurs, directed at a specific ethnicity, and there are no consequences. Others can sound off against me but there is no real world feedback, e.g. a punch in the face. If I were to talk to someone standing in front of me like that, I would likely be beat to a senseless pulp. And I should be. Online, people speak with others whom they will never meet, have no existing relationship with and bear no risk of accountability for their behavior.

That's what disturbs me most. When you have complete impunity, what comes out is really you. Social norms and fear of judgment restrict us from saying everything that pops into our minds. "Healthy people" filter out things that are socially inappropriate and may cause them shame. But it seems that when the fear of judgment or getting caught are removed, people will do and say some terrible things. Case in point - my cohorts on Halo 2. (And me. Let's be honest - though I don't slur racially, I've said a few things to opponents that I'm a bit embarrassed about!)

But what we call "healthy people" are just the ones that manage to filter out what they are really thinking, or would really like to say. The thing about people is not that they allow those things to come to the outside - it's that we don't; it's that all of us have those things on the inside, but with some self control, we can keep others from seeing that they're there. We can hide that which is bad. Behave well, though we're not thinking well. Our issue as humans isn't only behavior, it's also motivational and internal.

Jesus called us on it. If you're not familiar, he was talking and teaching about what real "goodness" is. He cites the external behavioral conventions and saying of the day; "you've heard it said...." then states what most people would agree on: Don't murder, don't be unfaithful to your spouse...etc. Then he ups the ante; "but I say..." and he moves us to the internal world - he gets to the (mostly) hidden reality of our hearts.

Read it for yourself. It's in the book of Matthew, chapter 5.

He seems to be concerned not just with how we act, but who we are - for-real, internally, when there is no fear of being caught or reprimanded, when we think we'll get away with it. That, I think is where we need to deal with who we are. That's the starting point; the heart. And that's the point, if we're honest, when we realize that our behavior might point to being a good person, but our inner thought life...we might not be all that good.

This is the starting point - our reality of need, rather than the illusion of goodness. We're all flawed and need some work. Those who seem so well behaved? Does the internal match the external? I'm not sure, and I can't be. It's between them and God.

Meanwhile, I'll hang out with some of the potty-mouths online. Whether they know it or not, they're naked and exposed. They're who they really are. I need to be more that way with God, and then ask for and allow change to happen to the areas that need some work.

When I'm playing with them and hear what they're saying; if it's a good day, I'll pray for them. If it's a really good day, I'll remember to pray for me - I'm not that different, I just hide it better.

My Un-Understood Grief

Well. For catharsis' sake I make this entry.

My Father died just over a month ago.

How should someone respond to that? I sent out lots of emails and phone calls asking for people to pray for him as his condition declined in the hospital. (It was just a hernia repair, which cascaded into the unbelievable.) When it all abruptly and surrealy ended, I informed them of the loss. Now, nearly everyone I know has need to make mention of it.

What should people say to me when they see me? (Like this is all about me - but let's run with this line of thought.) What can they say? Mostly I hear "I'm so sorry" and ask me how I'm doing.

Let's not make the mistake of thinking I don't appreciate their empathetic mode or their desire to know if I'm dealing with the grief "well." I do. The thing is, I think, that we as Americans in the modern era don't have much skill or practice with this type of thing. It's far less common, this personal familiarity with loss than I think it must be in most other parts of the world. We're awkward about it. I'm awkward about it.

My Father has died. I have, obviously, never before comprehended the full weight of that. I probably don't now, nor will for some time. When people ask me "How are you doing John?" I get irritated - not for the reason you think. More because I'm not sure how to respond.

How am I doing? At present I think I could answer that one of two ways.

Option One: I could have a conversation with them about the fullness of my Father's life, how he reared me, his moments of weakness and withdrawl, our level of intimacy, what strength he passed to me, what failings I have had to overcome, and the new strangeness of this reality; that your parents (if all goes relatively well) are the ONLY constant - the singular relationship in which you find yourself engaged since before you are able to remember. They always have been - like some relational mountain. There is no other such relationship. I could try to have a conversation - when people ask - about the simultaneous absurdities of being no where close to full realization of what this loss means and trying to heal. That conversation, I think, would do me a lot of good. But I haven't had it yet. (not even with myself)

Option Two: I could say "I'm doing fine."


So, what's irritating about this is that I can't really give either answer. The first option isn't an option, because in nearly every instance that I see my friends and co-workers, the context, the timing and the personal investment are probably all not up to muster for a full answer. Americans really just want to hear a one minute update. Really. With the exception of a few close friends, that's what I want when I have conversations too.

Option Two I can't go with. While people do want a synopsis, there should be some genuine element to it. Plus, the dialogue is "How are you doing with your Dad's death?" and I answer "I'm doing just fine." I'm doing a pretty big disservice to myself (that would be a bit more than an oversimplification) and to the memory and impact of my Dad. I'm fine with my Dad's death? Right. Now they'll think I'm in some kind of denial, or we had some kind of estrangement.

What I need is a 2 minute answer. But there is none. So, I usually wind up saying a few cliches and trying to give some information that is a little bit vulnerable and sincere but doesn't required a major time commitment or beg further pursuit.

Is that unhealthy? Shallow?

I'd really rather not talk about it much if I can't probe it deeply. I hate it right now that it most often comes up in small talk. I say a few "yeah it's hard"s then transition into talking about my Mom, who has more to adjust to. (Which is so true, but in part might be a dodge.)

The my most appreciated responses thus far? Honestly? Those who've said something like "John, we will continue to pray for you." I hope that's true. That's really what I want. They have cared. They know I will somehow need more support and prayer. They don't presume I could tell them what I'll need and they don't ask me to encapsulate the next few years of processing and self-discovery right then in a sound bite. They also recognize that if I need Option One with someone, I can probably ask someone who is willing to wade through it all with me.

I do need to wade through sometime soon - with someone who knows. Because the fact of the matter is - you comprehend that this type of loss will be far reaching and depth shaking when that day inevitably comes, but no amount of articulate explanation and theoretical empathy can match a knowing "Me too... Me too."

I miss my Dad.