Happy birthday Dad!

My father could be a real old grump, I think he got the award for the grumpiest old man ever. He told me once when I was a child that he would love me more if I got better grades. Well, I never got better grades because I’m either secretly a rebel or I just can’t cut it.
He changed in the last days of his life, maybe it was the morphine, who knows but I remember the way he smiled at me just days before he died. It was only one smile in a lifetime of doubting if he loved me or was proud of me, but it was transformational. It blew away all the anger that I held inside me for wanting his love so badly and for a moment I glimpsed forgiveness.
We all have lessons to learn while we are here on this planet, sometimes very hard lessons. Our teachers aren’t always the nice ones, they can also be the ones who are harsh and unloving.
I may not have amounted to much intellectually, but my curious mind has never let me down. I count myself lucky to have gotten that from him and also my love for Science Fiction.
Even though he also used to say to me that my best wasn’t good enough, he was wrong and he didn’t know it at the time, but he knows it now. A right old git wouldn’t you say?
My father wanted me to be something I could never be, and little did he know that I was remembering my own divine nature. I was never a slave to worldly values, even though he held those things in high regard, the rebel in me wanted quite the opposite.

What he taught me without knowing it was that everything passes away and what is left is only the love we leave behind. That one smile came directly from his divine nature and it was what I really needed to feel his love in that moment, not all the other messed up stuff.
Oh, and he also taught me that achievement and wealth can mean nothing if you lose your soul.
I have found that forgiveness has the power to transmute us into the humans we were always meant to be, releasing us from the grip of bitterness that eats away at us. It doesn’t mean I instantly forget all the things he did to me, but it aids me spiritually.
I love what Wayne Dyer says about forgiveness…
“It was one act of profound forgiveness toward my own father, whom I never saw or talked to, that turned my life around from one of ordinary awareness to one of higher consciousness, achievement, and success beyond anything I had ever dared to imagine.” It’s worth reading Wayne’s story. He says that his father was his greatest teacher.
I do have good memories of my dear old Dad though. When I was a little girl, I would dance with him by standing on his feet, I’d love to do it again in his transformed state…