Memoir Bytes – All the Light We Cannot See But Can Sometimes Sense

I live in a building complex comprised of 3 buildings. Ironically, the building I live in is 2 over from the one my father lived in for years since he divorced my mother, until his death a quarter of a century ago.

Often I walk out onto my balcony overlooking a small forest to one side and a walking path to another. I can see directly through the trees to my father’s apartment balcony. Of course I think of my father every single day that passes as though the years of his absence in my life don’t mark time. But since I moved here almost 2 years ago, I feel him closer to me.

When I step out for a breath of fresh air on my balcony, I recall the many times my sister and I went to visit him, bringing him home-cooked meals to store in his freezer, and the pleading we used to do with him, begging him to eat healthy, for his love of junk food and his lost passion for living had escalated his cholesterol levels through the roof, which prompted his ultimate demise – death by instant, massive heart attack.

#Memoir - We're never far from those who've left us for the next world when we measure the…
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Through the years, since my father’s departure from this earth, he has visited me many times. My inner knowing senses his presence. And he mostly shows up in my worst moments of despair, a comfort to me knowing he can hear me.

I can’t count how many times I’d sit on my balcony, staring directly at the balcony where he once lived, wondering how ironic it is that through all my moves around the city, I wound up living where my father had lived out the remainder of his life in solitude. Many times I’ll look down from my balcony and catch a glimpse of a man walking on the grounds with the same gait and posture as my father’s, and for a moment I wonder if that was him.

My dad’s portrait hangs proudly on my office wall, and I often catch myself glancing his way to take in his beautiful smile. And for that moment, it closes the distance between us, illuminating the part of me where I still carry our memories together, in my heart.

The one and only time I was transported in my dreams to visit him in heaven, stays with me in vivid sequence. It was a gift that helped me come to peace with myself for my tragic loss. I saw the light. I looked upon him still wearing the shroud he was buried in as I stood on a floorless ground with billowing white clouds. He reached out to me and spoke the words, “I love you” and comforted me when he told me he’s okay now, reminding me that he’d never be too far away from me.

I know he kept his word. And I know that it was that meeting I was gifted with that helped ease the heaviness in my heart. Although I was never invited back to that holy place again, I understood why. It was no longer necessary. I got my reassurance.

My father is always around me and he’s at peace, that was the message I needed to hear to help me let him go in my head and move my love for him to a new special place in my heart.

We don’t always see the light that beckons us to that other world, but even in darkness we carry the light within.