– 2012 10 27 W.C.H.
I can’t say life is without pain.
I can’t say that a life without pain would not lose something ineffable and powerful, and in some way, gestational.
I am not glorifying pain, or excusing it, or inviting it. I am merely stating what appear to be observable facts from my immediate lived experience.
William Huber certainly knew pain in his life. It is fair to say we all do.
I am heartened to continue to exist in the shadow of his example, in the trail of his love, in the purposes of his will. Not as him, but as myself. Because so much of him is mixed in with the formative experiences of my life, it is without any hyperbole that I can say that I continue not-apart from him, and am grateful for his ever present love.
It is possible, conceivable at least, that the pain of loss vitalizes and animates the other memories, experiences and emotions around it. In some way, having lost my father and the ache that comes from that experience ensures that his memory and presence resists the erosions of time. They’ve entered a quiescent latency, gestating within me, from time to time salting my life with more powerful understanding and more emotional color. In this way my learning and our personal interaction continues, with gifts that arrive unsought, from beyond the horizon of his life.
Happy Birthday Daddy’O!