Fathers and Sons

My father passed away nearly thirty years ago, and I wasn't at his side. My memories of him and love for him is ever present in my head and heart, still, however. Throughout much of my formative years, we had a typical father-son relationship. He went to work as a nuclear technician for Westinghouse for thirty-two years before he retired, never turning down over-time so that he could make the best life for his family that he could. Until the weekends, my sister, brother, and I would not see much of our father. On most weekends for all my early years, we had a ritual of getting out of bed and all piling into the car just after midnight every Friday night when dad got home from work for a two-hour early-morning drive up to the “camp”, our second home in the “country”, that dad worked on building and improving as income and time would allow for all my early years. The travel time back and forth was most fun as we all thrived in the captivating playful attention of our loving father.

Like Harry Chapin's Song “Cat's in the Cradle”, my life raising my own sons was much the same as my relationship with my father. While I worked away from home very often, I deliberately spent as much time as I could with the family. I was always mindful that I didn't want to be a father who was absent all of the time.

When my father passed away from cancer at the age of 67, I did not take the time to grieve, as is culturally expected, but found a deep strength within to deal with his passing, immediately finding peace. Recently, however, when I came across this video of James Blunt’s new hit song, Monsters, it stopped me in my tracks. It literally grabbed me by the heart strings; releasing emotions that I’d managed to hold at bay all these years. I knew the feelings were always there, since my father’s death, but I had always held them back out of some uncanny sense of denial. Tears came to my eyes and I cried out of love.

James Blunt wrote and filmed this ballad for his father, who is dying of cancer and does not have long before he passes. He asked his father to be in the video. The lyrics, ‘You’re not my father, I’m not your son. We’re just two grown men saying goodbye' touched me deeply. The spiritual significance, the dignity and the honor that is imbued in these lyrics is powerfully humbling. His words take us beyond our Earthly roles as fathers and sons, as equals on this spiritual path. I salute you, I love you, and I set you free. This is what I said to my father then, and I say to my father still.

This video with its lyrics is a gift to us all - but especially for men. My prayer is that all boys and men could watch it and reflect upon it's message. And when it’s their time to say goodbye to their father, their sons, their brothers, grandfathers or best mates, they can unreservedly weep and humbly release their feelings, and rejoice in the liberation that comes from connected, heartfelt, expressions of love.