The photo below is of my talented and complicated dad as an eight-year-old boy in carnival outfit during 1926. He did
Dad – in 1926
not quite make it to 100 … He died last Friday, 99 years old. I’m glad he went peacefully and without pain.
His parting released me of the anxious waiting for the day when I must sort his things, though I had a taste of this ordeal two years ago when I organised his care.
Even though I was an only child, my dad never supported me financially, not even my education, or the education of his grandson. There’s an endless list of what I could not do right for him.
And I still I loved him, and wished for his approval. What he leaves behind will not ease my situation, but most likely incur expenses I can ill afford. Age is often extended these days, and children tend to experience more and more that a parent’s last resources are eaten up by their care needs.
Even when communication within relationships is loving and open, the other will always remain partly veiled, and a mystery. My dad survived hardships after the First World War, the Spanish Flue, and the Second World War, which traumatised him. He could not quite adjust to the intellectual freedom of my generation. I admired his thirst for knowledge, his fine-mechanic and inventive skills, his achievements as a photographer and painter, and his up-and-go cruising around the world with his second partner after my mum died 30 over years ago.
Earthrise, Dec 1968
Most importantly, my father and my mother gave me the invaluable adventure of life – an embodied consciousness in this amazing time, when the outer and inner universe so rapidly expanded. For this gift I’m deeply grateful.
Still, I wish I had not allowed my dad to diminish my self-value quite to the extend I did, which came home to me once more in this dream.
Strangely, the week before last I started my very own Patreon site, hoping to spark a little support for my creative output.
I held back with the launch – feeling scared. I’m an introvert after all. But here it is, for my readers to explore.
Go and click on the link, have a look what I made of this platform so far, and bring up the question …
For now, I’ll hang on to my constructive mantra, something I heartily wish for all my readers:
A little more freedom, a little more happiness, and a little more beauty.
Course of Mirrors 