Posted by Glenn A. Goodwin on June 26, 2001 at 18:46:02 from 209.179.56.123 :
In Reply to: Father's Day posted by Jim Powell on June 17, 2001 at 13:59:09:
Dear Jim: I just read your beautiful tribute to your Dad and was moved to jot you a note. Your words made me cry, not out of sadness, but out of beauty. You are truly Ed's son...I very much regret having never met you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with all of us. Warmly, Glenn : Dear Dad: : I'm sure this note to you will be one of many... not 100% sure why I'm writing it, but I do know how much you love to have things in writing... a source of reflection; a catalyst for new thoughts. : The last time I saw you, it wasn't even you. I didn't want to go to Forest Lawn to be there for your cremation... I didn't want to see your body. I just wanted to remember you like that last day in Maui when we hugged at the airport and we both said "I love you". I was so afraid that by seeing you in a casket, that would be all I could remember. You and I talked several times in the past about my inability to picture Mom's face in my mind's eye, except to remember pictures that had been taken of her - you'd said it was the same thing for you. I was terrified that the only picture of you that would stick in my mind was of you in a casket. I wrestled with this and finally decided that I wasn't going to go; I had made my peace and there wasn't anything else I needed to say. But I left options open and Stephen and I were driving around anyway trying to find your "Arzen" that you talked about in your journal -- your place of meditation in the cemetary. And we talked about what kindof advice you would give me at a time like this, and all we knew what what you always said about "regretting the things you DON'T do rather than the ones you do." : I just didn't know how I could bear to see you like that. You didn't know it, but part of the focus of my study over the past couple years in performance enhancement has been "anchoring"; without getting too much into it, it's a process where you can anchor a positive mental state by physical action. A simple example of an anchor would be perhaps the smell long lost loves' perfume, or the smell of cooking that brings back a memory -- these are anchors that can change your state. Well, my "anchor" in getting through this experience at the crematorium was going to be my turtle pendant. I don't even know if you knew of it but since this whole cardiomyopathy thing, I never took it off, I always wore it around my neck -- a stone talisman with a petroglyph design of a sea turtle in gold. : So, I worked on anchoring with this turtle and i'd squeeze it and associate it with some of our great memories together -- our triumph at Wolfs Creek when I was 12. : I was doing okay when we walked into the chapel and then they wheeled you out in your topless cardboard coffin on the gurney and put you in the anteroom off to the side. I'd gone outside for a moment and then when I walked in I saw you in the room and Stephen was there. Steve asked if I wanted to be alone and I said "hell no". I walked over to you and really looked at you for the first time. : I was squeezing the hell out of the turtle pendant in my pocket, but it only really disrupted the experience -- it was like watching two competing movies shown on the same screen at the same time. Love Dad. Dead Dad. Love Dad. Dead Dad. : I gotta tell you Dad, you looked like shit. No offense, but people who say "oh, he looked so peaceful..." really interpret the world in a different way -- or the lady Peggy from the funeral home who said "Oh,he's so handsome". : Yikes. You looked like a dried husk of Ed Powell, like something had sucked everything out that was you and left the shell. : By now I was crying quietly and Stephen was holding into my shoulders lightly... I took my turtle talisman out and slipped it in the left pocket of your dashiki. Somehow it was more important that it go with you to this next stage. : Yet I knew that you'd already gone. : I touched your hand,and your arm and it was like a rock... actually a real rock has more substance to it... this was more like the fake rock that they put in peoples houses when making a "stone" hearth in the living room. It seemed so dry and hard and empty. I had tears streaming down my face, and could think of nothing to do but wipe my hand in them and brush them on your cheek, and on your forehead, if somehow to soften you up a bit. : But in the end, it was very clear to me that I wasn't really saying goodbye to you. You just weren't in there anymore. What there is of you, is in me, and always had been. I'm your son -- you brought me into this world, and you were always my father, even in the worst of times. : During the times of our battles in the early 70's I hated your guts you made me so mad, but I never doubted your love for me, and I don't think you ever doubted my love for you, even in the worst of those times. Some of our most tender moments actually have come in the most recent years. Two years ago when you and Stephen rushed out here to be with me in the hospital you cradled me in your arms as I cried, and called me your "beautiful baby boy". I was afraid, I didn't want to die and two days earlier the world was moving along normally, and then this. So here you were, what -- 72? cradling me in your arms like a child. : It meant the world to me Dad. : I'm doin okay now, and really have been. I'm not afraid. I'm in good spirits and I really love my life. And I have no regrets with you -- I told you this in January. I believe that you know how much I love you. You probably don't know how much you mean to me, and to so many other people. : Honestly, I didn't really understand -- at a deep level -- what you mean to so many people whose lives you've touched. You would be amazed at what happened with the website. I don't know if they have an internet connection where you are now, but who knows. AOL's everywhere. : You were a father to so many people but instead of making me jealous, it just makes me glad, and so proud for me to know that my Dad was someone so very special. : Happy Father's Day Dad.