The Power of Choice

How often do we truly and deeply contemplate the impact of our day to day choices in the bigger picture of our life, and the lives of those around us?

My dad passed away just a few days ago from heart failure. He was a tough cookie. He had survived cancer, multiple heart attacks in the past, had a pacemaker, but this last heart attack on Christmas Eve was coupled with a stroke and proved to be too much. After a week and a half of fighting, he passed peacefully.

I've spent most of my life - since I was 8 or 9 - without my father. With the exception of the occasional Sunday afternoon visit as a teen, and a couple short bouts of connection in my early adulthood. All points of contact would end the same; he would just kind of go away without a word and no way to get a hold of him. He never stayed. He didn't follow through. The exit door was always a bit too close, and the pain he kept inside was too great,

I suppose.

I didn't know him, really. What made him laugh? What inspired him? What was he good at? How could I know? Why could he get a hold of me now - as he is in the midst of his death, but not ever before.....my 38 birthdays that passed since he left, the birth of my children & grandchild, to celebrate my promotions at work, heck - just for help with a home improvement?

As my heart took everything in at the hospital, all this went through my mind.

It took a few seconds for him to recognize me when I turned the corner into his hospital room. He commented on my white hair and I said, "Yep, I got it from you." Surely, he remembered me with my dark brown hair that he passed on to me (along with my curls, blue eyes and facial features).

While he is gone from this world, I sense him now. I feel his energy as I write. Not the rage and physical abuse I knew as a small child. Not the depression and substance abuse that controlled him for much of his life....But him. His essence. The part of him that is now with Spirit. The Carl that I saw but a few times in my life - once when I was a teen going through tough stuff and he held my hand for the first time. And again when I was in my early 20's going through the unthinkable with my little daughter, where I saw his tears for the first time. The him that came through in the pages of a letter he wrote back to me, almost a decade ago.

The him that shares a common thread with each of us. The him that is love.

It's odd....feel him more closely to me now that he has passed, than when he was Earthside. Perhaps it's because he is free from the pain & regret that weighed him down.

Now, he just is, with nothing in between love & what he is.

In death, I feel, there is a shedding of all that isn't and what remains is all that we truly are....

This past week, I'm pondering the power in choice and how we create our life each day, through our choices.

See, my dad made choices to turn away from the pain instead of face it. He didn't know how to express himself, the good or the hard. He chose to numb - instead of move through it, and that choice eventually turned into something that was much out of his control, and drove further choices.

Choices - big and small - add up to the life we create.

Choice sets up how we experience our lives.

We are the Weaver of our Life, and choice is our thread.

The day leading up to his passing, I received news that they had weaned him from the medicine that was keeping his heart beating. He didn't want his kids there. He didn't want us to see him that way. A sense of finality washed over me.

I sought comfort where I always feel held - Mother Earth. She was drawing me outside, even though it was 10 degrees. I welcomed the sun's warmth on my face while the moon shone high in the sky. It was a reminder of Life's perpetual cycles and felt like a hug.

My sweet husband built me a fire and sat with me. Our Christmas tree was already taken down and awaiting to go back to the Earth, so Tommy started taking branches off and placing them in the fire.

After a few minutes of watching the fire, he beautifully suggested that my dad was like pine -

kind of prickly (my dad was a hardass),

pushes you away if you get too close (he was a lone wolf), only certain things will grow under it because it likes acidic soil (discussed above),

but still a beautiful tree (he was a good person at his core).

Together, we placed pine boughs in the fire in honor of my dad. As I watched the smoke billow up to the sky, it was as if my dad's spirit was releasing bit by bit.

The days leading up to my father's passing, I held space energetically for him. I poured love into it each day.

In the hours before he died, as I sat on my couch folding clothes, I received word they turned off his pacemaker. It would be only hours. I wept.

I went to that energetic space - full of green, white, blue and gold light - and helped him pass.

It was beautiful.

Some say that the dark exists to allow us to fully know the light. While I can't say that I fully grasp this, I do on a certain level. The lessons I will take from how my father lived, and his death will be with me the rest of my life, lighting my path.

Choose to shed the shit that is in between your true essence, and who you are today.

The wisdom gained offers us freedom in exchange for the pain.

Choose to be brave and face the pain to move through it, rather than turn away.

We are weaving either way.

Choose action over distraction.

Where our focus lies, our actions will follow.

Choose to be better,

without judgement of ourselves or others.

Choose to believe there is more than what our eyes can see.

We can perceive much more when we quiet ourselves.

Choose love.

And many more....

Fly free, Dad. I'll see you in the pines.

Thanks for reading.

In coherence,

Ranee