My dad died last year, as I shared in Cairns a couple of issues ago. I think about him a lot. A month ago, I realized that almost every time I thought about him, I was thinking about the last few months of his life, after his injury from falling. Dad would probably hate that. He was such an amazingly autonomous man that those last few months of significant dependence were hard for him and he would hate for them to be the image that I retained from all the years of our being together. And yet those memories dominate because they were the last. Becoming aware of this led me to resolve last week that it is my responsibility to keep alive all the other memories of Dad in his prime. So when thoughts of Dad arise in my mind – and the image is usually of Dad in a wheelchair during those last few months – I am now consciously choosing to actively expand my awareness to other memories. Perhaps conscious decisions like that are part of the process of adjusting to the world flowing on without a loved one.
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