This morning I signed the papers.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long, I’ve been putting it off for almost a solid year. In my head I feel like I should just be over it… move on or through it and just pull the trigger. Why has it taken me so long to finalize my dad and stepmother’s burial at sea? I want to give a flippant, “I don’t know”, but in my heart I do.
Of course I do.
You see, for those who know me well, they know that my childhood was one that should be left in the past. I won’t bore you with the details as I’ve shared them all in therapy and for all intensive purposes I’ve left that damage there and moved on. I no longer need to be defined by those who have gone before me, their bad decisions, their lack of compassion or their humbling shortcomings. I work everyday to move forward to define myself, to live in the moment and to love as hard as I can.
That being said, my parents were human. They made mistakes greater and/or lesser than I do now as a parent myself. I have a different view of them as an adult then that of being a child when I had no say and didn’t understand how difficult it is just being an adult. When you’re a kid, you have the world of right and wrong being drilled into you. As an grownup you are shocked by how many gray areas there are just waiting to kick you in the ass.
(my dad at 3 with is father :)
So I’ve chosen forgiveness.
In choosing to forgive I’ve released the pain and damage my father’s affair had on my mother, my sisters and I. I have chosen to forgive the violence that was once as well known in my family as my beautiful children’s faces are to me. I have chosen to forgive the abandonment that has haunted me in adulthood and has affected the most important decsions of my life. I am unwilling to allow my past to control my life or hold my future hostage.
In choosing forgiveness, I can acknowledge the gratitude I feel for my past because it has shaped the woman I have become.
So you see, I am releasing and burying more than my father and my stepmother next week. I am relinquishing the destruction they have participated in and giving them to the sea where they can again return to the Earth, become one with the wholeness of life and be at peace and love together.
RIP