Honoring Father’s Day

My dad passed away in isolation during the covid pandemic in a dementia unit at a nursing home. At the time that he passed, he still had moments and flashes of the man we all remembered and the father I knew. He worked his entire life to educate himself, and emphasized education with all of my brothers and I as one of the most important things we could do for ourselves and others in this life. I went to school and trained in acupuncture and as a doctor of traditional East Asian medicine to work in hospice and palliative care. No one else supported this somewhat unusual and off the radar approach. But he did.

My last year of school he had gotten so sick he was no longer able to hide his symptoms and things slid downhill both quickly and at a snail’s pace of suffering. I wasn’t able to be with him at the end, which given all he did to help me be others at their end has been bittersweet. I miss his quiet listening, his strength. The support he gave while not giving any answers and letting you learn lessons for yourself. But in the work I try to do, I remember him everyday. And what he made possible for me just by being.

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