Grief

The greatest sorrow one has to endure is not anything that happens to oneself, at least not directly. One article I once read was that in a survey, most respondents said their greatest sorrow was to lose a parent.

Why, amonst the fears of disease, poverty, disaster, violence, and balloons, would the deepest grief come from the death of a parent? It is because your parents were your guardians, from the very moment you were conceived, and they were your only world.

Even with a father like mine who was not home so often, especially in the later years when he was working out in Sept-Iles and Trois-Rivières for months at a time, it still gave comfort and paternal admiration that he was still working for the betterment of all our lives because he loved us.

In the hospital, we watched this gentle caring man getting pulled away from us, and there was nothing to be done about it. When he died, it felt like part of myself was no longer whole. And it hasn't since then.

That's why on Sunday after church, I crossed the street to the cemetary and I walked almost aimlessly about looking for my father's relatively new monument, took a "shortcut" and lost my way, then finally found it and collapsed in front of it, weeping miserably as I usually do.

I spoke to Sarah on Friday night, about the appropriateness of taking pictures of a tombstone. There was no simple ye or nay, but Sarah had this funny story about Adam Sandler's visit to his father's grave.
His family was planning to go visit his father, and in the Jewish tradition they were to place a stone on top of the grave. Adam had no stone to put, and he voiced his concern with his brother. His brother reassured Adam that he would take care of things. Thus, when the day came, Adam was at the graveside, having his moment, when he saw his brother coming towards him... The brother grabbed a stone off of another grave and gave it to Adam. His justification was, "That guy has so many people who cared enough to put rocks, and he has so many rocks, he won't miss one."

Well, it's funny in a kinda weird way.

Anyway, I took the picture. It's always a nice day when I visit my dad.

---

If I can ever get the stupid f#@$ing program to download off HP's website, I'll be able to upload the photo to my album. Otherwise it'll have to wait until probably next week, before convocation.