When I was a kid my sister and I would travel with my Dad and his second wife, my stepmother Jean, to Sudbury to visit his sister Mary and any other family members who happened to be around. My Aunt Mary lived on Lake Ramsey, and we would sit on the dock and watch the trains wind around the rocks as they headed for the station. These were the summers of my youth, the summers that become ideals in one's mind.
The Big Nickel is Sudbury's main attraction, and it was also my Dad's hometown. For me to speak of Sudbury is to channel my Dad's experiences, because the place always had more stature as an important part of his life than any secondary revelation that I might have.
This past Saturday we returned my Dad to Sudbury, into the ground. A post-human addition to its mineral landscape, perhaps again to become crushed, melted, compacted and synthesized into another geological possibility. It has happened a billion times before, and will continue as do all great cycles.
I can't help feeling that I am just a passenger to this whole process of watching my Dad move on. I feel like it is not happening to me, but that I am supposed to witness it. And yet I'm also leaving behind an older version of me in the process. It's kind of scary because I don't know if I'm ready to be something else, something bigger than I am now, something older, something more. But I'm not running away from it either.
Rest in peace Dad. Thanks for the push.
I am a passenger - I will not remain, I actually know that I'm not much, a passing star, a fleeting moment in the life of the universe, and yet, my passing on this earth with what I might have left of thoughts, deeds, creation, hopes and desires, will stay on... quite a mystery! Thanks for your loyalty to this man who was your dad for such little time and who is now...???
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