I've had a dent in the back of my car for the past 7 years. Nothing serious. It just defined who I was.
After receiving the news about my father's sudden death at my in-laws house in Ohio, my father-in-law found the first flight back home so I could be with my mom. My husband, on the other hand, drove from Ohio to Connecticut with two little boys. At the time they were four and two. It took him 2 days and plenty of Heavenly guidance, but he made it. He pulled into the driveway at my mother's house and my mom took the kids into the house immediately. My husband was still sitting in the car. When he finally got out, he just hugged me and cried. Yes, my father had died, but his friend had died as well. A man he looked up to, respected and who understood him even better than his own family did. He was gone. Or so we thought...
After composing himself, my husband went into the house and I was left to unpack the car. To make it easier, I decided to back it into the driveway and unload into the garage. As I backed up, I hit something. We were all out of our minds as it was and here I was backing into something in the black of the night in the middle of winter. It was my father's stump grinder. If you don't know by now, he was a lumberjack. All of his equipment was still in the driveway and the garage. Still fresh with hydraulic oil and wood chips. Brand new car, brand new dead dad and brand new dent... life has a way of happening and we get to make sense of it. It can be fantastically ironic sometimes.
That dent was a gift from my father. It was a reminder to me how quickly life can change - How things, people come and go, but feelings last forever. It marked me like a scar after a cut. And, this cut was deep. In good conscious, I could not get it fixed. Sure, I got plenty of quotes and talked about it, but did nothing until now. It was a scar I wore with pride for 7 years. Everyone needed to see it. I needed to see it. It screamed, "This happened in my life and I survived." It said, "This is who I am."
It was time. I don't have any logical reason for why, I just knew it was time to fix it. I kept looking at the dent and how I defined myself, not wanting to let go of that moment in time. It was as if I had a piece of my Dad with me in that dent. Just like bumper stickers on the back of cars that convey how the driver feels about life, abortion, teams or schools ... I used the dent in the same way. But now, that sticker, that dent is inside me. It is part of my cellular structure. I've meditated upon it for the past 7 years without realizing it. That meditation has become a part of who I am.
How odd it is to define ourselves and unconsciously label or limit who we are. How odd it is to have to keep something like a dent for so long and then one day wake up and it's gone. What dents are you wearing? Is it time to smooth them out? The Buddha teaches that "Nothing ever goes away, until it has taught us what we need to know." The struggle of dark and light, good and bad has disappeared. What is left? Love.
My husband hammered it out this week. It's a smooth back-end again and I feel good about it. To the human eye, the dent is gone. That's OK, because it is forever engraved in my heart.
After receiving the news about my father's sudden death at my in-laws house in Ohio, my father-in-law found the first flight back home so I could be with my mom. My husband, on the other hand, drove from Ohio to Connecticut with two little boys. At the time they were four and two. It took him 2 days and plenty of Heavenly guidance, but he made it. He pulled into the driveway at my mother's house and my mom took the kids into the house immediately. My husband was still sitting in the car. When he finally got out, he just hugged me and cried. Yes, my father had died, but his friend had died as well. A man he looked up to, respected and who understood him even better than his own family did. He was gone. Or so we thought...
After composing himself, my husband went into the house and I was left to unpack the car. To make it easier, I decided to back it into the driveway and unload into the garage. As I backed up, I hit something. We were all out of our minds as it was and here I was backing into something in the black of the night in the middle of winter. It was my father's stump grinder. If you don't know by now, he was a lumberjack. All of his equipment was still in the driveway and the garage. Still fresh with hydraulic oil and wood chips. Brand new car, brand new dead dad and brand new dent... life has a way of happening and we get to make sense of it. It can be fantastically ironic sometimes.
That dent was a gift from my father. It was a reminder to me how quickly life can change - How things, people come and go, but feelings last forever. It marked me like a scar after a cut. And, this cut was deep. In good conscious, I could not get it fixed. Sure, I got plenty of quotes and talked about it, but did nothing until now. It was a scar I wore with pride for 7 years. Everyone needed to see it. I needed to see it. It screamed, "This happened in my life and I survived." It said, "This is who I am."
It was time. I don't have any logical reason for why, I just knew it was time to fix it. I kept looking at the dent and how I defined myself, not wanting to let go of that moment in time. It was as if I had a piece of my Dad with me in that dent. Just like bumper stickers on the back of cars that convey how the driver feels about life, abortion, teams or schools ... I used the dent in the same way. But now, that sticker, that dent is inside me. It is part of my cellular structure. I've meditated upon it for the past 7 years without realizing it. That meditation has become a part of who I am.
How odd it is to define ourselves and unconsciously label or limit who we are. How odd it is to have to keep something like a dent for so long and then one day wake up and it's gone. What dents are you wearing? Is it time to smooth them out? The Buddha teaches that "Nothing ever goes away, until it has taught us what we need to know." The struggle of dark and light, good and bad has disappeared. What is left? Love.
My husband hammered it out this week. It's a smooth back-end again and I feel good about it. To the human eye, the dent is gone. That's OK, because it is forever engraved in my heart.
Posts
