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August, it happens every year.

By
August 3, 2024
Musing

A year ago I made a post about significant events that have happened in my life in the month of August.

My father passed away on August 27, 2023.

I am bereft. I have been in mourning. Grief is the old friend waiting by the door.

My father gave me three things that I’ve held close all my life.

The first, he gave me my name. I am an End of Horn. His name is on my birth certificate. He told me about our family and the pride he held in being a descendant of Gall.

I have upheld our name to the best of my ability. Our name is in the alumni rolls of the University of North Dakota, mine next to his, for a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. He was so proud that I attended his alma mater.

I went on to obtain a doctorate. Our name is in the alumni rolls of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution that has stood for 283 years.

I am now pursuing another master’s degree at John Hopkins University. He loved John Hopkins. I never fully understood why. His only response was because John Hopkins knows healthcare. Maybe that was enough. Our name will live on their alumni rolls.

I have published papers. I have presented at conferences. I am an expert in my field of study. Our name is known and will live on. That’s the legacy I have given to my father.

The second, he gave me direction. My father was a typical dad. He was not part of my childhood; he did not raise me. He once told me that he knew I had good grandparents. He knew I was raised well. He never felt the need to intrude or be involved. He spoke highly of my grandparents. He respected them. As such, he left me alone because he knew I would be cared for better than what he could provide. I respected and appreciated that. I know what he did in his life. I know of his past struggles. He would’ve stepped in if he had too, and my life would’ve been much different had that occurred.

When I graduated high school, I was top of my class and won numerous scholarships, but I was also being recruited by the military as I had high testing scores. I was being offered large sign on bonuses. When I told him, he said to me, “I served so you don’t have to.” He served in the Army. He was very proud of his service. He was a combat Veteran and had shrapnel embedded.

Not once had he interfered in my childhood or told my family how to raise me. This direction was the only direction he ever gave me. So, I listened. I accepted my scholarships, and I went to school and obtained an education.

Years later, while I was in graduate school, we discussed his lack of involvement in my childhood and life. It hurt knowing he was not involved but looking back, I am grateful he knew that my mom’s family was good to me. We spoke a lot about my half-siblings and how he viewed raising children.

Lastly, he gave me his truth. He was never a dad to me. He knew it, I knew it. He acknowledged he was my father; he acknowledged his own short comings. Our relationship was never that of parent and child, father-daughter, but more like distant relatives who saw each other every so often. More often our telephone conversations felt like old friends catching up rather than a parent speaking to their child, or daughter speaking to her dad.

I knew my father as much as he allowed me. I respected him. I uphold what he has given me, my life. All that he was is gone but a part of him lives on in me. I am his daughter; I look like him. I’ve been told many, many times I act like him. That includes stubbornness, frankness and an affinity for a little paranoia now and then.

He gave me what he could, and I am grateful. Wherever he is in his journey to the spirit world. I would want him to know, I am okay. I knew of him and his life, but I never knew him. Now, I never will and that’s okay. He taught me the hardest lesson I’ve ever had to learn. Blood isn’t family. Family are the people who nurtured you, taught you, stood by you, believed in you.

I may not have had him as my dad, but I did have uncles who did what he couldn’t. As I mourn the passing of my father, I find myself thinking of my uncles, my mother’s brothers and cousins. They acted as my father figures and words cannot express how much I miss them.

I have your name and your eyes. I see you when I look in the mirror. I am my father’s daughter. Thank you, dad. I have a good family. May you continue to rest peacefully.

The last day of 2023…

By
December 31, 2023
Musing

This year has been an interesting year. I lost my father at the end of August. Losing a parent is an intellectual exercise until it isn’t. For some, the loss is expected. For me, I wasn’t prepared. It was an unexpected loss. The most difficult part about the loss wasn’t going through the grief and mourning. It was finding an answer to the question, “How are you?”

How do you explain that feeling of profound loss? How do I explain the loss of my origin? The only explanation I could give was, my origin, where I came from, was gone. I felt rudderless. I felt lost in the ether. Untethered. My parents gave me a sense of origin. I could look at them then myself and say, “That’s where I come from. That’s my nose, my eyes, my smile.” I could see the features of my face in my father. That’s where I came from. I’ve been told countless times how I look like my father. Now he’s gone. What does that mean to me? I am still figuring that out.

This year was also the year I came home to Colorado. I cannot express in words my love for Colorado. This is it, this is home. I’ve searched for a long time to find the place where I felt like I never want to leave. I used to be jealous of those who knew where their home was. I searched far and for so long. I grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That’s the home of my childhood. But my home. The home of my life, and the days to come. That was an unknown for so long. I used to hate Denver, Colorado. It reminded me of my uncle who passed 20 years ago. Now, those memories no longer hurt. Perspective gained through life experience and time helped me to see past the hurt of the loss of my uncle to what I love about Colorado.

There’s a song, “Coming Home (Oregon)” by Mat Kearney that expresses how I feel about coming home to Colorado. Especially the lyric, “I’m coming home to the place that I remember, back to the land of my first love…” That’s my theme for home. It’s all about love. It’s but one of a few songs expressing how I feel about Colorado. I love Colorado. This is home. I will leave it, periodically, but I will always come home. During my homecoming, I will listen to my playlist about Colorado and be thankful that I am finally home.

In these last few hours remaining of 2023, I am reminded of so many wonderful experiences this year encompasses. Far too many to write out but I can say this, I never expected to grow old. The gift of trauma, you see. A sense of foreshortened future, that’s what it’s called. But I’ve lived far longer than I expected. Maybe I make it to my 50’s, even 60’s. Heck, maybe even 70’s. That’ll be something. For right now, I am happy to be where I am. I am home. I still don’t have things figured out but who does?

Happy New Year! See you in 2024.

Grief & Loss

By
August 29, 2023
Musing

I was thinking about a quote from Doctor Who today, “Immortality isn’t living forever. That’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying.” I grew up in a large family. Lots of grandmas and grandpas, aunts, and uncles with loads of cousins. Over the course of my life, I have lost many family members. I wonder if the day will come where I will be the only one left. That is the reality of coming from a large family. It’s an eventuality. When I was younger, I knew, intellectually, that losing family was going to happen. Over the course of my life as more and more people passed on, it became reality. It wasn’t a reality I was prepared for.

Then again, how do you prepare for that eventuality? You really can’t. You don’t know how the loss will affect you. It happens to quickly and you’re left blind-sided. Sometimes, you do see it coming but even then, it’s not what you expected. I am not sure which is worse, sudden, or eventual.

What grief and loss has taught me is that the grief doesn’t go away. It’s not like one day you wake up and you forget. The loss isn’t there anymore. That’s now how life goes. One day you wake up and the loss doesn’t feel so achy. The absence is still there. That absence is what is prevalent. They’re gone and there is nothing you can do about it. Things happen and they’re not there. You find yourself wanting to talk to them, wanting to share a moment but they’re gone. They miss so much.

After a while you come to a place where you keep them alive in your thoughts. In this way, they’re never far but they’re never here. That’s the conundrum.