Don't fence me in

One of Kame's favorite activities is climbing. Wherever he is, he seems to believe there is something better, something more, on the other side of the obstacles in his way.

Sometimes, I think my determined little terrapin friend has the right idea. Other times, I feel fenced in, trapped, as if I can never escape the choices I've made over the past twenty years. Walls... sometimes they seem unscalable. Fencing me in... holding me back.

Watching Kame climb, I realized that if an awkward little turtle, wearing a heavy shell, laboring away with his short legs and stiff plastron, can manage to get into the amount of mischief Kame manages to find, I should be able to overcome a few inconveniences.

When I was seventeen years old, two weeks before I turned eighteen, my father passed away. Cancer slipped in like smoke, winding its evil way into our lives. I knew, early on, that something was wrong, but I didn't know what. I tried to get him to see a doctor, to talk to Mom about how weak he felt, how sick he was, how he hadn't gotten out of bed much lately, how he was always "sick to his stomach", but Dad... Well Dad was a proud man, and I believe he knew, right from the beginning, that he was dying. He didn't want endless poking and prodding. He wanted a peaceful exit, a quiet walk into that good night.

I... I wanted my dad. I wanted him alive, well, and taking me fishing. I wanted to hear him laugh. I wanted to see him bouncing his grandchildren on his knee. I wanted his hugs... I wanted his approval.

Of course, what I want and what life hands out are quite often two very different things. Dad got his peaceful slide. Mom took care of him with tenderness I'll never forget, and I, well I was like a third wheel, always seeming to be in the way. Regret and hurts and grief piled up, building a wall between me and my hopes for the future that I thought would never come down.

The wall has loomed large lately. I have wanted my father more in this past year than I have in all the twenty he's been gone. In the past, grief was an obstacle, a wall I couldn't climb over. It seemed endless, stretching to the sky.

A character in a movie I love runs off into the distance, measuring the length of a hedge that has suddenly appeared on his turf. "It goes on forever!" he comments, before disappearing into the distance in the opposite direction. "It goes on forever this way too!"

Grief can seem like that, a never-ending wall stopping forward motion.

It is time I climbed the wall. It's time to move forward. Like Kame, I am learning to climb, despite the load I've been carrying, despite everything in my way.

To that end, I've applied to attend SUNY Binghamton's Winter Session, beginning in January. I've also entered NaNoWriMo, a writing challenge which will be in full swing by the time this blog entry is published.

Lesson number four for marriage, and also in life: obstacles are not walls, they are challenges. Life is an obstacle course and we can only truly live if we keep on climbing, keep on growing, keep on moving forward.