On the subject of lost and found

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see."

If you have read this blog before, you will notice there is a new title picture. It was taken about two years ago on a beach on Seabrook Island, South Carolina at about 8 PM or so. There was just enough light to get an exposure, but I wanted to do something a little different. 

There I am standing on the beach, but you see another me, seemingly happier, striding away with a smile on my face. Smiles at that time were at a premium, but the photography was what I did to keep myself occupied and detached for a while. A couple of miles up the street, my Dad was laying on his death bed.

The pictures I took on that trip had a life of their own. They were images taken through the eye of someone who wanted to escape from reality. The late night colors... the multiple images... the inanimate subjects were an examination on where my life was, where it was then, and where it would go in the future.

So, in the moments just after dinner, when there was nothing to do for my dad, while the hospice workers did their work, while my sister detached in her own way, I went to the beach. It was in that same ocean that my mom's ashes were spread just a few years earlier. The twilight - the sunset on an Eastern beach with a western view, was the perfect atmosphere for taking a trip to find meaning in a time with no meaning, with every meaning. A walk of consciousness if you will.

Sometimes to walk toward the future, you have to come to grips with the present.

It was on this beach, at this time, that I realized youth, as I knew it, was a thing of the past. I was about to be "an orphan." I was about to become the patriarch of the family. It scared the hell out of me. At the same time, I was not fearful. 

My Dad had lived a wonderful life. He was, in every sense of the word, my hero. I looked up to him in every way, even though I would not consider our relationship close until I was out of college. We weren't distant, we just weren't close.

He had spent his life preparing me for this time. "Be a man," he said. "Be a gentleman," he clarified. It was all the advice I needed. It was so simple. 

My dad died two years ago today, or at least I think it was today. I don't know. I don't want to know. He died at 1:47 AM, which, for reasons only known to him, my mom and God, was probably close for the perfect time for him to go. 

I do miss him, but when I go back and look at the pictures from that time, as I did for some reason today, I get a sense that he never left.

Good night, Dad.

Yours truly,

Johnny Blogger