I mostly gave up playing and singing music when my father died

Many people are very superficial and skip over the water of life like water skiers. But, even though I have water skied in the past, I have always tended to be more of a SCUBA Diver or snorkler in my life in regards to life. So, I am a very intuitive feelings person like my mother and yet simultaneously I'm like my father who was a valedictorian of his High School Class in that I am very logical and technical and intellectual when I want to be an it interests me. But, I tend to be very very intuitive and to feel things very deeply all the time. So, when my father passed away when I was 37 I stopped singing and playing music mostly because I just couldn't deal with my emotions when I sang or played. Looking back I see this was a very bad sign in some ways in my life and stopping singing and playing likely helped end my 2nd marriage during the next 9 years.

However, if you can't keep all the pieces of yourself in the same box when someone dies you often can't go on with your life at all. I found life sort of impossible for me after my father died. I think the thing was that my father was always a larger than life charactor in my mother's and my life. He was sort of like a spiritual John Wayne and people either loved or hated my father because he always said what was on his mind to anyone. In other words he was not a diplomat and instead worshipped truth always.

I tried to be like this in my life and found it hurt too many people being so painfully honest all the time. So, I was very relieved when I found Buddhism and found that kindness was superior to everything in life. Though truth is important truth can kill or save a person and it does both equally.

So, as time went on I discovered this about truth and realized that though living one's life cannot exist without enough truth without living a lie, that simply spewing out truth to people often kills them too either metaphorically or physically. So, since I realized only God should kill people I backed off this path of only Truth.

Though I revere truth because without it we all live a lie in our lives I also realize that without kindness everyone dies young. So, I found the path of kindness is the superior path to enlightenment.

People outside my family were very unkind to me growing up and as I watched many people commit suicide because of this unkindness or self destruct by racing cars, taking drugs, having car or motorcycle accidents I saw how this unkindness killed so many of the young people I grew up with and always had.

My father killed with the truth. Was I one of the murders of his truth? Maybe. But somehow I resurrected out of that into my own view of God and the universe and I survived. I loved my father but he was also a disciplinarian and I found I tended to walk away from disciplinarians after that experience growing up. When my father died so did I in many ways and it wasn't until I myself almost died for 7 months that I could put my life in perspective and simply be grateful for every moment of life instead when I was 50. After that I have lived in a constant state of Grace, with every moment on borrowed time bestowed in grace by God for me to do his work here on earth.

I was feeling a lot of internal pain this week after attending a memorial for my wife's stepfather's girlfriend. It was the same location as her mother's memorial 14 years ago now. So, her stepfather's girlfriend was passing on and being sent away in a memorial in the same place 14 years later and I found this dredged up a lot of feelings I didn't know how to deal with. When I began to feel dizzy and faint it was my wife who said, "You know the last funeral you attended was your best friend from high school." I said, "Of course, that's it! I couldn't even speak for about 5 hours before that military funeral because I was so angry and upset. So, my dizziness and feeling faint subsided when I realized the problem. Then later this week I was upset with my wife and wasn't acting right and my daughter who is 24 was on the phone with me from Portland and said, "Dad. don't you remember you hadn't been told by doctors that you weren't going to die yet when you went to that funeral in 1999?"

So, once again I could let that go and realize I was processing impossible things from the past and none of this really was in the present. Then yesterday I began softly singing songs I had sung in my late teens and early 20s to survive those times then and tears came to my eyes and I found myself healed on deep levels. I think I need to start singing and playing music more again. It's time!