July 10th—Twenty-Three Years After Your Death
Last year's letter
Ten days ago marked the two-year anniversary of the 18 Uncles journey. Launched from a cafe in Prague with no idea where it’d take me, I now sit in a public library in A Coruna, Spain, writing, editing, and attempting to keep this ship sailing.
Life is very, very good these days, filled with North Atlantic swims and Venezuelan arepa dinners. I was in Barcelona last week, a city that changed my life, and it was magical biking around tree-covered streets, watching the sun rise over the calm Mediterranian from a paddle board, and gorging on vegan junk food. I’m heading stateside in ten days, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking. There’s a lot to do before, during, and after that three-week trip home--I hope to see you.
Life is good, but it moves fast, and the theme of the year—and the project at large—is discipline. I’m excited to announce that I recently started a travel writing job for a online media company, my first official, steady paychecks from writing. I surely wouldn’t have gotten the position without the 18 Uncles experience and writing samples as a resume booster. So for that, I thank you all for supporting the journey. Doors are beginning to open up.
My publishing guy Peter and I have been sending the book proposal to professionals for feedback, and we’ve gotten a positive response. But there are always tweaks and notes, and it keeps getting polished.
In meantime, it’s back to the theme of discipline. As one of my writer friends always likes to say, “Butts in chairs, Mitch. Butts in chairs.” There is no alternative. Hopefully, we’ll have a manuscript complete in around six months. For there, who knows how long until publishing day, but it’d be nice to have it out near the three-year anniversary.
It’s another July 10th. Twenty-three years since my father passed. I thought about hiding in a park and writing another letter but got caught up with deadlines for pieces on Italian islands in the Adriatic and Koli National Park in Finland.
So today, last year’s letter from my first visit to his headstone.
Thank you all so much for following the journey.
I finally visited your headstone today, Dad. It’s weird to think I was only eleven the last time I stood there in the Waasa Cemetery. But I don’t remember it… or your funeral at all. I have one vague blurry flash of crying in the car, but beyond that, those days are not cataloged in my memory.
I’m not sure why I waited twenty-two years. I kind of wanted it to be a special occasion. I wrote a poem back in college about a man visiting his father’s grave for the first time with his new wife and a baby on the way—imagining I’d do something like that.
But I guess this 18 Uncles journey is as good a reason as any.
It was way smaller than I remember—the cemetery, I mean, always assuming it was bigger than a soccer field. I wanted to go early in hopes of having the place to myself, but the July sun was already shining over the trees when I got there, the grass still wet with dew, and the caretaker was there with the shed open, and two cars were parked under some shade in the back, a Catholic priest and two men standing by the bumpers. I parked on the side of the thin grassy unpaved road that loops through, grabbed my notebook, and needed something to sit on, so took a plastic TJ Maxx reusable grocery bag that had a desert scene on it, a sun, some cactuses, and those festive colorful Mexican banners strung between them.
I had no idea where your stone was. I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed by that. It had been twenty-two years, and I didn’t want to ask Ma. So, as the sun beat down and crickets sang from the forest edge, I wandered through the rows with my notebook and bag and scanned the stones, not surprised to see mostly Finnish last names: Kinnunnen, Oikarinen, Niemi, Ojala, Kempainen, Nuottila, Rantamaki, lots of Karpinens, Frantti, Parkinen, Anderson, Kuivanen, Pyorala, Eskuri, and a Karvola couple who were both born in the 1860s and passed in the 1930s.
Seeing dates like that always has me thinking of how quickly life shifts from one generation to the next, time whips by, the last names stay, but each and every one of us is slowly forgotten.
That thought can seem morbid, but it’s true.
That thought can seem morbid, but it can also be liberating.
Because nobody will remember our mistakes, right? The things we think are so important now, the things we lose sleep over, and the little and big things we fight over will all disappear in time.
How much did you know about your own father, Dad? How much did you know about your grandfather? Do you know what mistakes they made when they were thirty? Which job they might have gotten fired from, if they squabbled with their siblings, or some bad investment they may have made? How much did you know about your great-grandfather?
It’s a reality of life that in three generations most of us aren’t much more than faded pictures, a few first-hand memories, and a headstone. Again, that can seem depressing, but it can also set us free… free to live, dream, take the leap, and carve our own path.
Because even if we fail, it won’t take long before nobody remembers anyway.
So why not go for it?
That’s where my mind was as I looked back and forth between the rows, and finally came upon your stone… well, yours and Ma’s stone. I forgot it was standing and thought it lay flat on the ground. And I forgot Mom’s name was already there with a matching heart, a ring interconnected with yours, and her birth date with an empty space below…
I sat down on my bag in the shrubby grass and admired the brightly painted stones that are placed at the base. There’s a beautiful sunset on one, a rainbow on another, and I got emotional as I read the expressions, “Miss You Dad, Always Love You, and The Best Dad” written on a few. My eyes welled up, and a few tears slid into the dewy grass, but it wasn’t the sobbing I thought might come—or the sobbing twenty-two years probably deserved.
I tried writing some poetry but the black flies kept buzzing my ankles as more and more cars pulled in. They parked next to the others, and I realized a crowd was gathering behind me for a funeral, exchanging hellos, seemingly pretty cheerful.
Not wanting to be the guy sitting alone in the grass fifteen feet away from a burial, after thirty minutes, I stood up, picked up my bag, and walked back to the car, lingering in the quiet driver's seat for a few minutes before slowly leaving the cemetery.
I believe everything happens for a reason. So I guess wasn’t meant to get the few hours alone in Waasa with your headstone I had hoped for. And that’s okay.
I haven’t visited in twenty-two years because I know I don’t need to be there to see you…to feel you…to have you with me. All I have to do is stop…and breathe…and you’re there.
Funnily enough, Dad, being a vegan-lefty-radical, I think an uncle or two thought I was an atheist.
But you know I’m far from it.
I’ve always believed in a Higher Power. As one of my tattoo quotes says, “Life is eternal, Love is immortal, and Death is only a Horizon. And a horizon is nothing but the limit of our eyes.”
I see Death as more a transition than anything. And that’s why I don’t fear it… I don’t fear it intellectually anyway. Maybe if I were staring it in the face I’d be afraid. I guess I won’t know for sure until I get there.
But I do believe we go to a Better Place.
And so Death can have the aura of a Sweet Release.
Life can sometimes feel like an endless cycle of heartbreak, pain, never-ending work, stress, and worry… and I don’t think those are factors in The Afterlife.
But as is the duality of everything in the Universe, the other side of the coin is that we get to Be. Here. Now.
We get to listen to a beautiful song for the first time, fall head over heels in love, eat tacos around the table with family, take piping hot saunas then get the rush of jumping into cool water, play pickup baseball in the front yard with cousins, laugh uncontrollably, tattoo our aunties, and travel to corners of the world so divinely gorgeous words or pictures couldn’t begin to do them justice.
We get to Live.
And hopefully, live to the fullest.
And hopefully a life True to Ourselves.
That date: July 10th, 2002, for some of our old religious faith, was the fork in the road that led our family down a path of Eternal Damnation.
For us, it was the crash that ripped open a gaping hole to the world… tore down all the walls that then needed to be rebuilt… to rebuilding a life lived as our true selves… leaving behind the judgment and Puritanical rules that, for me, never fit that comfortably in the first place.
As you know, Dad, one of my other tattoos is from the book by Bronnie Ware called, The Five Regrets of the Dying. A palliative care nurse, after a career with people on their deathbed, she wrote about the most common regrets.
Number one: I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I don’t know when my day will come… When I’ll get to join you in Heaven. I don’t know if I’ll be paralyzed with fear or go gently into that goodnight.
But I do know that I’m living a life true to me, making one million mistakes, worrying too much about the future, not appreciating those I love as much as I should, and generally stumbling along in the fog.
But I’m getting better at being human.
And the path is getting clearer.
And I know you’ve been with me every step of the way.
And I hope I’m making you proud.
I don’t know when I’ll visit your stone again. I know I won’t wait another twenty-two years.
And I know I don’t need to be there to see you…to feel you…to have you with me. All I have to do is stop…and breathe…and you’re Here.
I love you.
Your son,
Mitchy
I have to say that you are a talented writer, you should do well with your new job.