6 weeks ago I was in Park City, Utah with the love of my life, my family-not-so-quite-yet-in-law and my furry son of all but 4 years old; he’s a fluffy dog, not a ‘real-boy’ to his frequent own dismay.
We didn’t have a care in the world other then the falling snow and Christmas, impending.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
Since I’ve been around the age of 20, some 15 or more years, we’ve had an additional member of the family. Christmas. New Years. Easter. All the holidays really. In fact he never left. He was never invited either. Yet, there we were, managing his presence the best we could. It was awkward.
All these years later and after a refreshing Christmas with those others-from-another’s family that I happily call my own, it dawned on me.
Leaving this frosty mountain town and descending to North America’s largest mountain top basin I’d assumed the temperature would drop, the snow would ease. Yet here we were. The snow from each passing anything throwing its tires’ backwash high atop our little hatchback; her dark parts striving to match her light with their salinity. The windscreen wipers too dry and cold to make any difference than further reducing the glass’ visibility. At 55MPH.
As the snowfall seemed to worsen as we drove further away from our former altitudes I couldn’t help but become aware of the metaphor presenting itself. Who I had yet to face.
The metaphor finally wore off after having made its point and onward home we went through the ever warming Winter desert climates approaching Los Angeles.
Only mere days later, I was off. Away from my new life in America. Away from my beautiful little family of: One Amazing Woman, One Tibetan Terrier and Five Cats (most of which, proud ‘Foster-Fails’). Yes. Five. I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I’m allergic! #TrueStory
One caring Perrier airport shuttle, then a heartbreaking goodbye, two plane flights divided by an unnecessary hiatus spent struggling with Fiji’s airport wi-fi conundrum and endless hours of unrest later… I arrived in Brisbane. A quick shuffle through Australian Customs as an Australian with (finally!) an ePassport – and I was out. It felt like some kind of birthing, into a new experience that I wasn’t sure of; some new reality.
I heard the old familiar whistle. The one he’d copped slack from people when we were kids, as if he was calling us like dogs, yet through endless events, crowds, busy places, weddings, parties, anythings – we’d ALWAYS come the first-time he’d blow out that old familiar whistle. Then…
There he was.
The wind was knocked out of me.
Almost as much as it seemed to have been knocked out of him.
There. He. Was.
…
Later regretting but at the time unable to control, I walked slower than I had intended, a result, no doubt, of the endless effort I was putting into holding it all in as I approached him; weak, frail, in a wheelchair… My Father.
And his stupid unwanted friend that we’d endured the company of for too many years; his cancer.
…
This man, my hero; my father taught me so many things.
Least of all was that every one of us is amazing. In some very real way each of us is unique through our choices. And is it not true that each and every one of us, just as he, are to leave this world with nothing but those choices determining the truest content of our character?
So, let’s share some stories of choices, of character, of pain, of love, of life. Let’s give some love by letting others share theirs.
I’m truly thrilled to have you along for the ride,
Iain P.F. McDonald.
The Most Amazing People 