Beginning Again
this New Year’s
Mosquito Lake, Ohio
**trigger warning – I discuss death and suicide in this piece**
In Zen Buddhism, they call it Shoshin: the beginner’s mind. Others call it the mind of a child; wide open, filled with wonder, always starting over, and not yet clouded by judgement. The idea is simple, an expert mind is crowded by what it already knows. A beginner’s mind makes room for what it doesn’t. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few” (Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind).
I met my birth father when I was 25. When you’re adopted and meet your biological parent as an adult, beginner’s mind isn’t optional, it’s a requirement. You’re not quite sure what you will find. You don’t know who you will be to one another.
There was an immediate recognition between us when we met. We had wildly different backgrounds and our lives and lifestyles could not have been more dissimilar, but there was much that brought us together. We had the same health issues. We liked the same foods and were often preparing the same thing for dinner on opposite ends of the country. We laughed at the same jokes, thought about the same things, and could spend hours on the phone.
My father was also an addict. An alcoholic. A self-proclaimed wanderer who had lived all over the country, mostly hitchhiking his way across the states. He spent a lot of time in jail. And me? I was a church-going mother of three living in the Utah suburbs. In many ways, this taught me how to love. How to approach someone with love and acceptance and let go of labels and judgement. There were long stretches of his sobriety and years of addiction. Through it all, iI loved him, and he believed in me without conditions. One of his last texts reminded me that I was the best thing that ever happened to him.
In his later years, my father settled down, returning to his hometown in the backwoods of Ohio. He stayed in one place and tried to stay out of trouble with the law. Each time I visited, we took a driving history tour of the places he had lived as a child. We reminisced. We visited his parents’ graves. Both of us are annoying morning people, and on visits we walked a few miles every morning at his favorite park, always at dawn.
During our talks on the phone and on the Ohio walks, I became an expert on my father. I knew his gait, his crazy stories, and the unique way he made his way in the world. Without noticing, my beginner’s mind shifted and familiarity replaced newness. I had heard all of the stories and nodded my head as he retold them. Our relationship moved and shifted. He became the person I called first. He never encouraged me to do better simply because he already believed I was doing it. Absolutely amazed by every little thing I did, his advice was always to be unapologetically me.
Last year, he called after he was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic liver cancer. We worried together. I cried. Still, he insisted he was fine. He was surprised to have lived this long. Years before any diagnosis, he ended our phone calls like it might be the last. “I sure love you honey,” he’d say, “and just in case I don’t talk to you again...” I’d laugh and tell him to stop and that I’d talk to him again next week. And then we’d repeat that entire conversation ending on the next phone call like actors reading parts. I sure love you honey, and just in case – talk to you next week Dad. That lasted for about six months before I insisted that he stop. I refused to say goodbye before it was time.
Shoshin teaches that expertise can be a closed room. When we believe we already know what’s happening, we stop asking questions. We stop looking again and going deeper. We mistake familiarity for caring. Dying of cancer, my father insisted that he was okay, and I believed him. Not because I didn’t care about him, but because my mind filled in the blanks and I accepted a version of reality that was easiest for me to hold. The one where he wasn’t suffering. And I honored the rules that we had set in our relationship. He was the father. I was the child. I turned to him for help. He refused to need mine.
My father chose the day of his own death and died by suicide in early November. He left a note saying that he was in too much pain. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for the aftermath of his death. My daughter and I flew out to Ohio and cleaned out his apartment. It was horrendous. We scattered his ashes at the lake and closed his accounts. For weeks, I woke up startled and crying. A new day was starting without my father. While I honor my father’s decision, I know that there is a cost to dying this way.
Losing a parent has a way of shattering expertise. It returns us, whether we want it to or not, back to the beginning of everything.
Heart wide open again, I’m starting over. I don’t pretend anymore that I know what my father was going through, or what moment finally tipped the balance, or why we didn’t talk about it. So, I sit with my grief. When people ask how I’m doing, I tell the truth, “I’m lousy,” I say, or “I miss my dad.” I cry. I hug too long. I feel. I listen a little closer. I let myself have regrets without blame. I let myself try again. I let myself not know. I’ve become more unrestrained in expressing love.
A relationship with my father taught me that unconditional love doesn’t believe in outcomes. It doesn’t wait for the perfect set of circumstances. It doesn’t demand certain actions. It is there, a loving constant. The ultimate do-over, always starting anew.
As the year turns and we tell each other about fresh starts and resolutions, I feel as though I am beginning again. Remembering that there is always more to learn, I’m practicing days without my father. Learning to believe in others, the way my father believed in me. And in his honor, let me tell you, I sure love you honey. Just as you are.
