So I'm going to get down right personal tonight.
After all, if you can't share your most intimate secrets with millions of strangers on the web, then who I ask. Who?
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my father's death.
He was not young, 67, but certainly not old.
He was the happiest man I ever knew, and probably also the most passionate. For those of you who happen to know me in person, I wonder if this might possibly remind you of someone?
Anyway, I lost him, in Russia, thanks to under-funded and under-staffed hospitals.
I was living in Pittsburgh at the time and I by the time I found out he was sick, it was too late for me to go and see him.
I never got to say goodbye.
Some idiot once asked me if I didn't think that he would have been ok had he been in the US or Sweden when he got sick.
Probably.
But he wasn't.
He was in Russia, teaching English, free of charge, at a university. You see, they are so poor over there, that they can not afford to pay their staff, and my dad, having been a teacher most of his life, really thought that sucked. So off he went, and I know he was a great success. I know because a roll of film that was returned to us along with my father's corpse, shows pictures of him surrounded by smiling students. My dad, a glass of vodka in his hand (when in Rome...)and his eyes staring intently into the camera, a bit tired looking but happy all the same. Happy to be in a new place, with so much culture and history, and happy to be making a difference. In those pictures of him and his students, he always looked so proud.
I know that look so well because it is one that I was lucky to have basked in for 30 years.
He was always so proud of me that when I think back, it makes my heart break. Sitting here, now, without a job or even a place to really call home, the pride he always felt for me is both tormenting and comforting.
He is the reason I have never been afraid to try new things. His trust in my ability is what has brought me around the world and back, into a marriage and out of a divorce through college and 12 years of paintball.
He is the man who has always told me to follow my heart no matter where it might take me.
So thanks to him, I have lived and loved in the strangest places.
I have followed my heart, and had it broken, from Sweden to Chang Mai and never once have I thought of slowing down and not sharing my life and my love with the people I meet along the way.
Perhaps now, at the age of 32, I should know better, but then again, perhaps not.
The last time I saw my father, was pretty much like any other night. We argued about something stupid and trivial, we drank a good wine and we danced the foxtrot.
2 weeks later he was gone.
The doctors I have spoken to tell me he felt no pain and that he was in a coma when he slipped away.
I still wonder if he was afraid.
I still wish I could have said goodbye.
That portrait of him ...
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certainly does remind me of you, both larger than life characters who fearlessly go anywhere and do anything!
It sounds like if he hadn't stayed in Russia he wouldn't have enjoyed his life as much. Better to life and die then waste away somewhere in the US, feeling useless as he was attached to state of the art medical gadgets.
So don't feel bad no matter what my fellow Americans suggest to you.
Reading between the lines it sounds like things aren't going well - I hope they turn around and you meet someone even more magical :-).
D