18/07/2025
I still miss my dad.
It was not possible for me to take care of my father during the last years of his life. He was not alone, though; my brother and his family were blessed with caring for him all the way to the end. When he died, I hadn’t had a chance to visit him for 14 years.
Having prevented a parent’s su***de when I was 16 - and being a middle child - all I ever wanted was to take care of my family… forever. Through a twist of fate, I had to leave them and come here. For years, I hoped to return but life didn’t work out that way.
I missed my sisters so much, I would often watch Little Women (the movie with Winona Ryder) to make me feel better.
Over the years, I sought substitutes for my birth family in all the various communities I ended up being adopted into. And then groups I founded for one reason or another filled that need.
But people come; people go. Some return. Some don’t. Some pass away. Change always happens. Nothing stays the same.
It’s like the weather. How often do we wish on a beautiful day that the weather would just stay that way forever? But it is the nature of weather to change.
However, among all the people I have come to call, not just my friends, but my spiritual family, there is one group who have consistently made me feel the most supported - US military veterans.
When I attended the Salute To Veterans And Military dinner-show recently, many of them greeted me as one of their own, as family. My friend, the host, considers me his goddaughter.
At one point, everyone at the party was led to sing along to the song ‘Lean On Me…’
I was so surprised when my other friend, a former Navy captain, came to stand next to me. I asked what he was doing and he replied, matter-of-factly, “leaning on you.” No one has ever stood beside me like that before. Then his wife (who is a breast cancer survivor like me) flanked me on the other side. I was so touched.
As we sang, with arms around one another, swaying and moving in rhythm, it reminded me of the one time ages ago when, during boot camp, after going through the gas chamber, my company of female recruits and I linked arms and sang together in solidarity…
What a strange turn in life that among my best friends now - and ever - are Vietnam war veterans. As a child and teenager growing up on the other side of the world, knowing only Rambo and what the movies showed, I never imagined it.
But the Love of this special group of people goes a long way towards making up for that old wound of having sacrificed my birth family and home to do the work I was born to do here in this, my adopted land - the native land of my husband and children. And so I try to take care of the people here the way I wish I could my parents and siblings so far removed from me by too many years lived physically apart.
It may sound bittersweet but it takes experiencing the stark contrast between opposites to truly appreciate life’s most profound truths.
