Things my father taught me

We laid my father to rest yesterday.  He fought cancer for six years and leaves behind a family who will miss him every day.

My father was an amazing, strong man.  He worked full time through chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.  When doctors here gave up on treatment for him, he possessed the bravery to travel alone to China to undergo further treatment.  That treatment gave him eighteen months of life, time in which he saw his first two grandchildren born.

I’ve been thinking this morning about some of the lessons that Dad taught me.

Find what matters to you and pursue it, ideally as a job

My father loved his work in insurance, enough that we often speculated that retirement would frustrate him.  As it turns out, he doesn’t need to find that out now.  He worked full time up until before his last trip to China.

I know what matters to me.  Words and worlds.  I want to be able to create worlds that give meaning to other people’s lives, that make people feel less alone, make them see magic in a grey world, and give them voice.  My father had an amazing work ethic – he worked hard, and achieved all of the goals he set himself.  He made what seemed, at the time, several radical decisions in his career, but they always paid off for him.  He always just knew.

I will take this lesson and apply it thus: I don’t know how much time I have.  No one does.  And so I will work as hard as I can to achieve my goals as soon as possible.  There’s no excuse to not write something just because it seems daunting.  And no reason to avoid a genre because of market etc.  I will write what has meaning for me.  (As an aside, I wrote “him” the first time there instead of “me”.  Yeah.)

Family matters

And that means family both of blood and choice.  My father didn’t tolerate fools, and that included family members who didn’t act as such.  He greatly valued the members who did, and treated his friends as though they were family.  We had a private funeral, but we estimate that if it had been public, there would easily have been 2-300 people there.  How many people can say that?

I’ve come through this really valuing my family and friends.  I’m lucky to have a wonderful immediate family, and to have married into a family equally as wonderful.  And I am blessed by the presence in my life of my son.  I know how much I valued the time I spent with Dad as a kid, and I want for my son to have as many happy memories of his childhood as I do.  That means finding a balance between work and him.  And my time with him alone is limited – in four years he’ll be at school and I’ll lose a lot of time with him.

Make the most of it.  Because we never know what’s around the corner.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, so best enjoy it.

This is how my father signed off his emails when he was in China.  It’s good advice and we all should heed it.

I will live, for you, Dad.  And you would be proud.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.