"Find Your Boat"

Cancer was the only storm the clouds didn't warn us about.....




Getting ready to move, I was sorting your things today. So many folders of papers with notes, appointments, invoices, pencil-written contracts on cigarette packs. I found a letter, folded in four, and the words "my sarah" double underlined. It was one of my letters mixed in with your morphine slips and unfilled prescriptions...and I just know you intended me to find it. It was the last letter I'd written you, the one where I told you about my depression; the end of my relationship with Julie, falling out of love, and how lost I was. You'd written notes within the lines, in response to mine. I nearly crumbled when I read your reply to my admittance that I'd fallen out of love with Julie: "You got guts, girl."
And then, at the end, in bold letters you told me "find your boat."

Find my boat, Dad. I hear you. Find what sustains me. Find peace that exists without anyone else. Find happiness and worth in my own creation. Find a home. Create my destiny and take pride in what I know is mine, is right, has meaning.

Thank you, Dad. Those 3 words may actually keep me alive, relentless in a storm. Never, ever give up on a dream. Thank you.


(But, god, oh god, how I do miss you still. I haven't stopped falling 'up'.)