April 4

On this day three years ago my dad, Lark, passed away. As I am filled with thoughts of him today I find that the one comfort I am able to give to people who have lost a loved one is that with time, grief becomes nostalgia...the pedestal is lowered and the person begins to live in your mind and heart again the way they once lived on earth. They become immortal by your ability to talk about them openly and they are reincarnated by your ability to pass on the important things they taught you to other people.
I would like to share with you one of my favorite poems in the entire world. It was written by a contemporary Native American poet named Dick Lourie and is the poem that is recited at the end of the movie Smoke Signals...which is a great movie based on a great book by Sherman Alexie called "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven". I hope it will speak to you the same way it does to me. Thanks guys.

Forgiving Our Fathers: By Dick Lourie

Maybe in a dream: he's in your power

you twist his arm but you're not sure it was

he that stole your money you feel calmer

and you decide to let him go free

or he's the one as in a dream of mine

I must pull from the water but I never

knew it or wouldn't have done it until

I saw the street theater play so close up

I was moved to actions I'd never before taken

maybe for leaving us too often or

forever when we were little maybe

for scaring us with unexpected rage

or making us nervous because there seemed

never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers

for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers

and shall we forgive them for their excesses

of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors

for speaking only through layers of cloth

or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths

saying it to them or not saying it --

if we forgive our fathers what is left