The First Dharma Seal

This week has been a lesson in impermanence. On Wednesday, my father had surgery. For the last ten years, he has survived kidney failure, a kidney transplant, diabetes, respiratory problems, and numerous side effects from the myriad medications he must take daily to sustain his life.

We were estranged when he had the transplant almost ten years ago. I was living in Washington, D.C. on hiatus from college trying to heal. The previous year, I was sexually assaulted on my way back to my dorm. It was mid-afternoon... broad daylight. Carrying my purse and my Safeway grocery bags, I allowed myself to be lured from the main street by a stranger who pretended to be a friend. I wasn't badly injured physically, but the mental and emotional wounds would take longer to wrestle and subdue. I suppose I was naieve. I extended the feeling of community I experienced being at a historically Black university to the surrounding community which did not always share my sentiment. Everyone was not my brother (or at least didn't act like my brother)... not that day.

I went to work full time, and I met someone... the man who would become my daughter's father. My father was none to happy that I decided to live with my boyfriend. He said some hurtful things, called me a few names I won't repeat, and we didn't speak for months. On the eve of his surgery, I still had nothing to say. I was too proud and too hurt. Being so far away, I don't think I truly internalized the serious nature of his illness or the risk involved in the surgery. I had been away from home for several years, and I'm sure that I still remembered my father as invincible as he was when I was a child. I certainly didn't think he was going to die. He could've. He didn't.

After my daughter was born, we moved back to Michigan so I could finish college. I lived with my parents. I live with them still. For nearly eight years I have watched my father's health decline. I have watched the man who once towered over me shrink slowly before my eyes. I have forgiven him and myself for everything that strained our relationship in the past and have made a conscious effort to rebuild our relationship. It has not always been easy, but it has been worth it. When I learned about a month ago that he would have to go back into the hospital for surgery, I was scared.

I learned something new about his transplant surgery. When an uncle donated the kidney that extended my father's life, the doctors installed it without removing the kidney that failed. I don't know why they did it that way, perhaps it is standard practice... but when I heard the word transplant, I thought something was going in and something was going out. It didn't work that way. The doctors apparently knew back then that there was a spot on my father's kidney films. They didn't say anything about it to anyone. Over the years, the spot has grown. They don't know what it is and don't want to biopsy it, so they decided to remove the failed kidney so that the spot (if cancerous) would not further threaten my father's well-being.

The surgery was successful. He lies in his hospital bed recovering. I am so grateful. Every time the phone rang last week I thought it was my mother calling to tell me that my father had died.

We cannot find anything that is permanent. Flowers decompose, but knowing this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we are able to love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive. If we learn to look at a flower in a way that impermanence is revealed to us, when it dies, we will not suffer. Impermanence is not an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality. [ ...from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Naht Hanh, page 131]

I kissed my father for the first time in I don't know how many years before I left his hotel room Wednesday evening. I feel awkward about expressing affection towards both of my parents. We don't typically hug or touch each other. Those expressions were a gift of youth that ended when I started wearing a training bra. Now, my daughter gets everyone's affection. As we prepared to leave, my father asked her for a hug. She dutifully walked to the side of his bed, hugged him and kissed him goodnight. "And what about your mom," he said. My heart quickly flipped. I wasn't expecting that.

I felt such a softness for him in that moment, such a quiet, protective love, that I kissed his forehead effortlessly. Without impermanence practice, without a situation that forced me to be grateful for every next day with my father, without the fear of losing him looming over me every day for a month forcing me to wake me up and appreciate him now and now and now, it would not have been that easy.