Rage, rage against the dying of the light

As spring turns to summer, my father, dead now for a full year, continues to occupy my thoughts almost daily.

Not because I am sad that he is gone, though I am.
Not because I am unmoored without him, though I might be.
He is with me, in the center of my mind, because I cannot seek his wise counsel, his particularly prescient insights, in the midst of these trying times.

Our culture stands on the sharp precipice of history.  We have been here before, surely, though perhaps never before like this.  Yet my father, regardless of circumstance, always seemed to know what was going on.  Would that he could tell me of such things now.

I know he would say things like, "It's a coup, John.  Follow the money."

And, "Never listen to what they say. Watch what they do."

But I cannot know these things as a certainty, because he is, put succinctly, no longer here to tell them to me as he once was... when we sat together on awkward chairs in his makeshift back-bedroom office space smelling of old man's feet and cologne and spearmint gum, surrounded by cropped and tint-corrected family pictures, and a framed-lifetime of awards and achievements, three-dozen useless empty software boxes, and the latest iteration of his always dumb-but-faithful dog asleep on the well-worn rug at our feet.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And yet, even without him, still my life goes on.

 And it is good.

#BLE