Loss, lasting love, and the ding of the unplugged toaster

A new friend of mine lost a meaningful person in her life, a loss such as she has yet to know in her young life. Most of our losses in youth are from our own store of innoncence and trust and belief in those to whom we look up. The reality of that loved one being gone- it's a grandfather- has darkened her days since with the thought, "he's really gone forever." And there is nothing wrong with one's private grieving process, for as my friend Ryan put it, 'to feel it is to heal it.' Yet we don't feel our most profound losses the same way.

Let me share this one thing, and I hope it helps, but I spent a life building up to this epiphany.
When I got news my Dad passed away at 58, I felt the strangest calm, from knowing how wonderful were our last words and how he loved the Western I drew him for his last birthday. He had come to California to visit, and could well understand why I was loving it so much, how good life there was treating us. I was so happy he got to see it for himself. I was trying to figure out how to answer his call that we might need to come back and look after him some when pneumonia aggravated his pulmonary fibrosis, and he slipped away, November 29th, after a rainy Thanksgiving.

Everywhere I went that day, I felt as though a corridor of heavenly light went with me. I will never forget walking east on Market Street in the bright shining sun with my lovely best friend, whose view of life and emotionally-tangible help and ideas had opened me to feeling life in this unconventional manner.
I felt ever step was through a mystically-experienced veil. I did not exactly feel sadness, because it felt so intensely as though he were with me in an inseparable way, for always. He was no longer in pain nor living in fear of suffocation from his condition, it's true. But more than that, I felt...happy? The joy was real and beautiful. I feel it now as I visit that memory of trying to tell Angela Dawn, in that moment.

We flew back from our home in California. Many were the mourners, for he had been kind to many people, and in those days, many friends came out to support us, from a lifetime growing up together.
There must've been a dozen of us gathered in the kitchen as I spoke about how these people we love have given us something that will stay around us, always, and if Dad were here, he'd agree.
One solid silent second later, as people nodded, the toaster 'dinged.' We laughed. Then we got a look at its cord, lying pliant by the outlet.
The unplugged toaster dinged, my friend.
We laughed so hard!
For many years, I was in a good place where, whenever I was doing something I knew he'd love, I felt him right over my shoulder. I've had one friendly dream after another about talking to him, and it's always the most normal thing in the world. It made it feel like he never left my life! ONly upon returning to Georgia, and seeing what life here without him was like, did I ever feel the loss in a more conventional way. Seeing the desperation and loneliness of my mom without his companionship, as she found it was not so easily replaced by everyone who could cut and paste "I love you" or "you're beautiful." It has been hard, a few times, to see his home and acknowledge he did not get to properly retire and enjoy it in his golden years. But every time I have taken one of his old tasks in hand, there he's been with me.

But I always try to return to that good place in Life where I realize his lessons and all his love live on in me. Sometimes, the departed are not so absent as those close at hand. Let their spirit shine in you and what you do. It is no more an illusion than life in this world ever is, for it touches upon something mysterious and eternal that is the spark in our few moments of breath here. Inspiration is the true breath of life.
Ding!