Love, Understanding & Knowledge

One thing that always resonated with me in "A River Runs Through It" is the idea of completely loving someone without completely understanding. There's no doubt, it's immensely difficult to understand choices the people I love the most make or even understand the how's and whys of their life. Near the end of A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean's father is scraping for more answers about his son's death and ways to understand and know his son better. For me, of course I feel this way about many, many, many of my friends and family but none more than my father.

For the random person who stumbles upon this blog some 7.5 years ago my father passed in something that shook me deep, how couldn't it? Everyone will go through this shaking at some point in their life-- death is an inevitable fact of life and it is a way to reassess and sometimes completely reorder your life. That certainly happened to me and I have no doubt that I could write 1000 pages on that alone. Life is short, beautiful and fleeting. There is still no doubt in my mind that I'd give every single thing I own, EVERY POSSESSION, EVERYTHING, for one day, one hour, one fleeting moment to be with my father again. That's not hyperbole, and I hope for those who might read this that they think long and hard about those most important to them and hold them tight tonight and express a little bit of their love for them as we make our brief revolutions around the sun.

That said, this is going to be short, and quick since I need to get up real early tomorrow. I just want to start becoming more disciplined about writing in this damned blog. When someone you care about so deeply is gone you look, scrape and scrounge for anything and everything to know them better, or at least I have. And so, while I was scraping to put together my taxes for this year I found some old family albums and a small letter from a childhood friend of my father's... My father went to a boys college in Sri Lanka and spoke about it just about every damned day. He'd always tell me about his college's motto, "Disce Aut Discede" Learn or Depart and sing the old class song when he had one too many glasses of wine and felt especially nostaglic. So, I'll transcribe this letter and in a later post write about it. Maybe one day you'll stumble upon one of your parents love letters to each other or letters to a friend... I have those too, but, things so personal and lovely deserve to be preserved and cherished for those folks who loved each other so deeply. I'll say it's reassuring that my parents dealt with the same sort of wonderful, trivial problems as anyone else and that they also shared a romance and love for each other that you'd hope for yourself when you're in the fits of love and courtship... Ok Here's the letter, written on a typewriter on some nice paper from Sri Lanka:

Date: 29th February, 1988

Dear Chandi old chap,


Where the hell have you been all these years ever since we left college? Not a bloody beep from you for over 20 years. Heard a lot abotu you form our "Class of 56" bulletin - including your by-pass heart operation. I hope you have recovered completely and are back to near normal by now. Take care of yourself 'putha' because as far s I can remember you have been having these "heart problems" even when you were college.

How on earth did you end up in the States? The last we heard was that you were somewhere in the Middle East. Anyway Chandi, please do drop a line anytime you find the time as I would very much life to know how you are doing both health and carer wise and also details about your love life, family and kids. As you will notice from this letter head, I am still with the family business. Yusuf is doing his own business (construction) and Shiraz is also with the family business (Estates). I am married to Fawziya (Fish's sister) do you remember Fish? We have three children, eldest son will be 18 in April daughter who will be 8 in April and smallest son who is 6 years old. The latest model will be out in August - that number 4 on the list. Can you or have you beaten that? Yusuf has two sons - twins born in U.K.

Sourjah is here from Brisbane. Incidentally his father expired today. There is absolutely no change in him after all these years.

Well, Chandi as I said before, do drop a line and lets keep in tuch if possible. Also look after yourself and like Dudley used to say (refering to college motto) do'nt depart too soon.

With kind regards and rememberances,

Your buddy,

Moiz

MOIZ SETHWALA


(with that folks... remember to hold onto those people you love as tight as you can, take a mental image and remember how beautiful they are.)

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

~Yeats

Picture: I'm the chubby kid in the red overalls my Dad is holding onto, my Sister looks absolutely terrified if you can see the picture. This is actually the rare photo of me >1 (yes, I am THAT big as a 1 year old) that I am smiling... the only other time they caught a photo of it... I was wearing a baptismal dress... I don't know if it's because I enjoyed cross dressing or because I was cleansed of my SIN! That said, about 15 minutes before this picture I was sobbing my eyes out in this parade and clawing at my Dad and the elephant to get down.