Hello Eshrink Subscribers:
It’s been a loooong time… For those of you who may not know, dad died in January of 2024 (this is the link to his obituary).
On this Father’s Day 2026, I decided the best way to honor my dad is to resurrect his blog. I tried to do it earlier, but my grief kept getting in the way. While I realize our grief journey never really ends, mine is at a manageable place where I can mostly smile while I sit here at my computer writing a post for dad’s blog instead of sobbing uncontrollably. Tears are welling up in my eyes, but they are mostly tears of gratitude that I had such an incredible dad in my life for so many years.
I’ll never be the writer my dad was or as wise as he was, but I will try to do my best to use this blog for subjects that he and I discussed frequently (especially during our eshrinkblog brainstorming phone calls). Actually, there are a couple of blog posts that I found in the drafts folder, and I will be sure to publish those in the future.
What’s Next on the List of Blog Posts for EshrinkBlog.com?
In addition to the above subjects dad and I discussed often, I will be writing some posts about grief and loss (with resources I’ve found helpful…and requests for you to share your thoughts, resources, or feelings in the comments section).
I also have some ideas for posts about PRO-AGING! Dad and I never got that one written, but it was inspired by his dry sense of humor. When we would talk about aging or yet another birthday, he would say, “But I guess when I consider the alternative, I’m for it [aging].”
I also want to share some tips and lessons my siblings and I learned during the time we were taking care of our parents. I need to do that sooner rather than later because I now understand my dad’s urgency in wanting to get his thoughts down as soon as possible when writing his blog posts—this aging process truly changes the speed of…I’m literally trying to think of the word right now…recall…I think that’s the word…(NOPE, recall wasn’t it…RETRIEVAL). Since we both were writers, we would commiserate about the “blank word” situation where we could literally see the word bouncing around in our head with the complete inability to GRAB it! Together, we would usually find the word without Google (I think we enjoyed the process of collaborating and sharing the frustration of the bouncing word scenario). When we would land on the word, we called it a brain sneeze 🙂
Those are a few ideas I have, but I would love to hear from dad’s Eshrink READERS! Please add any ideas for blog posts in the comment section of this post.
Final Thoughts Inspired by My Dad: A Passage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
My dad told me the book that spoke to him in his early life was The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I don’t recall the exact age he was when he first read the book, but he would return to it often.
I can see where the following passage about love and marriage may have influenced my dad on the type of marriage he had with mom. They celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in 2023. Dad (and mom) didn’t subscribe to that “everything is rosy” angle people often share. We had several humorous, yet serious, conversations about whether they were happily married. “Happy? Were we happy every day? Of course not!” he would say. And then the two of them would proceed to share so many “bad” memories of perceived “transgressions” that had somehow become comical in retrospect. Happy in the aggregate? DEFINITELY.
And I guess that’s the point. My parents were real. They argued. They made up. They had fun. They complained. They had inside jokes. They grew. They learned, they were loyal, and they loved deeply. I think this quote exemplifies the philosophy I saw play out as they explored different interests and they were a strong unit without being co-dependent.
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” – Kahlil Gibran
Until next time ESHRINK READERS! Please add your blog post ideas in the comments.
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