Musings on My Dad’s Life After This Life and Upon Embarking on His Next Adventure

he entered a world of strangers
hearing sounds whirling as wonder
enveloped by anticipations
bathed in new sensations
balancing fear on trust beams that carried him to next unknowns stepping into a family picture framed in time                          

he reached for other strangers making the unknown familiar, making the foreign family   trusting til goosebumps grew threads of truth weaving a blanket to swaddle the early fabric of his life.                                                                                        

feet became sure, hands became deft and skilled, heart wide open                                                                                       his mind playing with ‘this and that’s’ until he mastered them.                                                                                           threads of his life strengthened…wonder, balance, trust, risk-taking,                                                                               always coming back to the family that framed those first threads…

life became an adventure to find threads that would last through time,
even though he had no idea what or when that meant, he tested them, discarding frayed ones, and ones that were too garish                                                                   or felt rough against the tried and true ones. he’d watched as patterns were cut to garment peoples’ lives…
some fit for him and some didn’t
he felt the pain and horror of wars shattering lives
yet among them found visions of hope

he took others into the folds of his fabric, knitting unique gifts into pearls.
his family frame grew as he opened himself to the lives of others
the yarn spun into stronger threads of love’s truths                                       until the stranger was no longer                                                                      underneath all the screen prints and forms was a common silk              shared by all…

one fabric of humanity began to emerge in his heart as visions took shape
not shaped for one particular race, place, or pocketbook
but a mixture spun together to form strong threads which could weave common purposes into community.

he loved his life…the colors, the textures, the knowns, the unknowns, even the problems and challenges of it all!
mistakes or moments flawed became opportunities to learn the power of being forgiven and forgiving, and refocusing wrong turns into adventures, disasters into callings to mix threads in new ways.                                                       he learned to flip over the cloth to see the other side so that true vision became possible.                                                                                                        he shared what he learned and what he earned                                                 he knew we ALL needed warm cozy blankets of love.

And when it was time for him to leave, he left this world with no strangers…                                                             sounds still whirling as wonder                                                                                                                                       anticipations anchored in faith                                                                                                                                                  letting go of old sensations                                                                                                                                                                seasoned by Life to trust beams that carry him to next unknowns leaving a blanket big enough to hold us ALL.

…….Dad, you’re always in our family picture.

With All My Love,                                                                                                Mossy Ann   (Carolyn Ann Franck Gordon)