"Just as I always dreamed in secret. I raised my arms, I smiled, and I crossed the finish line." — Josy Barthel of Luxembourg describing his 1500 meter win in 1952.
I have just returned from a sacred journey to England initiated by the death of my father. As someone who runs with a spiritual focus, the metaphor of the run as a mirror of life's journey is one I explore almost daily. Now, my father's race, at least in this lifetime, is run. He has crossed the finish line. I have the greatest respect for all that my father accomplished in his life. And at 94, he certainly qualifies as a "long-distance runner."
But, more than anything, it is the qualitative nature of my father's life that is alive in my heart now as I run with him each day, communing with his spirit, sharing my deep gratitude and loving with him for how he lived his life.
When I was born in 1965, my father Jacques was 52 years old — he had already lived half a lifetime. A life that had included racing cars at famous Brooklands race track, service in the Royal Air Force, and business travels behind the Iron Curtain are just a few highlights. Many might have seen our difference in age as presenting a problem, I know there were times when I did. If my father did, he never let it show.
In the best possible way, Jacques was never a great one for acting his age. Indeed, I wonder perhaps if one of the hardest things about the experience of advanced age for him in the last several years was that it forced upon him something that he never really believed in: the concept of age.
When I was eight or so, during one of the wonderful annual vacations he would take me on, I remember him rising like Poseidon behind a rubber dinghy and outboard far out in the Mediterranean, water-skiing for the first time at age sixty.
He was well into his eighties and continuing to visit me and my new life and family in America, traveling solo, and astonishing us all with his daily bicycle trips along the sea front for a lunch time aperitif with the new friends that he seemed to make so easily throughout his life, wherever he went.
During one of those trips to California, he courageously accepted my invitation to join me in a counseling session with a psychotherapist I was seeing at the time. Once again, he walked into the unknown. Again, as always, he was willing to try something new. As we sat and talked, we both discovered we had the same important and urgent message to deliver to each other. That message was the simplest and most powerful one there is: I love you.
When at eighty-five, he insisted that I take him for a ride on my then newly acquired motorcycle, I could not turn down the gleam in his eye as he asked. Sure enough, he perched on the back of my Honda 750 Shadow and we motored up the curving coast road together, roaring with laughter as we bottomed out occasionally at the base of the bigger hills.
He shared with me once that after becoming a father at 52, he wondered if he would see me turn 21. He certainly did. And 31. And 41. While the last several months in particular, and in some way the last several years were uncomfortable for him, I thank God that he lived as long as he did, because I have needed every minute of that time to discover what a remarkable man my father is.
The constancy of his love was a sun around which my young life orbited. After my parents separated when I was very young, Jacques made sure that we spent time with each other regularly each week. During my recent trip to England, I put in my daily morning runs in London's beautiful Hyde Park, and paid homage to the days we spent walking around the Serpentine, playing hide and seek, and sailing model boats in the boating pond.
During my years at boarding school from the age of seven, week after week, month after month, year after year, he made the two-hour drive from London to watch me play in various school teams. In the summer months, watching the cricket matches, he would befriend and chat with the dozens of other parents who came to watch the games.
He was always the consummate conversationalist, ready to engage with anyone on any subject, whether he knew about it or not, because he was interested to know more. He was as comfortable talking with the barman at his favorite pub as he was with the shipping magnate in Monte Carlo, and each loved him the more for that, as we all did. As we all do.
With a beautiful, genuine, childlike curiosity, he was fascinated with the world and its people. He loved to talk, and anyone who had the blessing of conversation with him would usually get the treat of a good story: a gem from the golden age of motor racing; a peek into one of the many European cities and peoples from his many and varied travels; or perhaps a mouthful by mouthful retelling of the wonderful (and often bizarre) foods he had eaten around the globe. I don't think there was any part of any animal that my father had not eaten. Twice!
And boy could he laugh. When he laughed, he would give himself to it entirely, a loud, full-bodied laugh that could shake a room.
Back on the touchline in the rugby season, there was also many a cold, rainy winter afternoon when he would be the only parent on the touchline. I learned that I could count on him and his love.
To imply that our relationship was one of just fun and games would be to deceiving, and also do my father a disservice. Through ten years of drug and alcohol addiction in my tens and twenties, I did everything I could to push him away. And yet, he still kept coming back. Through the insults, the harsh words, the cruelty, his love for me remained constant.
When I finally found myself choosing between addiction and my sanity, it was to my father’s house that I ran for shelter. He welcomed me in with open arms and an open heart.
In many ways, I see his love for me as a foundation upon which I was then able to build myself a new life, the one that now includes my wife and daughter, a successful business, and a creative life. These are the enduring gifts that my father has bequeathed me. They are of course the greatest gifts any man could ask for.
More than anything, my father taught me, and is still teaching me, how to love. How to live from the heart, how to give, how to cherish those who are important to me, and how to be genuinely interested in the world. How to stay aware of the finish line and focus on enjoying the journey moment to moment.
While my father has crossed the ultimate finish line of our human experience, he is more alive in me now than ever. My challenge now is to live a life that honors the precious, timeless gifts and qualities that he has given me. And I relish that challenge.
Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you said was, ‘Thank You’ that would suffice.” I lean heavily on that prayer these days.
Thank you dearest Daddy, for all the many ways you have shared with us the wonderful Soul that you are. Bon Voyage and Happy Trails.
