After I wrote here on LJ last week about getting the news of my father’s death and the strained state of my relationship with him, I spent a lot of time over the next few hours pondering and processing.

As a guy fond of fantasy and myth, it’s probably not surprising that I spent a lot of that evening thinking about various “what if?” scenarios. What if I’d been in touch with him before he died? What if we’d made one last attempt at reconciliation? Better yet, what if someone other than a hospice nurse had been there at the end? What if I had been there?

I imagined that somewhere, somewhen, in an alternate universe where just a few different choices had been made, some different things said, things worked out better, and I was there with him right up to the end. I imagined what that might be like.

In one of those odd and wonderful things that the universe occasionally cooks up in spite of the cynics and skeptics, I happened to subscribe to Sean Patrick Fannon’s LJ () just a day or two before that, because I wanted to follow his ongoing Quest for a lady geek to share his life with. I’ve know of Sean for several years, because we share some common friends and associates, a passion for roleplaying, and a fondness for our Irish heritage. But we’ve never actually met. I’ve listened to him on podcasts, read some of his work, but never personally met him. Well, I was just catching up on the news of his Quest on his LJ when on Thursday morning, Sean wrote about his father being in serious ill health and being taken to the hospital. Sean and other members of his family went there to join him and keep vigil. During that time, Sean shared some updates about developments with his dad.

Suddenly, that alternate reality that I’d been imagining gained all kinds of poignant clarity.  Without even knowing it, Sean’s heartfelt sharing of his family ordeal reached across the aether to my laptop and captured me. Every day, I would read his journal, with its emotional ups and downs and its example of a true family acting like a true family, and I would be confronted with my own regrets, my own hopes, and my own what-ifs. And I was able to process them.

I’m still not fully comprehending how this whole odd mingling of lives and journals and fathers is really affecting me, but I know that Sean’s sharing of his week has been an incredible help to me in dealing with my own grief and regret.

And now I find myself without a good way to close out this entry. I suppose I’ll leave it with this: Thanks Sean, for sharing your feelings and your ordeal this past week. I grieve with you and I appreciate you.  I am awed at how these sorts of uncanny things happen – even in the midst of sadness, grief, and turmoil, threads of lives weave together and bring healing and empathy.

And here’s to two men of Irish blood – Charles Edwin Fannon and Robert Richard Bradley, who each in their own way helped make their sons the men thay are today.

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