Jill Berry Blog

living the creative life

My Father’s Legacy

Posted on March 9, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized

Here I am with my baby brother Mark at the age of 4 1/2. My father left our family a year and a half later, when my mother was pregnant with my next brother, Andrew. There were five of us kids, all little. I did not meet up with him again until I was 23 and just out of college. We tried to connect off and on for many years, but it never worked. We never connected in any family kind of way.

My father died this weekend. It is complex, grieving for something I never actually had. The idea was always there, the hope that this man would someday take me on as his child. He never did, and it makes me profoundly sad for the six year old that I was, so full of grief and so mystified at the disappearance of her hero.

I came home from teaching all day on Saturday to this news, and to homemade soup, and a chess game between my daughter and her father. Sydney was practicing on Dad to prepare for her chess game with the vice principal at her school. She was taking for granted what she has always had, a daddy who loves her and wants her to succeed.

We bring what we have to the table as artists, and I know that I bring the legacy of my father. I am so grateful for the opportunity art gives me to express myself, directly and indirectly.  And I am grateful to have the circle I have, of men and women who support me as an artist, a woman, a mom and a teacher. My brother Andrew and I are planning a ceremony, a burial at sea of our father’s spirit, and I hope for both of us a great wave of forgiveness.

Comments