Go Gentle - A Different Journey

Go Gentle

I have always loved teaching ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ by Dylan Thomas. In his poem, Thomas exhorts his father to fight against death, to ‘rage against the dying of the light’ and not to ‘go gentle into that good night’. I have used this poem in countless lessons to encourage my students to live a life that pushes the boundaries. Being part of my own father’s journey to the heights has given me a new perspective.

Unlike Thomas, as I sat with my father in his last days, I was able to undertake a gentler journey with him. My father was a complicated man, I have described him in poems as the ‘thundering god of my childhood’, as an enigmatic ‘question mark man’. I was afraid that the end of his journey would leave me with too many unspoken conversations, too many regrets. But Dad, who was always a fixer of things, was able to fix one last thing.

He left me with a deeper understanding of what it means to be able to let go well.

There are many things in life that I have had to let go of: parents, siblings, relationships and places. What hurts most is trying to hold on, it’s like grabbing a rope as it’s pulled through your hands, the burn is caused by the holding on.

That’s not to say that endings don’t bring pain. The pain is profound. Perhaps, though, I have found a grace in remembering  that the nature and purpose of journey is to move towards an ending. As I turn to look back over the path travelled, my power is in choosing what I will take with me on the next stage and, even more importantly, what I will leave behind.

I choose to go gentle.