I wrote this two years ago...
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My father passed away a week ago and still the shock of it hits me in little jolts throughout the day, every day.

As expected, I've been hurting quite a bit. What makes it even worse is that it was less than two months ago when my siblings and I learned that he had cancer. It all happened so fast. There have been too many goodbyes in my life over the past year, but this one was the most difficult one of all to bear.

The other day was a really rough one for me... there are days when I feel strong and other days where it doesn't feel possible to go on without him in this world. That day I was alone and I felt so sad and hollow. I searched for something... anything I could do to ease the pain. Nothing seemed to help until I looked across the room and saw the flute I had chosen from my father's things... things that were brought to me that neither my brother nor my sister wanted. That day, my father's flute saved me.

It's a beautifully made Native American flute. I had played other types of flutes throughout my life but never one like this. As I held it in my hands and started to play, it felt right. It was right. I sat on the floor in the middle of my room and just played from the core of my being, intuitively, from my spirit, and it wasn't long before I was playing the flute as if I had been playing it for years. Like when I paint... it was as if something else was flowing through me making it happen, in this case moving my fingers over the right holes to make the right sounds at the right times in order to create a melody that felt both familiar and haunting at the same time... and suddenly... I felt a tremendous sense of peace come over me.

As I blew into the flute to play it, I almost sensed my father's breath still within its wooden wall. As I played the flute with my eyes closed, I almost saw my father's face smiling down on me on the movie screen in my mind, as if he were telling me it was something I was meant to do and that he was happy, so very happy that I was finding so much joy in something he left behind.

Tears of pure joy ran down my face as I played, and I was overcome with an incredible sense of peace and love.

The flute saved me that day. I will play it often, and I will find peace through it and with it. When the weather gets a little warmer I will bring it into the woods and play it, and I will bring it with me wherever I go in case it calls to me to be played, in case my spirit needs the soothing the playing makes me feel. And I will cherish the flute for the rest of my life.

The flute was a gift. It was my father's gift to me... not so much the flute itself, but the feeling it gave to my spirit to play it. And I am so very thankful to my father for leaving behind for me this most meaningful, precious gift.