The Refiner’s Fire
By: Christine Quaglia
Tags: Parenting, Growth, Self Improvement, Development, Self

Photo via flickr.com

The other day my friend was going through a thing with one of their parents. It was just the usual and fairly regular parent-child dynamic. It featured the familiar refrains of “I have a better idea”, “you could do it this way”, and “what the hell is wrong with you” circulating in the air. It also contained the pretty typical mix of recrimination, guilt, frustration, years of history and every single button being pushed by the ones who installed them (i.e. this person’s parent). Needless to say, my friend was upset, both, at themselves for exposing themselves to such familiar criticism and, then, for getting upset by the criticism. They were also upset at their parent for not seeing them as the adult that they are. An adult who is capable of making choices that, while imperfect, and not those that their parent would make, are still very much okay decisions.

My friends upset carried over from one day to the next and as we were discussing it I found myself missing my own father’s recriminations, judgments and criticisms while simultaneously being reminded to be grateful for my mother’s recriminations, judgments and criticisms which remain ongoing. As my friend and I were talking, I said to them, “enjoy it all while you have it. My Dad could be super harsh and angry and weird. His last — I think? — words to me were ‘you talk too much’ and even though I hated it then I’d kill to have him criticize me now. I miss it! LOL! So that’s the approach I’m trying to take now. Just take it all in gently, accept it, don’t get amped and let it slide off because someday it’ll, oddly enough, be missed.”.

Author’s note: my Dad was right as I do in fact talk too much. Another author’s note: this is in fact how I am now trying to live my life and engage in my relationships. Soften, accept where I am and where other people are too. Especially other people because if I don’t like where someone is or how they are being there, so what? None of my business. My business is to be loving and supportive, keep a safe distance where needed and to be grateful I’m not walking in their — at least as they seem to me — really clunky and really uncomfortable shoes. It is not my job to dissect or separate one part of a person from another part of that person. My job is to accept their whole being and, when framed in that light, the gig actually seems pretty easy.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish my Dad had been…..a little softer, more forgiving and less critical of himself and others. I also wish that not nearly every one of our conversations had included the phrase “I have a better idea.”. But, our conversations did often include that much maligned phrase and my Dad was who he was: exacting, tough, angry, complicated, critical, sensitive, free spirited, curious and, at the bottom of it all, very, very loving especially toward me. He was the one who taught me to hear my own voice the loudest and to not get swayed by the immaterial opinions of others. Yes consider things from those who matter, but, at the end of the day, make your own choices and then be prepared to live with those choices.

My Dad adulted me even when I was a kid. He was not explicit with his lessons and didn’t sit me down for the ‘talks’ I longed for as Danny Tanner might have with his kids on “Full House”. But, as my friend Anne-Marie reminded me: Lou was Lou. He wasn’t Danny Tanner, and, while my Dad wasn’t a subtle man overall, his teaching style was subtle. So while the lessons weren’t explicit neither were the lectures. He wouldn’t ever sit me down for a shaming but he’d Dad me and criticize and correct me in more casual conversation. Pretty regular casual conversations but, for right now, I digress.

The story that best exemplifies my Dad’s ‘teaching style’ involves a communion dress. In my family’s culture communions were a big deal. Even though I attended communion classes I kind of lost focus with what was going on (probably thinking about “Full House” or something). So, while I was going through the ritual I didn’t really know the reason. Had I known the reason I probably would have taken a pass but, again, I digress. All I knew was that there was a costume. Fashion was the light at the end of this First Communion tunnel and I was there for it. What can I say, I have always been into the lewks.

Anyway, as we all know any good lewk begins with a mood board and mine centred on my Aunt Sue who had just married my Uncle Al the previous August and, as far as I was concerned, had exemplified the height of 80’s fashion. Full skirt, long train, head piece, sparkles aplenty. I was in love and knew my communion costume was going to be modelled after that dress. We went shopping for my communion dress / costume on a bright but cold Saturday and my Mom and I went into the shop while my Dad parked the car. By the time he entered, a battle was in full swing. Like any good miniature bride marrying a stranger, I had found the dress. It was Aunt Sue’s wedding dress, headpiece and all, in miniature form.

While I was in love and my Mother was in horror. The dress was great for Sue and for her occasion, less great for me and for mine. My Dad asked me if I liked the dress and I told him yes. He asked me (seeing the hindsight of twenty years worth of writing on the wall) if I looked back on the pictures and still didn’t like it would that be okay and I answered yes. My Mom continued to protest and my Dad asked her who’s occasion it was and she, obviously, answered that it was mine. Bottom line: my costume party, my choice. I was (thanks Mom!) dissuaded from the train but I still walked out of that store as happy as an eight year old with a fabulous costume could be. My own voice, thanks to my Dad, had been allowed to come through and so I didn’t just get a dress, I also got a little more trust in myself. I also got to learn how to look back on a wide range of poor choices I have made and live with each of them.

That costume moment was one when I could accept my Dad; a part of him that was pleasing to me. In the moments when he wasn’t behaving perfectly, there was not quite so much acceptance. And what do you know? In those moments of non-acceptance, I became what I feared and what didn’t like about him and sought to avoid: harsh, exacting, unacccepting and unyielding. I can’t say that I understand my father better now than I did when he was alive, but, I can say, I accept him now in a way I didn’t before and, for me, that will always lead to a pang of regret in my heart.

Why couldn’t I accept him fully an on his own terms when he was alive? Not all of his behaviours certainly but all of him. Why couldn’t I just let more things slide off of my back? The simple answer is simply that I was afraid and I wasn’t very evolved. A common but toxic combination. The truth, is I was evolving and refining then and I am refining and evolving now. I am (and I really hope Michelle Obama is proud) in an ongoing state of becoming.

I am also learning and this is one powerful lesson I have learned. While I didn’t want my father to die in order to have to do so, he did die. I didn’t want him to suffer even though I know he was suffering and I can’t change any of what occurred. I couldn’t change it then and I can’t change it now but I can let it instruct me. I can let it shape the qualities my soul needs and wants to experience more fully. It doesn’t all have to be for not. None of it has to go to waste and that’s true of anything.

And so, while I may never fully know the answers to those questions, I am starting to think it was a combination of factors, the most salient being my own inability to separate person from behaviour. I didn’t like a lot of my father’s behaviour then and I probably wouldn’t like it now. There wasn’t always a lot to like. In fact, some of what he did was hurtful and unacceptable then and it probably still would be now. The difference now though is me and my ability to assert myself more effectively, to set boundaries where needed and to accept myself, and other people, more wholly and on each of our respective terms; wherever we are in our respective refinements.

Previously, I would shut down instead of open up. Rather than let my Dad be who he needed to be, I’d either stick around, take whatever he threw out or try and pushback to change it. The flipside was I would just walk away and be angry. In fact, I’d be stewing, getting harder and harder in my own heart because I was resisting rather than accepting. I couldn’t see that while I didn’t have to stick around and accept certain behaviour, I still ought to have accepted all of him. I didn’t need to be around him as he behaved churlishly, but, I could no more separate that part of my Dad from him than I could the things in him that I could easily accept. Things including his free spirit, his strong will, his curiosity and his desire to learn; his sense of adventure, his sense of generosity and his kindness.

I am not one of those people who can saint someone once they’re gone. I’m not even someone who looks back really in nostalgia or an attempt at revisionist history. I can still see who my Dad was — the good and the bad. The difference being now though, I can see him and accept him in his totality. There is no longer segments and fragmentation. I am no longer trying to surgically carve out the pieces I can’t stand while only preserving that which I love. I see him now. All of him and I just wish I had the insight to see it all sooner.

But time is a trickster and a healer and, while it hopefully doesn’t change the clarity and the accuracy of what we see, it can certainly soften a lot of things, including the harder edges we put on ourselves, on each other and on the world. Time is the ultimate refiners fire. Melting away and softening that which we never needed and that which we certainly no longer need to keep. When my Dad initially became terminally ill, I felt the oddest physical sensation. For weeks on end, I felt like I was burning. Literally, physically on fire. I knew very clearly that I wasn’t set ablaze but I felt it. This burning coursing throughout my body. I even told a friend, “I feel like I’m going through a fire and waiting for, and asking to be, delivered from something I can’t be delivered from.”.

Photo copyright Christine Quaglia

After a time the physical sensation of burning passed and as my Dad’s illness progressed toward death, I never thought much about that sensation again, until many months later, when I received a note from a friend wishing me restoration and refinement for the upcoming New Year. This friend talked about the refiners fire and how, while painful, it is also purifying and it brought me back to that sensation that I had felt so acutely eighteen months before. The burning. The fire. The need to be delivered from something that I believed I could not be.

At the time, I felt as though the fire would consume me. That it would swallow me whole and burn me up into nothing. And the fire did burn me up but not into nothing. The fire collided with the gift of my “one wild and precious life” and it refined that gift. Made it something new. I was delivered after all. I see that now and I see that my Dad was delivered too. My Dad who had resisted his illness and prognosis; raged and railed (as he was wont to do) against it, walled himself off from those who loved and wanted to help him. And, yet, at the end of it all, died with more peace and grace and love that any of us would have dared to think possible.

At his sickest, he was going through a fire, he was being purified and refined; travelling to places within and beyond himself that those around him could not touch. We all go through fires and we may do so willingly or unwilling; with grace or without but we will all go through them and the fire will always do its work and refinement. Initially, my Dad went through his refining fire unwillingly, but, as is true for us all, there were forces beyond his control alchemizing and changing him. Elevating and increasing his being even as his physical body seemed to diminish and reduce. It is no accident his favourite book was “The Alchemist.”.

There was pain and suffering and decay, but, also, purification and refinement along the path. That occurs along all of our paths whether or not there is a terminal illness. Life, and each part of it, is all a part of the refiners fire. All part of the refinement itself. And the more we each surrender to our refiners fires, the more we each become purified and take on the exact shape we are supposed to take on right now. I wish I had known that sooner than the hour of my fathers death. I wish I had seen that when I felt he was critical of me or behaving in ways I didn’t like. I wish I had seen with greater clarity that he was in a process of refinement and I was too. We all are always. I see that now. I see that life is an ongoing refiners fire and that acceptance of whole beings puts us even the tiniest bit closer to knowing unconditional love.

Sometimes the refinement from pain is really obvious, other times the refinement from joy is really obvious and, other times still, the refinement is happening without our even knowing it. We are all being alchemized all the time and awareness of that helps us to accept the refining rather than resist it. Acceptance also helps us to accept the refinement of others as well as our own. I read a quote today that says, “[y]our weirdness will make you stronger. Your dark side will keep you whole. Your vulnerability will connect to the rest of our suffering world. Your creativity will set you free. There’s nothing wrong.”. And that is true for me, for my Dad, for all of us as we continue to be refined. Each of our stories, experiences and perceptions are unique and while we are not obligated to always agree wholly with each other we ought to try and accept each other wholly; for all of our sake’s.

Everything and everyone changes and everything and everyone, eventually, comes to an end just like this epically great fall that we have just experienced. It came to an end and it is now refining into winter. There will be another epically great fall and a not so great one and everything in between. We can learn to accept all of the seasons and all of our own seasons and those of each other as we each get purified, refined and, in one form or fashion, emerge new from each and every fire.