Heather
I only met Thad once, but I am grateful I had the opportunity to finally make a link to my biological heritage. I have no idea what kind of father he could have been if he hadn't been limited by the constant challenges of his own brain, but I want to think that we will have the chance to find out in the next life. When I met Thad I wasn't even sure he would grasp that he was my biological father but it was obvious he recognized our relationship. As a gift he gave me a book on Zen and the Japanese culture, saying he no longer needed it. Initially I took that to mean he had already read it and no longer wished to keep it, but I soon came to realize that he no longer needed a copy of the book because he had it memorized. I could open to a random page and ask him to tell me the second sentence in the fourth paragraph and he could quote it verbatim. He obviously found comfort in the words so I think it fitting to memorialize him with the following quote:
"Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake; A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream; I know not what life is, nor death. Year in year out---all but a dream. Both Heaven and Hell are left behind; I stand in the moonlit dawn, Free from clouds of attachment." (Uyesugi Kenshin). I truly hope that whatever the next life holds for Thad he finds himself free of the wiseman's purgatory that in this lifetime imposed such challenging limitations.