This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes  as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! 
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house  empty of its furniture, 
still, treat each guest honorably. 
He may be clearing you out  for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent  
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi~ another of Daddy’s favorites.

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear, because that's where the river will know it's not about disappearing into the ocean,
But of becoming the ocean. Kahlil Gibran

Libby, Brenda and Family.
Mr. Blue was a very kind and caring person who was loved and respected by everyone who knew him.  He will be missed.  May God grant you comfort as you go through this loss of your loved one.

Papa loved everyone with passion. Libby, you were the undeniable love of his life. Not only that, but you also found the key to my heart, raw cookie dough. Patrick and Kelly, if I have learned anything as a stepparent it’s the true meaning of unconditional love, loving someone else’s children as much as you would your own. Papa loved y’all deeply as his own and I am so grateful that he brought us together as a family. Misty, you keep a spirit alive in this family that I know Papa felt when we lost your mother, Aunt Debbie. You are beautiful, fiery, and full of wit and grace, which I am sure you got not only from Papa but also from her. Mama, have the gentleness, the forgivingness, the resiliency, the humbleness, and the compassion. You bring the unconditional parts of Papa to everyone. Sis, you bring his intellect, his wisdom, his sincerity, his spirituality, and his deep fondness for investigation and inquiry. And I know, I know. I carry the torch of his stubbornness and hard headedness, which I personally like to call tenacity and perseverance, and his impulsivity, which some might call adventurousness. We can all thank Papa for who we have become as humans, and for the relationships he helped us weave. There’s not a person here whose life he has not touched, and for that, I will always be grateful.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows calls this type of narrow perspective where as humans we seem to deny our capacity for bigger thinking and feeling occhiolism
n. the awareness of how fundamentally limited your senses are--noticing how little of your field of vision is ever in focus, how few colors you're able to see, how few sounds you're able to hear, and how intrusively your brain fills in the blanks with its own cartoonish extrap-olations-which makes you wish you could experience the whole of reality instead of only ever catching a tiny glimpse of it, to just once step back from the keyhole and finally open the door. This is something that, as a therapist, I often talk about in session with my clients, how easy it is to fall into the narrative of only one possibility, and to let that narrative create your perception of reality; to fall prey to the notion that, if one thing exists, it is impossible for something else to exists simultaneously.

Knowing Papa was knowing how to share in complicated emotions. Yesterday Miguel asked me to do a ritual with him where I recalled different memories connected to Papa, memories that evoked both positive and negative emotions, which were sent to different places depending on how they felt in my heart. I recalled a time in the hospital when I was little. I was there for a chemotherapy treatment that required injecting a large needle into my spine. Whenever they had to do an intervention like this, my strengths became Herculean, at least by Papa’s account. I’ll never forget one day when Papa walked in after what seemed like hours of combat, tiny me fighting off every nurse and doctor in the ward. Immediately I gave in when I saw Papa, but I can’t tell you which emotion I was feeling at that moment. Perhaps I was feeling calm because of his presence. Perhaps I was feeling fear because of his presence. Where do you put this experience with a person, one where you are afraid of something that is there to save you? Into which emotional box does something like this go? Isn’t this the complexity of humans, our relationships, parenthood, partnership, and all the other types of connections that we have with ourselves and one another? I doubt my child mind was thinking in such complex terms, but in looking back I recognize the dichotomy and complexity of something that is both painful and healing, much like the process of grief, emotion ebb and flow. I recognize the necessity, at times, of two things existing all at once, despite their seemingly complex duality. This, to me, is Papa.

Like all of us, Papa was a complicated human. His love was as big as his temper, his voice as gentle as it was commanding. Papa existed dialectically, exhaling gentle love as quickly as he exhaled analytics, and sometimes fire. His emotions were big, not always tempered, but always from a place of passion and landing ultimately with an unfurled grace, rolling off his southern tongue like a marble to the solid but slightly tilted ground.

I wrote a eulogy that I unfortunately was not allowed to share at Papa’s funeral so I thought I might share it here. It has to be shared in parts due to its length.

OBITUARY

Neil Douglas Blue Jr.

9 March, 1932 – 17 October, 2023

Johns-Ridout's Mortuary-Elmwood Chapel & Elmwood Cemetery & Mausoleum

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