Our Stories
Rick's Story
Rick talks about his parents and how they were his lighthouses growing up. Specifically, he focuses on how a moment with his father in the hospital has guided his view on the meaning of life.
I have always felt that my parents were kind of my lighthouses. You know they kind of guided me along the way and I think that my father was more protective of the rocks, but my mom was the lighthouse that steered me to shore when maybe I hit the rocks. They were pretty incredible people, I mean and it is sort of, of course like any family we had our own disfunctions. My father raised birds and when I say we had birds, he had maybe 40 parakeets in a cage on wheels in the garage that he would wheel out. We had ring-necked doves and white doves in the basement in a huge coop. And then he actually built a huge coop outside for the cocktails. So we grew up with lots of birds and he was a very gentle man, he was a man of birds and flowers. My mother was very, my mother was always making something for somebody, okay. She was always crocheting or knitting. And if she loved a soap opera star who had a baby she would send them things that she made. And she was always feeding people. And if she didn’t have food to give someone if she came, she would give you canned food. “You sure you have enough to eat honey?” you know. We took in a lot of people who had no place to go during Christmas and so there were always people who would come for the holidays. They kind of took people under their wing. I think one of the most significant things that happened for me was when my father had kidney disease and when he, it was discovered he only had kidney. Um and he eventually had to go for dialysis but he had that type of poisoning that happens and we were all gathered in the hospital room and I thought that that was going to be the time that he was going to be leaving us. My father has blue eyes, but his eyes changed color. They just sort of. I don’t even know how to describe it, they became translucent and we all noticed that. But he was looking behind us, and I just knew that his brother was in the room, his mother was in the room. You know, his relatives were in the room and that they were there to get him. And to take him. And I really didn’t expect that he would live that night, but he did. And so in the following morning when we went to visit him, and we of course were thrilled that he was still there you know, he said, “I really thought I was going to leave last night and I never thought I would have the opportunity to say I love you again.” And I thought, oh my god, that’s it. That’s the only reason why we are here, that he gave me my mantra. He gave me my purpose. He gave me this incredible insight that the only reason that we are here is for the opportunity to love and say those words. And we forget that as we squabble, as you know, as we go through everything we go through. You know but, that to me became the beacon of his lighthouse.