Zen and the Art of Grief: A Brief Note on Shadow and Light
The death of my father, grieving, being lost, finding a Zen practice, and growing stronger
Chapter 1: Mic Drop
November 25, 2024. It’s my father-in-law’s birthday. I’m on Thanksgiving break after another whirlwind of what is fall at a New England boarding school. Up until this moment, my morning was as follows: 30 minutes of meditation, walk the dog, play with the kids, go to the gym, shower, walk the dog, order a hot black coffee from Dunki’s (where they truly make the hottest coffee on Earth), pick up my new prescription (as in the last 90 days, a script I never imagined I’d be picking up), get a library card in the town where I’m now a first-time homeowner, and sit down to type these words, 3 years since my dad told me he had lung cancer, nearly 9 months after his death.
I’ll start at the top and do my best to tell the story, one that is very much still unfolding. And I promise to keep it brief. After all, none of us has a moment to squander. Right around Thanksgiving, 2021, my dad and mom let my wife and me know that they had to give us some news. We had finished eating dinner after putting our infant daughter to bed, who was approaching 7 months and still what I’ll call a selective sleeper. My dad told us he had just received a stage 3 lung cancer diagnosis. He had a hard time getting to that final point. He took a circuitous path that did not have a happy ending. I remember staring straight ahead, expressionless, getting the sense that something big and not good was happening, waiting for the mic to drop, as if I was expecting it all along, and feeling numb.
I began preparing for my dad’s death. At first, it wasn’t clear that he was going to die, at least not imminently. There was always that sliver of hope. Your dad is a fighter, people would say. Maybe he could beat this thing. My dad did fight. He fought hard. He had a lung removed. He endured multiyear treatments that left him in constant pain. He did his best to stomach this unexpected turn, though it was clear he was suffering, physically and mentally. Needless to say, this wasn’t the retirement he had planned for. And as we were raising my daughter and anticipating the birth of my son, I tried not to feel disappointed and heartbroken that he would miss the rest of their lives. Like I said, there was always hope. Even when, on more than one occasion, his doctor told him he only had a few months to live, he never closed the door on life.
Though I wouldn’t say it out loud, I believed the cancer would kill him, and while I rode the rollercoaster of hope and despair, it was mostly in hopes of having a little more time, which, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and the unquantifiable efforts of cancer research, I got. I had more time than most to prepare for my dad’s death. I had time to be supportive, and I was determined to be present. Admittedly, I struggled with guilt, with not feeling supportive or present enough, yet, on the whole, I had a generous heads up, and I thought I was ready. I thought I was strong. I wanted to be a rock for the rest of my family. I wanted to be at peace, to radiate peace.
Looking back on it, I realize I was lost in the future. Of course my dad was going to die. There was nothing I could do to stop that. I should have spent less energy preparing for that inevitability, and more energy living with him, being with him, expressing gratitude and compassion. In those final months, he would tell me not to break my cadence. He didn’t want to be a burden. He didn’t want me to interrupt my life for him. But, depending on how you look at it, life is an endless stream of interruptions. It cares nothing for our personal agendas. It’s not until we drop our preferences and plans that we can flow with the river of life. I didn’t know this at the time. I wish I had. I was swimming upstream, and in the days ahead I would try to swim harder, or the current got fiercer, or both.
I titled this “Zen and the Art of Grief: A Brief Note on Shadow and Light.” I had grieved before — with pets, relatives, friends — but never so intimately. This was my first real dog fight. I’ll put it this way: when I speak of “the art of grief,” I am not calling myself an artist. I actually mean that grief generates art. I’m tempted to deploy some word play about finding the light in dark places, but I’m going to refrain. Grief is hard. No bones about it. It is definitely the most challenging human feeling I have ever grappled with, and while I do not look forward to the next time grief comes knocking, it has also been the most transformative experience of my life. I’ll get to the Zen part in a bit, but grief is a bit like a pressure cooker. It’s intense, and you aren’t coming out the way you went in.
Chapter 2: The Room
It took me 7 months after the first chapter to start writing this one: The Room. It’s the toughest bit for me to describe, and I know I could never do the memory justice with words. It’s the kind of experience you have to live, like seeing the sunset over the mountains, skiing fresh powder, or the birth of a child. Except it probably won’t make your top 5 experiences of all time. Nevertheless, I’m going to talk about the room where I watched my dad take his final breath, where, to this summer day, I sometimes feel stuck.
It was the end of February, 2024, and I had just over a week before the start of spring vacation at school. I was in the midst of my first year in a new professional role, dean of students at a grade 6–9 boys boarding school, the most challenging job I’d ever had, one that left me spent. I was counting down the days to a ski trip at Steamboat with my hometown friends. It was dumping snow there, and between the stress of work and my dad’s ongoing battle with cancer, I had never felt more ready for a break.
I got the call that my dad was sick and was being hospitalized. He was having trouble breathing. It seemed like he caught whatever respiratory illness was going around Massachusetts. I was worried, but initially everyone thought there was a good chance he would recover after a few days at the hospital. To complicate matters, I was coming down with an end-of-trimester cold. Whatever was going around our campus of middle school boys, I had that. Runny nose, cough, fatigue, stuff I didn’t want to pass onto my dad. For me, the worst case scenario was that I would be the one to kill him.
So I stayed at school and kept plugging away. My dad seemed to be in good spirits, and he kept telling me not to break cadence. From what I was hearing, it sounded like he would likely be discharged by the end of the week. As I’m sure you have already deduced, that isn’t what happened. His breathing got worse, and he was becoming more reliant on a machine to get him the oxygen he needed. The doctor explained that he had pneumonitis (likely triggered by his medications), and if he didn’t start improving soon, we would want to start considering end-of-life care. I shared my concerns about my symptoms, and the doctor said if the time came, that should not prevent me from going to the hospital.
In the early morning hours of March 2nd, the day my school would start spring break, I woke up to a call from my mom. It was time to go. I threw a bag together, got in my car, and drove to the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care at Mass General. It was a surreal and emotional two-hour ride that culminated with a couple of illegal maneuvers before pulling up to the valet at a hotel where my dad used to be buddies with the doorman. I was having trouble finding a place to park because the garage was closed for construction, so I told the man working the valet parking that my dad was dying and I needed to get into the hospital. He parked my car, and I hustled to find my dad’s room.
I don’t want to draw this out, so I’ll stick to some of the highlights, if you could call them that. There were the visitors, my dad’s sister, two of his childhood friends, his face scrunching up in sadness, teary goodbyes, squeezing hands, bonds brewed as thick as blood after a lifetime of memories, laughs, hardships, vulnerability, knowing. A few times he said, “I’m in a real pickle.” There were my final moments with him. Sending a few last messages to people for him from his phone, talking with him about my brother and my mom, helping him shave his face. Him saying he hoped this wouldn’t mess up my ski trip and apologizing to me for checking out early. I told him it wasn’t early. It was just time. He didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t know what else to say.
I still don’t know what to say. I could write this a thousand times, and each time it would be a little bit different. There are so many details to remember, so many details I have tried not to forget. I can’t tell you how often I have replayed scenes from the room in my mind. My dad saying he was ready to go off the breathing machine. Him asking to FaceTime my wife and kids and watching them say goodbye, hearing my daughter’s voice as she spoke to Papa Tom for the last time. My brother, my mom, and I sitting with my dad on his bed, my brother telling my dad how much we loved him, then asking me to sing a song, and me choking through “I’ll Fly Away,” just as I had years before at my grandmother’s death bed, my dad’s mom.
After my dad drifted into sleep, I watched him breathe for hours. The nurses said he would pass in about 30 minutes once they removed the oxygen, but he just kept breathing. It sounds awful to say, but I wished he would stop. I was scared that he would wake up and be confused or in pain. I wanted him to be at peace. I found myself saying, “Love you, Pops” to the rhythm of his breathing, thinking of me on his shoulders, body surfing together, him standing on the sidelines. His breathing got slower over the hours, and then it stopped.
Nothing can capture the silence between life and death, the stillness, the true emptiness of that space in time. He was gone.
His body began to transform. I’ll spare you the specifics, but that was one of the toughest parts for all of us in the room I think — seeing the body that was my dad become almost unrecognizable. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that we will die one day, it’s hard to come to grips with the fact that our body, everything about us, is impermanent. We are always changing. Nothing will ever be the same. There is no going back. The present moment is always in motion, and no amount of effort or strength can keep it in our grasp.
My dad, as I knew him, was gone. And I remained. I packed up his things. His glasses, his clothes, his shoes, and we left the hospital around 4:00 AM on March 3, 2024. Though I have grown a lot since then, I would be lying if I said a piece of me isn’t still there — in that room. While there were beautiful moments that I am grateful for, and most people would consider themselves fortunate to die surrounded by loved ones, it is waves of sadness, regret, and guilt that still hit me from time to time. In the immediate shadow of my dad’s passing, I remember thinking, something like this will happen in the future, maybe something worse, and I don’t know if I can do it again.
Surely, there are daffodils and sunshine ahead. Let’s move on to the next chapter.
Chapter 3: Dead Flowers
I can summarize the week following my dad’s death as exhausting. Between the memorial service, the effort to be gracious and thankful, my lingering illness that lasted the entire month, and the endless, unexpected, and overcomplicated logistics of settling up with death, I was drained. I only want to emphasize two points.
One. The support I received was inspiring. Whether it was someone showing up for the services, a heartfelt letter, a phone call, or a quick check in, so many people showed me and my family compassion when we were in desperate need of it. I was moved, and I told myself that I would try to pay the debt I owed. I would show up with compassion whenever possible, to ease the suffering of another, or, at least, to share a small piece of it.
In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014), Bessel van der Kolk says, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” He goes on to explain the following:
Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love.
That’s powerful stuff that we should never take for granted, though sometimes it takes a calamity to remind us.
Two, and this one requires a more lengthy explanation: there is beauty in dead flowers. To be clear, that was not my initial conclusion. Far from it. In the case of my dad, we received lots of flowers at my mom’s house. The place was literally blooming. The funny thing with flower arrangements is that they die. I am sometimes — perhaps more than sometimes — guilty of having a dark sense of humor. As the mourners left and the sympathy stopped flowing, so too did the flowers wither and brown.
How funny, I thought, that our grieving family, in particular my mom, was left with a giant mess to clean up, an overwhelming reminder that we were cloaked by the shadow of death. I remember the massive wreath on the front door. What was once a ring of bright white flowers now felt like, I don’t know, a big dead halo, some haunting specter. I piled it all into the car with the other trash from feeding visitors and drove it to the transfer station.
In those gray days, I couldn’t see that the flowers were natural, that they still possessed their original beauty. They were a part of the earth, a part of the universe, and they could resume their connection. They could return to the dirt from which they came. They could carry on and give life to more flowers. Instead, I saw it all as trash, rather than compost. I threw out everything and tried to plow forward. I think that’s what most of us do, especially in these situations. I was fixated on the suffering, blind to the truth.
For the remainder of the spring, I wanted to heal. After the school year ended, I spent three weeks working at summer camp instead of my usual nine (I’ve been going to the same camp since I was 11 and have been on staff since 2008), using the remaining six to be with my family. I participated in the Pan Mass Challenge to support cancer treatment and research with some close camp friends. A chills-down-your-spine kind of event. Team name: Seek the Joy. My kids were happy and healthy, and I was getting a priceless opportunity to focus on being a dad. This was also the most time I had with my mom in years. I had so many reasons, every reason, to feel happy. But I wasn’t.
I couldn’t figure it out, and the fact that I knew I should be happy only made me feel worse. The end of the summer came around, and I was terrified that another school year would break me. I was supposed to be done grieving. Instead, I felt like I was constantly falling into holes and trying to claw my way out. I talked to my wife about how I was feeling. She was worried about me, and she told me I needed to get help. I also met with two longtime camp friends who experienced the death of their fathers, and we shared our struggles with grief and healing. I could feel I was at the head of a steep trail, and I had people who loved me encouraging me onward.
Chapter 4: Seamless
I started by reaching out to my primary care physician to talk about how I was feeling. After describing my anxiety and despair, my doctor prescribed me with an anti-depressant, Prozac, and I scheduled meetings with a behavioral therapist. These were two big steps for me that, with affirmation from family and friends, helped me to raise my baseline so that I could develop a more positive outlook. The prospect of “finding myself” no longer seemed out of reach.
Soon thereafter, I started going to a local Zen center, as in Zen Buddhism. I was raised a Catholic, and though spirituality had played an important role in my life, I was spiritually disconnected during the ordeal with my dad. Even prior to his disease, I had grown distant from the Church for my own reasons, and it was no longer an anchor for me. There was a void, and I had been practicing meditation for a couple of years without any bearing. I knew I liked meditation. It was a game changer in terms of my composure, presence, and peace of mind. Nonetheless, I was looking for something more, a community with a dedicated practice and clear purpose. So I decided to give Zen Buddhism a try.
I’ll admit, by the time I located the center, which is in the basement of a “museum” displaying what I can only describe as weird, unwanted, and oddly alluring stuff, I was questioning whether or not I belonged in such an unfamiliar space. The chanting and bowing and walking in circles didn’t help my confidence at first either. I was a beginner again, a student, there to listen, practice, and learn. My Zen teacher coincidentally lost his father as well, at a much younger age than me. I studied Zen texts and Buddhist teachings. I learned about the interdependence of things, about no birth or death, about transformation and continuation.
In time, I realized that my dad wasn’t gone after all, that he was still with me, that I actually knew him better than before, that life goes on, and though he is no longer limited to his body, he exists. I understood that there will always be suffering, as well as the end of suffering, especially if we are aware and skillful in our ways. For a Catholic boy raised in the suburbs of Mass, I found inspiration in a place I never expected, and the fire was burning bright.
There was a short time where I thought my grieving and anxiety were coming to an end. A very short time. I continued to struggle. There were stretches during the 2024–2025 academic year where I wanted to quit my job and run off to a little cabin in the woods. Several stretches. And though no one can stop the days from growing dark, certainly not during a New Hampshire winter, I found a path. I found a practice. When you practice consistently, day after day, no matter how slow you go, no matter how little progress you seem to make in a single effort, you will grow stronger, wiser, closer to your true self.
Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind observed that when someone believes in a particular religion, often “his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In [Zen] the point of the angle is always towards ourselves” (2020) After months and months of searching, through practice and more practice, I felt I was going back to myself, a sensation I was familiar with because of my experience returning to camp each summer. And to camp I returned once again for the full 2025 season.
What a journey it has been, yet I can only speak for myself. My story is nothing special. Compared to most people, it’s been pretty cushy. I know many of you reading this have dealt with loss and grief. Many of you are dealing with it right now, and I hope you know there are people who will listen to you and support you. When I learn about the suffering of others around the world, it doesn’t take long to realize that I have little to complain about.
Still, life is a journey. Everything has led to this moment, and this moment would not exist if everything before had not happened. We cannot understand how the stars aligned to bring us together, here and now. You can try to be all-knowing, but then you will be forever searching for answers you will only find in your heart. Any divisions we perceive separating us are a figment of our imaginations. Our shared awareness is seamless, like the ocean, like space. Endlessly flowing. This gives me great comfort, a sense of liberation. If I just keep practicing, if I just keep doing my best, I will always return home.
Thich Nhat Hanh said this:
The moment of awakening is marked by an outburst of laughter. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who, after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat. (1995)
I smile every time I read that. I hope the promise of what rests in your pocket fills you with joy as well.
But before I finish, a warning about practice! This one from Meido Moore:
If you are going to put work into living your daily life differently, being present during your activities—which is hard work, yes, doing those things — then please just be sure you do it all for a reason. Do it as part of a practice that has a chance to succeed. Do not be what have been called ‘mosquito students’ or ‘mosquito practitioners’; there are a lot of them, and they’re very strong for a certain time or season, but after a few months pass, all seem to disappear. No consistency. Maybe they come back the following year! But the thread of practice continuity and penetration is not there. (2018)
What we learn in this life is not meant to stay secret. It’s not Vegas. Our practices should not be exclusive or self-serving. We are no better than anyone else. We are a part of this universe, and we ought to value it. While we are here, we have to decide what we will practice, each and every day. How fortunate we are to travel the path. What a miraculous gift, one that I can only aspire to pay forward in this lifetime. If anything I said sounded useful to you, please put it into practice.
Date of completion: July 17, 2025
Epilogue
It’s just after 9:00 PM on a Saturday night, April 25, 2026, my last duty weekend at boarding school, and I get a message from a faculty on the duty phone reporting that a 7th-grade student has lost his wallet during the Target trip. The poor guy thinks he dropped it in the parking lot and is already back on campus 30 minutes away.
I call Target, and they take my information but explain they don’t have the staff to send anyone outside. I call the Chili’s in the same complex, and a super nice hostess sends a manager out to look in the lot. While on hold, I learn that Chili’s made 47 margaritas per minute last year, and then I get a call back from Target. They let me know that an unseen good samaritan has put a wallet on their service desk.
The store closer texts me pictures of the wallet. I go to the student’s room, and he is on the phone with his mom who is on the other side of the world. He confirms that the wallet is his, looking more shocked than relieved. I thank the Target employee who will put the wallet in the safe for the night, and I call back the Chili’s hostess to let her know about the happy ending, and she thanks me.
This is compassion. This is interconnectedness and the goodness of ordinary people. Of course, it doesn’t always happen this way. Bad things happen too, but ill fortune does not confirm an evil design. If we believe the universe is out to get us, we will always be at war with it. The only way to live in peace is the way of the heart, the way of compassion. Without the heart, the whole scene above does not occur. Understanding this, we see how much our choices matter. We can imagine the consequences of closing our hearts.
After 13 years, I am in my final month working at boarding school, at least for the foreseeable future. Professionally, I don’t know what I will be doing next. The US is at war with Iran. Going to the grocery store and pumping gas are financially unsettling. The job search has reintroduced me to rejection, and I struggle with questions about the future.
Am I making the right decision?
Did I make a silly mistake?
Will my family suffer because of me?
Will I find a job that is a good fit?
Do people think I’m a loser?
Is there something else I should be doing?
What could I be doing right this very moment to set myself up for success?
This is the panicked voice of my ego. I have become more aware of it, and though it still carries me away from time to time, I don’t get so far gone before I notice I have strayed from the path. I attribute this to the practice of Zen.
Nine months after finishing “Zen and the Art of Grief,” I sat down to write this epilogue late into the night. This is not a boast. While I found this path in my delusion, which I am grateful for, I have not emerged as some enlightened being. It has become increasingly clear that I am nothing special, and I should not expect any special treatment or outcomes. I include this brief addendum to my brief note so that I might express my enduring appreciation of the practice.
If you told me in the fall of 2024 that I would suddenly go cold turkey from all intoxicants because the Zen precepts motivate me to maintain a clear mind, I would have said something like, “Yeah, I don’t see that being realistic for me.”
I don’t know what my dad would say about me taking formal vows at the Zen center, or chanting the Heart Sutra, or bowing. But I think he would like the discipline of it, and he would be proud.
Most people who know me will see that who I used to be is different from who I have become. It’s true that you can never step in the same river twice. Everything is always changing, and if we do not accept that, if we do not open our heart to the unfolding presentation of life, we cannot live.
I can be a self-centered, arrogant, judgmental fool, and also a kind and loving friend. I am studying to learn more about the mental prison I have constructed in my lifetime. I am practicing to grow stronger and wiser — as a father and a man — so that I can take the long journey beyond the walls I have built. I know that I have my ancestors to thank for giving me the strength to take this journey, and it is my responsibility to travel on.
Outside, a loon calls for the first time this spring. There are no words for it. Its song is the perfect epilogue.
Works Cited
Hanh, T. N. (1995). Zen keys: A guide to Zen practice. Harmony Books.
Moore, M. (2018). The Rinzai Zen way: A guide to the practice of Rinzai Zen. Shambhala Publications.
Suzuki, S. (2020). Zen mind, beginner’s mind (50th anniversary ed.). Shambhala Publications.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.