Today’s post is something of a P.S. to yesterday’s. When I was growing up, my Dad had a saying: “Let’s make a memory.” He’d say it right before he’d take us off on some impromptu adventure, like sailing out from our creek into the Chesapeake Bay on a Friday evening, so we could spend the night (the six of us packed a bit like sardines) anchored under the stars. I still remember rocking under the Big Dipper, the gentle lap of the waves a particular type of lullaby. My Dad wrote a daily column for the newspaper he edited and managed, and in it he’d often chat about our family exploits. Once, when we were very young and building a new house, the fireplace had to be ripped out and the masonry re-done to meet code, delaying our move-in. We were all disappointed. My Dad took my three older brothers and me over to the new house and we had a picnic in front of the deconstructed fireplace and walls, amidst the piles of white bricks. He wrote about it in his column the next morning, how he hoped he’d “made a memory” for his young children: a picnic in our house-to-be instead of lots of fussing over the fact that we couldn’t move our furniture in yet.

Here’s a long ago photo of me with my dad, in front of that fireplace.

This past weekend my husband and I made some memories in our new house, which we just finished building (and like my own parents, we met many delays in the process). We had our first party. And it was very special: a surprise 18th birthday party for our son. His friends all worked so hard for months to conspire to keep it a secret from him, and the surprise went off like a dream. The smile on his face (after the shock faded away) as he turned the corner into our living room, accompanied by two friends who’d kept him out of the house while guests arrived, to a loud chorus of 17 and 18-year-olds yelling “Surprise!” was all about Making a Memory. For hours the house rang with the laughter of lovely teens, as my husband and I hustled about cooking up pasta with pancetta, vegan chili and grilled pepper tartes. My daughter helped all day, baking a four-layer gluten free chocolate ganache cake, and that evening she was our official party photographer.

A lot of things went through my mind that night. How lovely my son’s friends are. How much I love my family. How my son’s smiles and his friends’ that night were so welcome after months of college applications and other high school senior year stressors. How I would never forget the joy lighting up his face.

But I thought, too, of how much I miss my Dad. How he taught me to go the extra distance to make the big memories — by having given me so many of my best ones. And most of all, how much I wish he could have met his grandson and grandaughter, really known them. I thought of how much my son’s smile reminds me of my father’s, especially whenever we’re in the midst of great memories in the making.

Those of you who have read a lot of my work know that my dad died when I was 12-years-old, from a compilation of chronic conditions. If he were alive today we could certainly have saved him. But forty years ago the doctors could not. In The Last Best Cure I write a bit about how his loss has impacted me and my own well-being long into adulthood (more on that to come in later posts). And how his early death, which didn’t have to happen, has influenced my life’s work — dedicating myself to helping others to heal, to help them to take the journey to well-being that he never got to take. And why I set out on that journey myself — so I might be here with my kids, watch them grow up as my father could not watch his own children grow up. So I can, I hope one day (many years from now) meet my own grandchildren.

And something else went through my mind, too, this past Saturday night as I looked around at our kids and their friends caught up in their own particular brand of hilarious teenage humor. It hit me suddenly as I raced around serving food and collecting plates and setting out drinks: I would not have have had the stamina to throw an event like this before taking my journey to find The Last Best Cure. I just couldn’t have done it. It really hit me then: I’m making a memory, and I have the energy to do it. That may seem a small thing, but you have to have been where I’ve been. Then again if you are one of my readers, you probably have been where I’ve been and know the glee that comes when your feel your life energy and your stamina surge. When you feel joy.

After our busy weekend, I am happy tired, rather than lying on the floor tired. That’s what the process of activating the healing responses of the brain can do. I mean it. It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly superwoman. I’ll never be that mom with heels on at 2:00 in the afternoon (having had GBS twice heels are out for me anyway!). But it does mean I can create more really great memories to revel in with my family, because I have the energy to make them happen in the first place.

And somehow, in some way, that makes me feel like my dad is here. With me, and with his grandchildren. Because the lesson he taught me is getting passed along, one memory at a time, in a chain of memories to which we, generation by generation, all belong. The link to my Dad, and the memories he made, is alive.