THE HERO MAKES HIMSELF OBSOLETE

In the iconic final scene of John Ford's film The Searchers (1956) the protagonist of the film, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), is framed in a doorway where he is presented with a choice between returning to his family and the homestead and being "Uncle Ethan" or spending the rest of his mortal life wandering like a ghost in the desert as a "Searcher".

After watching all of his kinfolk pass by into the house while he gazes on that world he somehow knows he can no longer belong to, he then, after turning his back on the happy scene before him, continues to wander off alone, a perfect metaphor for all of us when departing from one life to the next.

Recently I lost my father in the great divide between life and death which seems to separate both portals in similar fashion to John Ford's framing of the doorway in the final shot of The Searchers.

Perhaps he, like Ethan, sensed he too was at that threshold between one life and the next.

The home and the desert.

Leaving his friends and family behind in this present life of ours, my father ventures into the next stage of his consciousness somewhere beyond, however you may choose to interpret that.

When Ethan turns away from the family scene at the end of the film, he knows he has served his function on this earth. Not only has he returned the kidnapped Debbie (Natalie Woods) to her parents but he has also found some form of personal redemption for himself as a man. In this regard he has made himself obsolete from the story here on in. His hero's journey is complete.

And now when I think of my late father, I feel he has done the same for us all. Though the loss is immense, there is a sense that he had resolved all the many threads of his life in one singular tapestry.

In the final few months of his life, I observed that my father found a great comfort in watching Westerns as if somehow he found the simple, yet classic fables both fundamental and elemental in their depiction of the human journey.

And as a spiritual renegade and maverick individualist himself, my father reminds me of a lone cowboy who, having saved those around him (as much as any of us can save anyone or anything), can go on to save the rest of all sentient life as his Bodhisattva vow has commited him to do.

A hero who completes his or her mission and who has fulfilled their moral and mortal duty successfully closes the book on their story. At least for now.

And so, in this way, my father, like Ethan, had made himself obsolete from his past life with us before venturing off toward the next karmic adventure on the horizon.

There's a poetry to that I feel.