Today I Choose to be Peaceful – When Peace Finds You First

The week after Dad died was chaos wearing grief’s face.

I sat surrounded by towers of paperwork at his kitchen table-the same table where he’d eaten toast every morning for twenty years, where he’d paid bills in his careful handwriting, where I’d now become the executor of a life that had ended too soon at 92. He could have lived to 120 and it still would have been too soon.

Death certificates to order. Funeral arrangements to finalize. Bank accounts to close. Insurance companies to call. Each task a small violence against the reality I couldn’t accept: that this vibrant, stubborn, wonderfully difficult man was gone.

My phone rang constantly. Cousins with questions. Funeral directors with decisions. Friends offering casseroles and condolences. Everyone needed something, and I gave it, because that’s what you do. That’s what I’ve always done. You keep moving until the crisis passes.

But this crisis felt infinite. This grief had no end date, no resolution, no way to organize it into manageable pieces.

By Thursday, I was running on coffee and determination, that brittle energy that holds you together until it doesn’t. I fell asleep at my kitchen table, my face pressed against a pile of Medicare statements, dreaming the deep sleep of the completely depleted.

The Hollywood Hills, of All Places

In the dream, I found him sitting on an old wooden swing.

Not just any swing. This particular swing was perched impossibly in the Hollywood Hills, near that famous sign that had watched over Los Angeles for decades. The detail was so vivid I could smell the eucalyptus trees, feel the warm California breeze that had nothing to do with our life in the Midwest.

The location made no sense. We’d never been to Los Angeles together. Dad had no connection to Hollywood, other than working at NBC New York for 44 years. If anything, he would have scoffed at the pretension of it all. But there he was, swinging gently, looking out over a city that sparkled like scattered diamonds in the valley below.

“Dad?” I approached carefully, as if sudden movements might shatter this impossible gift. “Dad, how are you? Are you okay?”

The words came out cracked with tears I didn’t know I was crying in the dream.

He looked at me with those familiar blue eyes- clearer now than they’d been in his final months, bright with something I couldn’t name. He patted the wooden seat beside him, a gesture so quintessentially him that my dream-heart broke all over again.

“I’m more than okay,” he said, his voice carrying that slight rasp that was so familiar. “Look.”

He waved his hand toward the view, and I followed his gaze. The landscape stretched endlessly before us- not just Los Angeles, but beyond, as if we could see everything: mountains and oceans, cities and forests, all of it shimmering with a beauty that made my chest tight with wonder.

“Look at all I can see,” he said, and there was joy in his voice, pure and uncomplicated. “It’s so beautiful and amazing.”

I felt something in me loosen- some knot of fear and grief I didn’t know I’d been carrying. He was okay. More than okay. He was… radiant.

Then his face shifted into the familiar expression of mock exasperation I remembered from childhood, when I’d leave my toys scattered across the living room or forget to feed the goldfish.

“The only problem,” he said, reaching up to swat at something above his head, “is this damn cat sitting on my head.”

Pure Dad, Even in Paradise

I woke laughing.

Actually laughing, there at the kitchen table with Medicare forms stuck to my cheek and my neck stiff from sleeping upright. The dream was so vivid, so absolutely, quintessentially him, that for a moment the impossible seemed possible: he had found a way to let me know he was fine, and he’d delivered the message with his signature mix of awe and annoyance.

A cat on his head in paradise. Of course. Even in the afterlife, Dad would find something to complain about with that particular brand of loving irritation that had defined him.

But more than the humor, more than the impossible comfort of seeing him peaceful and whole, something else had happened in that dream. Something had settled in me, some profound sense of calm that had nothing to do with my circumstances and everything to do with a deeper knowing.

Peace. Real peace. Not the kind you earn or achieve or meditate your way into, but the kind that arrives unbidden, like grace.

It stayed with me through the funeral planning, through the service where I spoke though crying, through the long weeks of paperwork and phone calls and the hundred tiny violences of erasing a life from bureaucratic existence. The chaos continued, but underneath it, holding me up like water holds a swimmer, was this strange, steady tranquility.

The Knowingness That Stays

More than a decade has passed since that dream. I’ve tried to find Dad again in sleep, searched for him in that space between waking and dreaming where impossible visits feel possible. I’ve looked for swings in Hollywood Hills, for that view of everything beautiful and amazing, for his voice telling me he’s more than okay.

I’ve never found him again. Not like that.

But I’ve learned something about that peace he gave me, that calm that arrived when I wasn’t looking for it, when I was too exhausted to manufacture it myself.

Sometimes peace finds us.

Sometimes, when we’re running on empty and held together by duty and caffeine, when we’ve tried everything we know how to try and failed, when we’re sitting in the wreckage of our best efforts wondering how we’ll take another step- sometimes peace walks in unannounced and sits down beside us.

It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It doesn’t require that we be ready or worthy or sufficiently spiritual. It just arrives, like an unexpected letter from someone you love.

Learning to Recognize Peace When It Calls

I used to think peaceful meant quiet- no phones ringing, no deadlines looming, no people needing things from me. I thought it was something I had to create by controlling my environment, managing my schedule, finding the perfect meditation cushion or yoga class or breathing technique.

But that dream taught me something different. Peace isn’t the absence of chaos. It’s the presence of something deeper- a certainty that transcends circumstances, a stillness that exists even when everything around you is in motion.

It’s the knowingness that Dad carried with him to that impossible swing, the same knowingness he passed to me in sleep. The understanding that there’s something larger than our immediate struggles, more beautiful than our temporary troubles, more amazing than anything we can see from our limited vantage point.

That peace lives in me still. Not always accessibly. Not always obviously. But it’s there, like a tuning fork I can strike when I remember.

What Peace Looks Like in Real Life

These days, when life feels like too much- when the world is screaming and my phone won’t stop pinging and my nervous system is convinced we’re under attack- I remember that swing.

Not the details. Not the Hollywood Hills or the impossible view or even Dad’s voice. I remember the feeling. That sense of being held by something larger than myself, something that sees the big picture even when I can’t see past today’s troubles.

Sometimes it’s enough to close my eyes and breathe the word “peaceful” like a prayer. Sometimes I have to actively choose calm when everything in me wants to choose chaos. Sometimes I sit quietly and try to see what Dad saw from that swing- the long view, the beautiful view, the everything-will-be-okay view.

And sometimes, when I’m too tired to choose anything at all, peace chooses me. It sits down beside me wherever I am- at kitchen tables covered with impossible paperwork, in cars stuck in traffic, in bathroom stalls where I’ve gone to cry- and reminds me that I’m held by something that won’t let me fall.

The Practice of Receiving Peace

I’m learning that choosing to be peaceful isn’t always about generating calm. Sometimes it’s about being still enough to receive the calm that’s already there.

It’s the difference between trying to create light and opening the curtains to let light in. Peace isn’t always something we make; sometimes it’s something we notice, something we allow, something we stop blocking long enough to feel.

This requires a different kind of practice than I’m used to. Not the effortful kind where I meditate my way to serenity, but the receptive kind where I create space for serenity to find me.

Sometimes that looks like sitting in my car for an extra minute after I arrive somewhere, just sitting without agenda or activity, making myself available to whatever wants to arrive.

Sometimes it’s letting myself be held by memory- not just the dream of Dad, but all the moments when peace has shown up uninvited: holding my newborn son, walking through a Redwood grove, sitting on a bench looking out over Tampa Bay, or laughing so hard with friends that time stopped.

Sometimes it’s trusting that underneath all the surface chaos- the emails and deadlines and endless demands- there’s a deeper current of tranquility that flows regardless of whether I’m paying attention to it.

The Invitation Peace Always Offers

Dad’s dream-gift wasn’t just about him being okay. It was about me remembering that peace is always available, even in the middle of grief, even in the middle of chaos, even when we’re too tired to look for it.

It was a reminder that we don’t have to earn calm or achieve serenity or perfect our circumstances before we’re allowed to feel peaceful. Peace doesn’t wait for permission. It doesn’t require that we get our lives in order first.

It simply offers itself, over and over, like a patient friend who never stops believing we’re worthy of rest.

Today I choose to be peaceful. Not because I feel peaceful- though sometimes I do. Not because I’ve created perfect conditions for peace- because I rarely have. But because I’m learning to recognize the peace that’s always choosing me first.

The peace that sits beside me on impossible swings, that holds me through the worst weeks, that whispers in the space between heartbeats: you are more than okay. Look at all there is to see. Even with the cats on your head, even with the chaos at your feet, you are held by something beautiful and amazing.

Sometimes we find peace. Sometimes peace finds us first. Both are grace. Both are enough. Both are true.

And sometimes, if we’re very lucky, we get visited by the people we love most, sitting on swings in impossible places, reminding us that being peaceful isn’t about having a perfect life.

It’s about recognizing that life itself- messy and difficult and heartbreaking and beautiful- is already more amazing than we can see from here.

Even with the damn cats on our heads.