I just ordered a bunch of my dad’s books. It’s my birthday present for him, every year since he died. My father passed away on December 29th, 2019, and on his birthday, just two weeks later, my sister and I embarked upon the first annual “Boundaries of Order Pilgrimage”, carrying copies of our father’s books to distribute to all of the little free libraries of Burbank, California.
I don’t remember if it was on this walk, or another walk with my sister around the same time, but we talked about what she had just learned from reading Debbie Reynolds’ autobiography. Debbie had grown up nearby, and she wrote about the seizure of the property of Japanese Americans there in Burbank, about families just disappearing, being taken away and put on trains… about the internment camp for Japanese Americans right there in Griffith Park.
Of course I had long known about what had happened to Japanese Americans during WWII. But I had never known that there had been an internment camp right in our own neighborhood, or that the streets we walked to and from school had likely been built on top of farms that had been stolen from families.
I wondered out loud: What about their neighbors? Did any of them stand up for them? Did anyone try to stop them from being taken?
So much has changed since that first Pilgrimage. When my sister and I set out, we couldn’t have known the extent to which our own world was about to be upended. And I am chilled by the memory of our conversation about the Japanese families and their neighbors. After the past three years, I feel that I have an answer to my questions. And it’s not what I wanted it to be.
My family isn’t in Burbank anymore. But the tradition will continue, and late next week, I’ll embark on the Third Annual Boundaries of Order Pilgrimage, in Lexington, Kentucky. I like to think that it will make a difference, and not only for my dad, wherever he is. I like that so many of his books were taken so quickly back in Burbank, and I like to think that they’re being read. Getting his ideas out into the world, and having people understand them, was one of the most important things to my dad during his life. And those ideas are needed now more than ever.
Here’s what I wrote about the first Boundaries of Order Pilgrimage, in early 2020:
My father passed away on December 29th of last year. He had been sick for a while, but none of us realized how sick he was until the day before he died. So it was a huge blow to all of us when he went. ...which of course it would have been even if we had known months ago. There is nothing good about death, and nothing good about losing a parent. I'll write more about him when I'm ready, but for now I'm just really sad and really exhausted and really missing him.
Which is why my birthday, which falls about a week after the day he passed away, could have been a really, really crappy day. Thankfully, I have two sisters who weren't about to let that happen.
Sister One arranged for celebrity birthday greetings from Oliver Phelps and Nicholas Brendon. Greetings for which I don't even have words. You'll just have to watch them yourselves.
And Sister Two accompanied me on the pilgrimage I had decided I would do that day. I knew that the only way I could make the day anything other than miserable was if I did something to honor my dad. I decided I would take a bunch of his books to all of the Little Free Libraries around town and deposit them. So, that's what we did. We found eight Little Free Libraries, and deposited eight copies of his book Boundaries of Order
That night, my husband, sister, and some of our kids went out for dinner at one of our favorite Japanese restaurants: Honda Ya. It was the last restaurant we had taken my dad out to, last spring, back when he was still able to get around easily.
Looking at this picture now, I feel so grateful that we took him out that night. I am so grateful for so many of the things we did with him, and for him. There are things that I can see clearly now, that I could not see until right after he died.
Things like:
1. Before someone dies, it's so easy to think about all the "important" things you need to say to them, or do with them. And I'm so glad I did say the things that needed to be said. BUT: It's not the "important" things that necessarily matter the most. What matters most is just being with that person. Just hanging out with them, talking about anything at all. I don't really remember what I talked about with my dad that night at the Japanese restaurant. But it was one of the most important things I've ever done.
2. Re: Cultures that place a lot of value on "honoring your elders." From the outside, it would be easy to think that they do this for practical reasons: To encourage the preservation and appreciation of learning and wisdom, etc. Or even self-serving reasons on the part of the elderly themselves. But what is crystal clear to me now is that there is another reason. That honoring our parents in particular (not always an easy thing to do, I know) is not only for their benefit, but also for ours.
I could spend the rest of my life wallowing in the regrets I have about my dad: That I didn't spend enough time with him, didn't just go over and hang out very much, didn't take advantage of the fantastic opportunity I had to do that by living so close by. I could add to that all the ways I might have been able to help him survive his cancer if I had urged him to try something else earlier, if I had known what to urge him to try. The list could go on for a very long time, and I could really torment myself with it if I chose to.
But I also know that I did the best for him that I could figure out to do, once he was sick, that I was there for him in the ways that I thought he needed me to be, and I also know that he appreciated me for that, because he said he did. So, even with the regrets I have, I can have some peace. I'm not tormented by the thought that I wasn't there for him when he needed me to be. And I know now that I would have been, if I hadn't done the things I did.
So this whole "honoring your parents" thing - it's more than just a practical tool, or self-serving tradition. It comes from a recognition that the bond between parents and children is a real thing. It is a deep thing, and a meaningful thing. And if you betray it, you are hurting yourself. You are giving yourself a terrible burden to carry around for the rest of your life. I don't think I realized that before, but I do now.
I don't know if there is an afterlife. I think there probably is, but I can't say that I "believe" there is. I hope there is. And at times like this, I completely understand why - if there ISN'T - humanity has had to convince itself that there is. Because the thought of this loss being permanent is too hard to bear. So I don't know. But if there is, and if my dad is able to see us from there, I know he would be happy to know that just a few days after the Great Boundaries of Order Pilgrimage, my sister and I returned to three of the Little Free Libraries to find that two of his books had been taken.
Remembering my Father: Boundaries of Order Pilgrimage
Thanks for sharing this part of your life with us. I think your choice of how you are honoring his life is a terrific choice. I especially enjoyed seeing a picture of him from one of your last meals together. I can see why the restaurant is one of your favorites as well. His choice of food looks great, and I very much enjoy Japanese cuisine.
The work that your father did to help shed light on, (to borrow from Rothbard,) man, economy, and state, helps to give his readers a better understanding of how those three topics affect our daily lives, then and now. The work that you are doing to help extend his legacy to the people of Burbank with free copies of his books, and to your own readers here on your Substack. Thanks again for sharing.
Theodore Lee
I anticipate feeling regrets about my mother’s passing when it happens. I know that’s an odd thing to say. Looking at our relationship and my feelings, and my awkward and unsatisfying efforts to speak the truth to her, I recognize that some of what goes unsaid will look, in retrospect, like it shouldn’t have been so hard to say. And yet, I know that, where I am in my healing process, it is, at this time, as unsayable as if it were required to be expressed in a long-dead language spoken by a small tribe on the other side of the globe.
So whenever I read a story like this, from someone who WAS able to speak the words of her heart at the time when the recipient could hear them in this dimension, I feel both a touch of sadness and also a vicarious gratitude that, each time such a thing occurs, the world is a little bit healed and I, in my brokenness, am a beneficiary.