Holidays and days of remembrance have very sharp edges. Although they may contain the most heightened moments of gratitude and closeness, being at peace with them requires skill at one of the most fundamental aspects of tranquility: contentment with things as they imperfectly are, without desire to change them for the better. That’s especially true in a society where we’ve become adept at selling each other images of impossible ideals, be it of beauty or family or other elements of all we’re told to desire and attain.

It’s Father’s Day as I write this. It’s one of those edgy days of remembrance. My own father returned to the soil over two years ago, deep issues divided us while he was alive, and I chose not to have children. I did not know my father’s father, who died before I was born, and my memories of my other grandfather recede into a childhood memory haze. These are not the realities of which the sweetest of Father’s Day ads are made.

Still, I’m at peace with it all by now. I’m not giving in to any temptations to feel ancestrally lonely. I wouldn’t exist without my father, obviously, and within me grow traces of his better qualities alongside his more subtle demons. The entire line of humanity preceding me still informs my existence, and the entire line of life yet to come does the same. It’s the chorus of the first song on the Grace and Tranquility CD I’ve created with Gypsy Soul: “I look at you and hear you say/All your ancestors are gone/But in the words you say it with/All their voices linger on.” The interconnectedness of life still cradles me beautifully, and when I look deeply into those connections, loneliness feels like an absurd concept.

When it was time for my father’s memorial service and I was creating a flyer for it, the photo I chose was not human at all: it was a single seagull flying off into the sky, not apparently lonely or wishing for anything to be different. It seemed to symbolize his passing and our connected yet solitary nature better than anything. Later the same photo ended up in the book version of Grace and Tranquility as the lead to the section called “Imagination as Foundation.” Imagination is the foundation of compassion—our ability to envision the world through others’ eyes—including the eyes of our fathers, our distant unknown relatives, and our unborn descendents of two hundred years hence. Compassion for our own inherited pains and imperfections is vital too, especially on an edgy day of remembrance. These words would not exist without my father. I would not have been able to create the book, the CD, anything at all, without his best intentions, his generosity, and all of the associated demons and challenges. So happy Father’s Day, to all fathers and to all of us who’ve had them. For every one of us, there is never a fatherless day. There is no reason for things to be different than they are.