Discalimer: I don't own Star Wars.
Fathers and Sons
I understand now that I could never have saved my father's life. He was meant to die—it's what he was born for. To right the balance.
He didn't bring the kind of balance the old masters were expecting. And he was never meant to. I sometimes wonder, now, if that was a part of the reason for his fall. The old masters were so certain of what it must mean to bring balance to the Force—the destruction of the Sith. So they taught him how to fight, and how to kill, and he learned those lessons well. But they never taught him how to love.
They never taught him how to die.
They didn't teach me, either. They taught me to be a warrior, just as they had taught him—calm, controlled, with the Light as my weapon—and they sent me out to do battle with the monster.
And the monster was my father.
Even now, years later, I still can't quite comprehend that.
I couldn't kill him. And in those last, desperate moments, when the teachings of my masters failed me, I remembered the words of my first teacher, perhaps (though I could never have known it at the time) the wisest.
Aunt Beru used to say that at the heart of love lies sacrifice, and forgiveness.
The masters told me to kill him. Instead, I forgave him. And my father sacrificed everything.
It's strange, I reflect as I meet my father's eyes in the face of my newborn son, that the one thing which eluded the Jedi since the beginning of the Order, the thing which alone can truly bring balance, is something which anyone who has ever truly loved knows. Perhaps they never saw it because it's so simple. So incredibly simple, and the most difficult thing in the universe.
It's forgiveness. It's sacrifice. And it's love—pure, simple, and unconditional.
We named our newborn son Ben, in honor of my first Jedi mentor. I think my father would like that.