Beyond the Will of the Soul

Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here.

-Nine Inch Nails, Hurt

..Tears from a Stone..

I am out of practice. This is the reality of the situation. I tell myself that I do not want to write because I have nothing left to say, but the constant nagging of thoughts suggests otherwise. Though there be atrophy, there is still will left to flex these emotions.

My father killed himself ten years ago today. Ten years seem so long that it is almost funny. How can someone just disappear for that long? Did he really exist, or was he just some elaborate fantasy? He seems like a fantasy, but perhaps only because my sole interactions with him these days take place in my mind, and in the deep places of my heart, that is, when my heart is unprepared.

I have willed my heart to be stone toward him. It isn’t an issue of malice against my father, but rather an act of survival- I simply cannot spend my days longing to see him. My heart grew a callus through continual thought and emotional stimulation. The callus thickened as the phantom persisted in agitating it. The feeling grew dull as the callus calcified to stone. Ten years of hard labor will turn hands into rock. Likewise, a decade of unrelenting, dissatisfied thoughts and desires turn emotions into brick. The itch cannot be scratched, and so I am done with feeling for him.

But I am not, not really.

Years of clutching a rock in your chest is wearisome, though I will tell you that it is less burdensome than attempting to fill the vacuum this rock entombs. I suppose writing this is an act of survival as well lest this rock in my chest grow to become my tombstone.

This is not fair. I did not ask for this. But that does not really matter. Reality often demonstrates its power over us by pushing aside those things we think unbreakable, including our own sense of justice or equity. So though I acknowledge that this situation is awful and not fair, I do not wish to harp on that. The time for lamenting these particular facts has passed and I have already reflected on them in other essays. This current work is not intended to be a repeat of previous works. There is another topic I wish to explore, though I am unsure of what it is or how to even start upon it. I merely see it from the corner of my mind.

I want to say that I will never forgive my father for killing himself, but I already have and absolutely would do again without question. Besides which I do not really want to say that- I just really want to be able to want that. I suppose that is the stone trying to crush him as it winds up crushing me instead.

I can no longer live with a heart of stone anymore. It will be impossible to love my wife as I should with a heart that can only operate to defend itself by suppressing my feelings. So I have to just deal with this:

Ten years of the lack of you…

The reality of future decades without you…

You will never meet my wife…

You will not attend my wedding…

You will not hold any grandchildren…

This is too much. I need to take a break.

..Mine Shaft..

Feeling for the edges- imaginary fingers tracing out the grooves of an imaginary hole that is sealed by an imaginary rock. Gaining a grip and sighing deeply. Lifting up the stone and peering into the hole. Empty as usual.

Empty, yet present all the same as I climb into the darkness and explore the mine shaft yet again. I explored this darkness for several years searching for answers. I didn’t really find any that satisfied my need to see my dad or to fight my dad or to hug my dad. Back then there was only wisdom to be found. Great, painful chunks of it. And here I am attempting to hoist more of it up.

..The Me in Me..

It has been weeks since I have last written anything, but this has been on my mind near constantly. Just staring into this hole, willing these words to manifest on their own or to have the burden of them go away. Neither option has availed itself so far. So here comes another attempt to manually execute this procedure, though really I am looking for any excuse to step away from the computer.

Sometimes I imagine just staring at you to see if I can remember what you looked like and how you acted. I imagine you staring back at me and I wonder what you would think of what you saw. And sometimes we will say mean things to each other, but then I realize that it’s just me saying mean things to myself in order to make a rift between us.

I cannot cope apparently. And I cannot imagine you saying kind or encouraging things to me. This is not because you were not kind or encouraging- I just cannot cope with those words or actions. I cannot cope with exploring the loss of your love and affection. To no longer have access to your love has been devastating. And I cannot imagine it because it was your unique and personal love. That is something that just cannot be synthesized in memory or imagination, no matter how long or well I knew you. It would involve encapsulating you, and you were just too big to take up permanent residence in my heart or mind.

I miss you and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Denial and silence are a delusion- you seep through any wall I build up. I want to love you, but I feel like I just collect that love in a bucket and pour it onto the ground where all it does is foster weeds.

I suppose that isn’t true, but sometimes it feels like it. I can be as dramatic as you were sometimes.

I feel like a ghost. Not in any sort of spectral or otherworldly way, but in the sense of being unnoticed. Of course, I know that people notice me, but they cannot see me wandering in my own head looking for you. That is what I mean. People see me, but they do not see the me in me. And now this is conflated because is this about my personality, or is this about you? More than likely it is both.

The me in me is at a loss for words. The me in me still misses you desperately and has not been okay just carrying on life without you. This is the me that is still sad about all the unresolved issues that will remain unresolved. This is who is encapsulated within me, not you. The conversations I have with you are really just conversations that I have with myself, or rather the person I remember you to be. In the end it is all still just me. You will never answer me and never comfort me, and that is the hard part about all of this: you did this terrible thing and now it is on me to not just deal with it, but to move past it. And that means moving past myself. Moving past the part of me that is tied up with you.

Is me in me still angry? Sure, sometimes.

Is me in me still sad? Absolutely.

Is me in me noticed? I do not allow him to be.

I do not know what to do about this but walk away for a while. This is not what I imagined.

..Glance..

I’m a keen observer, or rather, I try to be. I notice little things that typically go unseen because of their function. Droplets of water on a cobweb. The fine scales of a dragonfly’s wing. The pattern of sunlight that draws its way across my bedroom ceiling throughout the course of a day. Little things that call no attention to themselves, but just exist as a result of how the world works. And in these observations I attempt to draw greater meanings and motivations.

I apply this same principle with people. Especially with their facial expressions when they think they are unnoticed. People are wonderful when they are in a state of social ambiguity. They are their genuine selves in a system of lives and physics that makes everything seem insignificant except the greater whole of the total’s immensity. To notice a person’s small role in the greater machine is to take note of the craftsmanship of that machine and wonder at its goal. Furthermore, to see the subtleties that undergird that role reveals a person’s humanity. It lets you know that you are not alone in the immensity of this life, and that others are just as important and complex as you are.

I glance at people as they walk by me or wait in line or sip their coffee or take a break on a bench. Where do their eyes wander? Do they connect with mine? Do their lips form a hard line or are they smiling? Are they squinting?

From these details I try to discern what I can about them, or rather, about their experience in that given moment. Are they happy or sad or somewhere between? If I know them, does their expression add a layer of depth to their personhood, given what I know of their current or past circumstances? Are they revealing that they are more than what they let on to the world around them? Yes, undoubtedly, but beyond my ability to interpret. My understanding is finite and localized by the breadth of my limited experience and learning. Besides which, subtle winks, grunts, frowns, and hasty scratches are mere shadows of an individual’s identity. How can they do more than merely hint at what is going on in their owner’s mind?

If you were to glance at me, would you know that these words were stored up in my heart? When I stare at the void in my heart, the image I have to represent the absence of my father, what intentions lay behind it? What does the me in me think and experience? When I stare at the image of the void, or my father, or just myself I perceive my redounding ache for him. More than that I feel the weight caused by his absence. I feel the distance of time that separates me from the reality of being able to interact with him. I feel my mind attempting to create him again and again out of mere memory and failing and knowing it is failing. I feel the dissatisfaction of helplessness in not knowing where these feelings are coming from or what I can do about them.

But what beyond that? Mere shadow, thick as wool yet formless as night.

..Word Anvil..

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate, And though I oft have passed them by, A day will come at last when I, Shall take the hidden paths that run, West of the Moon, East of the Sun. -Tolkien

The thoughts do not make any more sense than previously- they just have words now. It is a great effort to wrench from the coalmine of grief logical materials that can be shaped into somewhat cohesive ideas. And they are weak ideas. My ability to comprehend these thoughts and thereby bend them into rationality is limited, and perhaps useless. These emotions and thoughts do not bend easily on the anvil of intellect, and therefore yield a somewhat weakened and incomplete product. My words will never describe what I feel, only the shadows and refractions thereof. I will only ever understand peripherally, and so will only be able to describe abstractly. I will only ever have a sideways glance at the thing that effects me body and soul. I will only be able to experience it and never able to verbalize the experience, not fully or directly anyway.

I must settle for the periphery. I must settle for never being able to fully understand. I must accept that the full understanding of my thoughts and feelings, though they be mine and though I feel the full brunt of their sway, is not mine to have. They are too great to fully know, at least for now. They are like the winds at sea. They cannot be controlled. They exert their power despite my opinions on their method or timing. All that can be done is to move with them. To maneuver with them so as to guide me rather than let them topple or drown me. So rather than attempting to bend the wind of thought with the iron of intellect, perhaps the better approach is to focus the wind into the sail of the heart till I reach the destination of the will of my soul.

..Will of the Soul..

And this is what I will. What I desire. What I see peripherally and feel fully, but will never experience in reality.

I wish my father knew my wife and I wish he could attend our wedding.

I wish my father knew that he was integral to me becoming friends with my wife, though he had passed on several years before I had even formally met her. I want to imagine his face light up as she and I told him how it was the books he gave me to read as a young adult that became the sort of foundation upon which she and I built a dialogue and eventual friendship. He played matchmaker without even knowing it. She and I love him for that. I wish you knew the love she has for you.

I wish you could meet and know my future father-in-law. He is a wonderful man, and he reminds me so much of you (so much sometimes that it hurts). He loves the same books you did, and has the same depth of thought. He reads as voraciously as you did and can converse on any number of subjects, just like you. I am sad that you will never meet him. Your bond to one another would have surpassed the mere obligation of family ties- you would have been friends. Great friends. You wouldn’t have to be lonely anymore.This, of course, creates a paradox in my mind. You died in your loneliness, and it would have been impossible for him to be friends with you before I even knew his daughter. Herein lies a tangle of thoughts and emotions that I make a note of, acknowledging that they will never be mollified in this life.

I wish I could have seen your life turned around. I wish you could have been happy, and that we could revel in our shared happiness together. I wish I could invite you to my home and I wish I could have meals with you again and I wish I could discuss books and ideas with you again and I wish I could watch stupid movies with you again and quote dumb movie lines with you again. I wish I could look forward to possibly placing grandchild after grandchild into your arms, and say, “See?! Can you believe it?! You were right!” I wish these things could take place in reality, and not just in my imagination. I wish I did not have to suppress these thoughts. I wish they didn’t have the power to overtake me and cast a pall upon reality.

I wish I could tell you sorry, or somehow take away the consequences of your actions. Ten years later and I still feel responsible for what you did. I am so sorry. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. I wish you could tell me it wasn’t my fault. I wish you could take back your last action and come out of hiding.

Herein reality flexes its dominance in the face of what I deem to be fully just desires. Though I will these things to be, they can never be. This is the will of my soul. This is the empty island the sail of my heart leads me to, and it hurts enough to crawl under a heart of stone.

..Isle of Stone..

Are you proud of me? Are you ashamed of me? Do you care that I still care about you? Do you feel the weight of my sorrow as I feel the weight of your absence?

I will never hear your answers with my waking ears, and the only responses I will ever have will be the ones I conjure on my own in the synthesis of memory and imagination. This is unfulfilling, and so I must cast it aside. It cannot matter what you think of me, not anymore.

I hope you would be proud of me, though.

..To be Heard..

I said earlier that I was talking to myself through all of this, but that is not entirely accurate. Obviously, there is you, the reader, who is receiving these thoughts, though you do so peripherally, and not directly. And this is to be expected and it is proper. All reading is a peripheral viewing of a writer’s thoughts. I acknowledge you from the periphery (that is, I acknowledge that you may exist and that you may be reading this), and I thank you for taking the time, whether you mention to me that you read this or not. Even if you happen to find this 100 or 200 years from now and cannot talk to me because I am long gone, I thank you. Around the invisible and unreachable corner connecting life and death I peek over with this written thought and I thank you. Though we only meet here at the juncture of my written thoughts and your reading eyes, I thank you. And that will have to be enough.

God has also been present. Though much of what I have written comes out as introspection and self-talk, it is not without Him peering in. More than that, I am talking to Him in all of it: like carrying on a conversation with one person within earshot of another. This is me peripherally communicating these issues to the Lord.

Why not directly? Maybe this is as direct as I can be with this subject. Being direct merely retreads old paths, and the thoughts expressed in this reflection could not be addressed by the old hikes. I only understand this so much, and I am limited in my ability to describe it. I am unsure how to even ask for help in it. I am hoping that I am communicating loudly enough for God to perceive that I need help, though I am unsure of what kind. And I believe He understands fully, even though I can only communicate abstractly about this to Him.

Though I will my thoughts to go in a certain direction, it is He that guides me beyond the inevitability of my unfulfilled and never-to-be-met desire to see my father in this life. And while He can understand fully and therefore address the issue perfectly, I continue to only understand peripherally, though I experience fully. The thoughts and feelings I can only loosely grab and make simple sense of, He knows in full. For though I stand peripherally to Him, He dwells fully in me. So my thoughts and feelings become His, and He makes them into more than broken dreams. Though I know them as broken, He has me experience them in their restoration.

No, this does not make any sense to me, but just as the feelings and thoughts of grief are greater than my ability to grasp them, so then must their restoration be. All I know is that I am heard and that I am known. I am known not peripherally, but in full. Though I only understand it dully, I experience it fully, and ever more fully. And that will also have to be enough.

..The Years of Mending..

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. -Psalm 139:6

These are all broken thoughts. The product of my writing is poor compared to the reality of the experience I feel, though I wish them not to be. Herein reality shows me how much I do not and cannot understand, though I think I have a right to.

What will it be like to be fully mended? To fully know and understand. Again, I only comprehend this peripherally. Oddly enough I only feel this peripherally as well. Words fail here. The only way I can think of describing it is like gaining a new ability, but only understanding that after the fact and not by your own doing.

There are aspects of my grief that I no longer endure, but I only found out in retrospect. I did not do anything to fix them, I merely received the repairs. I walked into them as they waited for me to acknowledge and pick them up. The process felt unbearable, but it made me ready to receive the mending. I pointed out the problems, but I did not fix them because I couldn’t. And yet they got fixed. Again, words fail here. I apologize.

I want this process to be over with, but it is ongoing. Each mending seems to be preparing me for the next issue, which will lead to the next mending. It seems there is no shortage of things to be fixed about me, and each fix seems like a minor bit of necessary preparation for the next big operation (which inevitably seems smaller than the one that comes after it).

To what end am I being mended? It is not enough that I get over my father’s death, apparently. That would have been good enough for me, but I only understand peripherally what is actually good. I am changed beyond who I was ten years ago. I did not ask for that, but here we are. I only see dimly the road ahead, but I hope to one day have mended eyes that can see as clear forward as they can reflect backward.

What will there be to see further down the road? Will the vision put to rest and explain the path that grows ever longer behind me? To what end am I being mended?

I daresay that I am being formed to turn the impossible corner, and finally see fully what I now only perceive the edges of. I hope that I am being made fit to jump the wall that divides the knowledge of my father’s continued existence with my inability to be with him in that new existence. I daresay that I am being fit to receive the gift of a seemingly impossible hope. That I am being made for a greater reality.

Dad, you took the shortcut, but I must take the long road. I hope that you are there at the end of it. I hope that my body is formed to overcome corporeality and finally be able to hug you again. That my ears are made to hear you beyond the silence of these intervening years. That new eyes will be able to pierce this dim reality and see you again.

Who knows what you will be like then? And who knows what our mending will look like after that? I do not understand what it is I feel or what the substance that produces that feeling looks like- I only glace at it peripherally as it tugs on my heart to carry on down the long road.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. -1 John 3:2

A More Honorable End

My father committed suicide seven years ago today. I was tempted to just let this anniversary pass without acknowledging it, but it did not feel right to do so, given that I have not been able to think of anything else since the start of January. So I find myself placing my fingers to the keyboard once again; not for too long- just long enough.

Suffice it to say that I have written extensively about this matter for quite some time now. At this point I do not believe that I can convey any other thoughts describing my sadness or anger or frustration, or even the loneliness of carrying around the memory of a ghost. And to manufacture more thoughts using slightly differing word tenses and stylistic phrasing seems disingenuous and an attempt to grab up attention for a matter that is important to me, but perhaps not overly remembered by others. At some point during grief it must be acknowledged that your burden is your own to carry and that summoning attention to it constantly transforms you into the image of your grief in the eyes of others (and, unfortunately, in your own eyes). One cannot live life as an animated monument to the deceased and expect to really live. These thoughts are not an attempt to do so.

Wishing is a futile exercise. It is hope with a sense of loss. But I do desire to just express this one void hope so that it can be acknowledged for what it is and what it can never be: I wish my father had a more honorable end. I wish that his exit was not so anticlimactic. I wish he had an end that was as big as he was, or, I should say, as big as I imagined him to be.

I wish that more of my friends could have known him so that they could realize how big a hole his exit left behind. I wish that I could look back at his death with the satisfaction of knowing that he truly lived to his potential, sad as it would be to see that legacy go.

I wish he didn’t die before I was ready for him to.

Herein we see the futility of the wish. I was not ready for him to die, and reflecting on his death will never ever bring a sense of satisfaction. I have only want and hurt out of it. I should remember the good times. I should remember his humor. I should remember his kindness. I should remember his deep mind and wisdom. I should remember just how big and strong he was. But all of those memories lead to an inevitable end that stains the whole. My father could not manufacture an honorable end for himself, and I cannot assemble one out of select bits and pieces of his life. His end is not his to change, nor is not mine to reinterpret.

Now I desire to express a hope. True hope is backed by the satisfaction of knowing that the object desired is inevitable, though in certain circumstances it cannot be explained why. I hope to one day no longer feel the need to justify my father’s life. I hope to let his end be what it is. I hope to let my father’s life stand on its own without the need to have my life act as a buttress for it. I hope to not depend on a sense of honor that is completely transitory and self-reliant. I hope that the meaning of my father’s life, and indeed the meaning of my own life, can lay outside of whatever thoughts I can muster concerning completeness and beauty. These things are hard to accept and embrace, but I have hope that they will be.

As of now, I only know a shadow of what should be. I only understand the immediate ugliness of wrong. I do not understand fully the true nature of restoration. I only know the shade of it and the closed bud if its being simply because I know that it should be there, though in truth I do not fully comprehend its form. I do not understand why it waits or why the story carries on the way it does. I only know that its existence points to what is wrong while simultaneously promising to what will be right.

Really beyond this topic is beyond my scope, and so here is where I will end this reflection. I miss my father, I wish for better things, and more than that I hope for something greater than I can completely understand: a meaning that supersedes my own understanding of meaning. A hope devoid of wishing. Restoration and beauty and completeness beyond their shadows.

It Happens Still

(Sung with a voice like a bell)

It happens still, though years have gone by,

I wind up thinking of you

I hear you pass, though I know it’s not true,

My mind stumbles in thoughts about you

Your presence vague, just a shadow of pain,

As your memories coming shining through

And I close my eyes, tis my only disguise,

As I try to remember you true

And I feel it still, though against my will,

Your absence comes into view

True I can’t see your face, that memory is all but erased,

It’s still hard to think about you

I grasp the air, you’re nowhere near here,

Just a thought as I sit in my room

And I wish it not true, though try as I might,

There’s no escaping how much I miss you

So I’ll stay right here, and ponder anew,

And think more thoughts about you

The Reflecting Pool

I’ve been writing about my father’s passing for six years now. I am out of words, but am not lacking for thoughts or emotions. I once wrote about “emotional constipation”, the idea that the emotional complex of grief was so great that finding words to describe the pain of it was akin to having a mental bolus that could only be pushed out through much exertion. This is not that. The state I find myself in now is more like being empty, only that is not quite accurate. It’s like a once soaking sponge that has been squeezed. The majority of the water is gone, but it is still damp. That’s more accurate: a damp state of being. It’s like a lake that has been fished in so much that all that remains are the little creatures that escape nets and hooks. I’m teaming with thoughts and emotions, but I cannot quite grasp what they mean or what possible importance they can be.

The word “death” is still hard.

The word “suicide” is still hard.

The word “dad” is still hard.

The phrase “Dad committed suicide a week before my birthday” is STILL HARD.

These and a million other thoughts and emotions are still hard, but I do not know the significance of any of them. All I know are what I have gained by catching the big fish over the years. I once wrote that grief is a mineshaft that you fall into. As you wander around looking for the exit you find chunks of gold- little pieces of wisdom and insight born from traversing the dark. Grief now seems to have morphed into a vast reflecting pond. A pool teaming with life, though what kind and how much is currently unknown.

Perhaps in time my thoughts will grow, as the small fish in a pond without larger predators seemingly do. Perhaps as I grow older and encounter new experiences I will understand more clearly the current thoughts and feelings that flit around my head. Perhaps they will grow large enough to capture and measure. Perhaps I will write more about this then.

But perhaps I will not. Perhaps what develops will not be made for words, but for reflecting. Perhaps they are better suited for conversations, or to simply dwell on with others. Perhaps they are here to comfort me in the sunset of a hard memory. Love without words, peace beyond comprehension.

My Heart does not Love the Memory

Dad isn’t fading away from my memories, but the reality of him is. I find myself thinking of dad almost as if he were like an imaginary friend or a figment of my imagination than as a real person. It’s an odd thought considering your father to have never existed, but to have been made up the entire time.

I know it’s a ridiculous thought. I couldn’t be here if he didn’t exist. I know this. I just can’t remember him being real. Or rather, I can’t remember him being real without it hurting real bad. He was here, and now he’s gone and not coming back. It’s like missing a body part. Better to think of it never existing to begin with.

I’m starting to have dreams of him now more often than in years past. I’ll ride the bus with him, or eat with him, or do any other such mundane activities with him. In the dream he is still alive and still strong (sometimes he and my mom are still married). These aren’t the nightmares or bizarre dreams that I used to get. These are almost like memories. Future memories. I’m not sure what the dreams are. They’re desires, I suppose. Desires for something that cannot be.

With the back of my eyes I see you, but all that’s in front of me is a blank wall or a tree or the sky or just the reflection in the mirror staring back.

A few weeks ago I found a couple of books that reminded me of you. I’ll probably never read them but I bought them anyway. I put them on your bookshelf in my living room and pretended that you bought them. It was a brief respite from the reality of your death.

I miss you. Five years you’ve been gone now, and you’re no closer to coming back. It doesn’t seem fair. I had plans. Hopes and expectations now relegated to dreams that I sometimes remember. I hate that I think of you as an imaginary person. I hate that peeling back the facade of that defense mechanism leaves me feeling empty. It makes me want to call you so that you could reassure me. Bitter irony.

I’m well taken care of, and I hate to sound ungrateful, but it just isn’t enough. You left an awful hole and the whole world can’t plug it up.

Sometimes I try to hang onto the sad feeling as long as possible because I just want to remember you as a real person for a little while. It validates my existence, but it also makes me feel you, if that makes any sense. There’s a whole portion of me that lays dormant now because you’re gone. Do I let it die, or do I revive it from time to time to let it grieve?

It’s weird to think that there’s a part of me missing because you aren’t here to bring it out of me. Does this part just disappear, or does it get redistributed to different facets of my life? I do talk more about you to people (whether they want to hear about you or not…and whether I feel comfortable bringing you up in conversation or not). Perhaps the whole of me is changing to accommodate those things in you that I lost (whatever that means).

Father’s Day is a fake holiday, but I mostly say that because my dad is gone. It’s a holiday now relegated to memory and unfulfilled desires. No card to buy. No phone call to make. No gift to mail down south. Just memory and imagination.

I knew a man once. He was big and strong and funny and rather brilliant. He was obnoxious to be sure, and he could be fierce when angry, but his love was genuine and tender. My memory recalls him, but it just can’t pull all of him together. I remember him in pieces. On the rare days I do recall a sharper picture of him I immediately remember his box of ashes. I remember the whole only to remember the loss in whole.

I miss him and I want him back. And I wish I could tell him that. Bitter irony.

Words are not enough, but they are all I have. My emotions are inexpressible, my thoughts are beyond my ability to understand, and my tears only serve to obscure what I thought I understood.

Where are you?

Who are you?

I miss the sound of his voice and his laugh. I miss his pontifications. I miss knowing he was always there.

I regret I cannot introduce my friends to him. I regret being unable to call him on the phone or to visit him.

I’m saddened with the prospect of living several more decades without him. In less than three decades I’ll have lived longer than I knew my father. That seems unfathomable. The man I talked to every day silent for so long. That’s an unbearable thought.

I’m sad that this is all I can say for Father’s Day this year. I love my dad, but I cannot reach him. My heart transcends the boundary between life and death, but my mind and my body remain here on this side of the dividing line and it is an unsettling feeling.

These words are mere shadows to what I actually feel. Likewise, my memory is only a shadow of the man my heart still fully loves in a present sense. My heart does not love the memory- it loves the man.

The memory does not provide comfort, but merely confirms the object of my affections. It is a snag upon which my love trips and falls. It is the tear in my mind that both confirms my dad’s absence and yet preserves my affections. I see through it like a hole in the wall. Both my affection and his absence. It reminds me constantly of both. I do not love the memory, I love the person the memory stands in memorial to.

It’s Just a Date

I was out grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago trying to round out my meals for the week.  I was in search for a bag of broccoli that would stay fresh for the next few days.  One bag of broccoli I pulled down from the shelf had the following expiration date:

January 24, 2019

“It’s just a date” I told myself as I tossed the bag of broccoli into my basket.

I find myself saying this a lot.  I say it coolly and causally so that no one suspects that something else is lingering on my mind.  “It’s just another day on the calendar” I say as I accept a meeting request.  It’s just like any other day.  People get married on it.  People have birthdays on it.  People go on vacation on it.  People eat, people sleep, people live on that day.  My father just so happened to have died on it, but that was years ago now.  It’s just another day, really.

But I guess it’s not just another day (not to me, anyway).  I’ve often wondered to myself over the past few years how long normal people take to get over a loved one’s death.  I wonder if the experts are lying when they give their estimates that range from a few months to a few years, or if I’m just not normal for failing to fall within their timeframes.  Maybe there is something wrong with me if I can’t just let this day go by without feeling sad.  Why should I keep feeling sad?  The event is long since passed and feeling sad doesn’t change anything (I say this as if I am able to convince myself).  Why do anniversaries carry with them any sort of special meaning or significance?  They’re just another day!  Eat, sleep, and move on!

Move on…now what does that even mean?  Does it mean to forget the past?  Does it mean to toss aside your emotions?  What does it mean to move on?  I have to get by this date, so how do I move on if I don’t move through it?  I can’t just skip this date.  If only I were able to skip this month then maybe I would be normal (except for the fact that I would only be around 11 months out of the year).

Maybe it means just putting on a brave face.  To face the challenges and responsibilities of the day while also dealing with the significance of the anniversary.  To live in the hole without dragging others into it.  To not let grief repulse others or get in the way of life.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” “I’m good.” “I’m well.” Etc.  Physically, financially, professionally, maybe, but in my head I’m thinking behind me and still trying to make sense of all of this.  Trying to play catchup with the rest of me.  With the rest of the world.

I present a fine husk to everyone while the rest of me is elsewhere.  Is it honest to do that?  How do you casually say that you miss your dad?  How do you just remain calm as you explain that your dad killed himself on this day?  There is no casual explanation.  And, likewise, there is no casual response from others.  People have certainly tried to carry on casually after I have laid this bomb on them, but I can always tell the tempo of the conversation changes in the aftermath (which is kind of natural and perfectly understandable.  How are people supposed to act when you lay something heavy like that on them?)  How do you remain calm and reassuring unless you leave out the details?  How are you supposed to function in the world if you bring up what is truly on your mind?

It’s been five years now since dad died.  I don’t know what the significance of that is, but it seems important for some reason.  It’s just another year.  Much like the ones that came before it and, more than likely, much like the ones that have yet to be.  But he’s not here.  Is that important?  He’s just another person and this world is filled with people.  The difference here, however, is that this was my father.  This is the anniversary of his suicide.  So, yes, it is just a date, but this date means that my dad is no longer here.  I understand that not many others feel the weight of that, so I understand how other people see this as just another date, and my dad as just another person.  But that is a rather lonely reality to face.

It’s just another day, but then again it is also THE day.  I know it, but not everyone else does.  Is that important?  It is to me, but maybe it doesn’t have to be for everyone else.  In fact, I know it doesn’t.  It doesn’t mean it’s not significant- just that it falls on a normal day.

What is important?  What needs to be done on this day?  What constitutes normal?  I wish I knew.  More accurately, I wish I knew how to make my mind align with whatever ideal normal is purported to be.  But then again, maybe that’s not really what is important.

Living- that is important.  Living even on hard days.  Swallowing whatever pain comes along so that you can live.  The only other option would be to let the pain swallow you, and life is too short and too important to do that.  That is important.  That is what needs to be done today, and tomorrow, and in all the years to come.

To live.

Beyond the Red Door

I sit in my study early this morning making last-second revisions to this post before publishing it later today. I’m wracking my mind trying to find the right words to say, and everything is coming up short. I want to say things that words really can’t express. I am frustrated that this isn’t “good enough,” but I am glad that I at least wrote something. This has been on my mind for the past few years now, but up to this point I’ve yet to deal with it. I wish I could make this clearer. I wish I could make this more beautiful. I know those desires come somewhat from pride, however, so I will settle for what words I am able to find.

I had a dream I was in the house with dad the day he died.  It was about a month or two after his death and I was living alone at the time in a small house in Midtown, Tallahassee.  It was a cold winter that year, and this house never warmed up too well (God bless this house, though, because its thick walls absorbed my screaming and my rages that year).  It was a bitter time, and I was thinking about home a lot.  I was trying to escape the reality of my father’s death and it’s associated consequences, but I could not escape the dreams.  These dreams have all varied through the years, and I do not remember all of them, but this one I remember as if it were a real memory. This one haunts me:

I find myself standing on the driveway outside of my dad’s house.  It’s a bright, sunny day and the house glows in its obnoxious Caribbean Blue paint.  It’s hot in this dream (it’s always hot in Miami).  I’m staring at the door when I hear my dad’s voice.

“Zack” he calls out to me, “Zaaaack.”  His voice is low and slightly desperate.  I open the front door and walk into the house.  He keeps calling my name, each time drawing out his cry a little longer.

“Zaaaaaaaaaaaaack.”  I reach his bedroom door.  There is an odd, red light shining from the edges of the doorframe.  It’s as if the sun is setting in his room.  I make to grab for the doorknob, but I can’t bring my arms forward.  I’m being held back!  I press my face and shoulder against the door in a desperate attempt to knock the door down (Damn my arms they’re being pinned back!). The red light is growing brighter.  Dad is still calling my name.  I’m gritting my teeth against the strain of the door and whatever force is pinning my arms behind my back. 

“Zaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.”  The Who song, I Can’t Reach You, starts playing as I feebly press my whole body against the door.  I am enveloped by the red light.

I wake up to my cold, dark room.  My arms are wrapped around my chest and I am giving myself a bear hug.  I was holding myself back from opening the door and stopping him.  

It’s hard to know what to make of this dream or the circumstances surrounding it.  I think of it often.  I wonder at its implications.  I wonder what the red light beyond the door was and I wonder why I was holding myself back.  What is my mind trying to tell me?  What is it trying to make sense of?  Why of all my dreams do I remember this one so clearly?

In one moment, I will think that the red light beyond the door is Hell, and then I’ll think that maybe it merely represents my dad’s life fading away like a sunset.  In one moment, I’ll think I was a coward because I held myself back, and in another I’ll think I couldn’t have been a coward because I was trying to get into the room.  My mind undulates between vast trains of thoughts and emotions as I conjure up different meanings for the red door. It’s as if my fear and my guilt are trying to meet halfway on an interpretation, and I’m caught in the middle of the negotiation. I wish I had a say in what the dream really means, but I have no idea. I only know what I am afraid of and what I feel guilty for.

I suppose it is just a dream, but I feel so burdened by it.  Perhaps it is merely a reflection of my desire to have been there that day.  I do wish I could have been there.  I wish I could have stopped him.  I wish he would have called out to me.  I wish I could have broken the door down.  But I was hundreds of miles away when he took his life.  A good excuse for inaction, perhaps, but not a very satisfying one.

I failed.  I failed to stop him. To convince him. Even in my dream I failed.  In my own dream I got in my way. Does that mean I think I got in the way in real life too? That I placed obstacles in front of myself that prevented me from helping him? Yeah, I do think that…

Or maybe, instinctively, my unconscious knew something that I have been unwilling to accept: that I was powerless to stop him from taking his life, and I continue to be powerless to that end.  No matter how often I think of this, no matter how much I pray about it, no matter how much I write about it I cannot change a thing.  Not a single thing. My guilt and my fear cannot fuel me to change anything.

I do not know what went on in my dad’s room that day (aside from the obvious).  That is the red light.  Mystery that is beyond knowledge or investigation.   Knowledge forbidden to mortals on this side of eternity.  Something too blinding to see, and too overwhelming to change or redirect.  And deep down I know and respect that, and that is why I held myself back.  I war in my mind about this though.  I am still in denial about what happened while simultaneously being fully accepting of it.

At the end of this I still find myself in an unsatisfying spot: wanting to know more or wanting to be able to do more, but the only option I am given is to wait.  To distract myself with other things.  To busy myself with the matters of life even though I don’t necessarily want to.

What is beyond the red door is forbidden to me.   I was not given permission to access it despite my own contention that it was my right to be there that day.  What happened in that room that day is between my father and the Almighty.  It was not my place to be there and it was not my duty to stop what happened. My guilt and my fear are lying to me.

O Lord, forgive the rage that bleeds from my grief.  Forgive my tired mind.  Forgive the thoughts that keep returning to this scene to fix what my mind perceives as being broken.  Forgive me for my doubts and my weakness.  I am ashamed that I am still dealing with this and that I have not found a solution for addressing it.  But Lord, I know this is an impossible task for me to do.  I can no more heal my mind than I can go back in time to stop dad from killing himself.  I am powerless and need Your help.  I know that You were there beyond the red door.  I know that it was You that kept me from entering in- even in my own dream.  I cannot see why, but help me to trust You in that. Forgive me for fighting against You.  I just miss my father (of course, you know that).  I hadn’t planned on him not being here.  I hadn’t planned on never seeing him again.  I hadn’t planned on any of this.  Life is not the way I imagined it would have been, and sometimes I try to take it back or to change things.  But I can’t.  This is the life I have been given.  This is the life I am called to.  Help me to live now, and to stop trying to break through the red door.

Pretend to be Strangers

As the chatter in my head grew too loud and the walls of my house grew too close I was moved to take a walk. Along one of the various streets around my neighborhood I encountered a man, a stranger, though somehow familiar. He sat upon the sidewalk, wearing a light jacket and dark sunglasses. A subtle, yet cocky, grin formed upon his lips and I could tell he wanted to strike up a conversation. I was not really in the mood for a chat, so I waved at the man, averted my eyes to the asphalt, and walked faster to get the point across. The point was not taken by him.

“Are the dogwoods in bloom?” he said to me as I passed by.

Suddenly the chatter in my head stops and my mind is still. I stop and turn to the stranger.

“It’s not really the right time of year. Aside from that, the dogwoods haven’t really bloomed for years- there’s a blight.”

“That’s a shame. I have great mem….” he pauses as he speaks as if wishing to avoid tripping. He grins and lets out a sort of giggle as he stands up.

We regard one another for a while. One stranger to another, yet not in the sense of persons who do not know one another. This is another sort of strangeness.

“So…is this where you live?” He asks carefully.

“Yes, up the street from here.” It’s hard to know the right thing to say.

“It’s a lovely place. I would have loved to have lived here. Unfortunately, things just didn’t work out that way.”

“You did what you could.”

He looks at me with an heir of alarm and caution. “Careful. Can’t be too direct.” he says through a smirk.

We make a silent agreement to pretend to be strangers.

“Well, now what?” This is killing me, though the only voice in my head now is his.

“How bout a walk?”

The breeze is cool and the sky is a bit gray. We walk in silence for the most part, though we comment here and there about the weather and play a movie quote game.

“I haven’t walked this long in a long time. These hills are killer.” He sits down on the sidewalk and unbuttons his jacket. I stand over him. The sun is setting and he appears to be fading with the dimming day.

“Is this where I leave you? We haven’t even returned to where I found you.”

“I always happen to be where you find me.” He says through a sort of frown. He seems to have grown older, though I can’t quite tell how.

I look down on the ground at his feet, lost for words.

“Zack.”

I refuse to look up. He stands and walks toward me. He towers over me, just as he did in life. I look up at his face and he takes his sunglasses off. Behind them are revealed a broken soul lost for words.

“I miss you, son.”

Gone. The familiar stranger vanishes. I am left alone on the streets that intersect reality, memory, and fantasy.

“I miss you too, dad.”

I walk away. The chatter in my mind coming back, though whispering for now.

Meandering

Please excuse my lack of social graces
As I traverse this sea of phases
My many awkward faces
As my soul within me races
As my mind slips into rages
As I explore the many cages
Of memory’s grief

My Goodbye is Impossible

I wish I could have said goodbye. Just goodbye. Not to stop you. Not to make you feel bad. Just one last hug. One last look. One last audible sound. But I can’t find you.

When the house got cleared out and we were getting ready to sell it, I wandered around it as if searching for you in familiar places. I sat in the library. I sat in the living room. I sat in your bedroom. But I could not find you. I could bid my farewell to the home of my childhood, but I could not say bye to you.

I watch movies we enjoyed together, but you’re not watching them with me. I turn my head in hopes of seeing you there, but you don’t show up. An empty seat now occupies your spot.

I go to the places where I put your ashes, but you are not there either. I hope to spark some moment with you, but all I’m left with is an empty scene. An incomplete moment. You aren’t even in the periphery, and your ashes have long since washed away.

I walk hoping to find you walking by my side, like the old times, but I end up walking alone. The only footsteps I hear are my own as I reason to myself what to make of all this.

I stare at the rain, trying to get lost in its noise like you used to. I just wind up being reminded of you, and how you are no longer here. It does not wash away my sorrow, but rather makes puddles of it in my mind. They splash up on me as I wander through old memories of you. I remember the things I wanted to do with you, and their impossibility now. I am covered in the mud of unfulfilled hopes and dreams.

I look at and touch your old things. I imagine you touching them and pretend that somehow that means that I have touched you. But your glasses do not see me. Your books do not speak to me. Your music does not embrace me. The objects were before the man, but behind them you are no longer there. They are mere shadows and fragments of the man who held them.

In a thousand different ways I try to find you to gain some sort of closure, but you are not here. My goodbye is impossible. You are gone, but constantly with me. Close to my heart, but impossible to interact with. There, but separated by a gulf of time and space. Living in my mind, yet gone all the same. Perpetually around the next corner.

Just to say goodbye. I ache for it. To hear your voice one last time! One more hug! One more laugh! It is an emptiness that I am left with, dad. I can’t fill this longing no matter the distractions I occupy my mind with. I wish you were here, and I can’t un-wish it no matter how much I try, and no matter how much you may have wanted me to. Even in my angriest moments when I pretend to hate you, I can’t help but realize that all I really want is for you to be here. I utilize the full gamut of emotion to summon you, but not even my emotions can bring you back. I clench my fists at invisible bars to try to tear away the reality that separates us, but they are beyond my abilities or rights to move.

And so this is the way it is. I will have this wandering goodbye with me until the day it is time for me to go. And in that day I will not need it, because it will become a hello. An embrace. Tearless sobbing and quaking laughter. My impossible goodbye yielding a never-ceasing hello.

But until then…