I Hear the Old Man Laughing

Do you know how Christmas or your wedding anniversary can sneak up on you? It's weird of course, because they shouldn't really. You know when those events are (unless you're an atheist and/or a polygamist), you remember where you were when they happened and yet suddenly there they are and you're surprised.

I have a more elaborate, self-created, challenge. Because of 'fog of life' issues, try as I might, I can't get into focus (for me) a defining moment, the death of my father. When I say he died forty-four years 'over the Memorial Day weekend', that's the best I can do in terms of specifics. And having it subject to the Monday Holiday rule doesn't help me much either.

I know and will always know, the moment my wife and I were married; the minute and hour of the births of both of our children, but I'm unable, actually unwilling, to nail down any better than 'over the Memorial Day weekend' as the date of my dad's passing.

I've wrestled with every aspect of that relationship for almost every waking moment and it's all added up to zero. I'm very much writing today to exorcise demons rather than for any other point or purpose. I keep thinking every year I've flicked the scab off that wound. 

But as I sit here, I can feel my throat tighten, the rock in the pit of my stomach grow heavier and the taste of ash in my mouth become more pronounced. Again I'm seven, not seventy-three, and waiting as I did most days, with dread, for him to come home from the City. And so it begins, never to end.

We, the six children he struggled to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide everything under the sun and in-between, are ourselves, parents, and in some instances, grandparents. I don't pretend to know the hearts of my siblings, but only speaking for me, I've worked as hard as I could to not become our father with varying and sobering degrees of success.

And if the years have taught me anything (and that proposition is still subject to debate), it's that his intentions, like those of every parent, were the absolute best. And yet one by one, as we could (when we could) we disappeared, leaving those younger behind to be his children. Until he, himself, suddenly, left and no words could fill the void or cover the silences.

I'm never sure if it's the horrible son or the failed father who's to blame for all that was lost years ago, but I know the face I see in the mirror every morning belongs to the person responsible now for not letting go of the poisons of the past to savor today and secure tomorrow. It wasn't mere coincidence this time years ago I needed to be talked down from the ledge because I'd become addicted to loathing the view. I couldn't look but I couldn't look away.

Each of his children will try to make peace with the world he gave us and that we lacked the strength to reject aloud while he was here to hear us. I wish us well in that endeavor. At the time silence equaled consent and thus we became accomplices in our own victimhood. 

I want to shout at the man whose knowledge often overwhelmed the nuns who tormented, rather than taught, each of us, "If Jesus exists, then how come He never lived here?" instead of nearly choking on the words, knowing I always shall.

-bill kenny