What does Memorial Day mean to you? Aside from being a long weekend, a break from work, an excuse to fire up the barbeque? That's not an idle question. Does Memorial Day mean anything to you, other than marking the start of Summer?
The pain of loss is always a constant companion, sometimes sharp, sometimes fading into a kind of background ache that over the years has, perhaps perversely, become a comforting warmth. To carry that pain is a part of the bargain going in, but something that, while you may appreciate it intellectually, you are never really prepared for. Emotional scars are the worst scars, for the physical may heal but the wounds dealt to the soul never do. A smell, a turn of phrase, a fragment of a song, and the memories come flooding back in a rush, an elephant kneeling on your chest in all his crushing weight.
I can never smell jet fuel again without being transported back to another time and place, without seeing one future closed off and another opened. Faces of the living and dead alike fade into an indistinct haze, yet there are moments in time perserved in startling clarity, as fresh and as urgent in the mind as the day they happened. Echoes of a past as immutable as the stone beneath our feet, you are left to wither and age while there are those who shall be forever young, forever cut off from your future and theirs. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and who can say who got the better end of that deal?
At some point you learn that the "peace" everyone else takes for granted is an illusion, a lie we tell ourselves to hide the fact that it is bought with blood. Orwell said it best, that we sleep peacefully in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf. And, never having fired a shot in anger, there are those who pass from this world to whatever comes next, if anything comes next other than the cold silence of the grave. Moments caught in time, where "No fair!" doesn't count and the saddest words in the world are "Why me?"
The hardest thing I've ever had to do is look into a widow's eyes and see reflected there the same question that torments me in the small hours of the night: why him and not you? Years pass and that question never loses its edge, an exquisitely sharp knife that strikes straight into the heart. There's that elephant again, demanding that, at the very least, you bear witness to what you are and to what those who are gone are not.
Someone once told me that it's not necessary to lose your soul in that job, but that a certain amount of violence will be done to it. And to some, it is only a job, while to others its something more, a calling verging on a religious faith. There are as many reasons for joining up as there are those who have joined, but there is one tradition that everyone shares: dying young. That, too, is an inescapable fact of life, the most vital of lotteries determined by the most random of chances. The winners get to go home and live with the questions and the guilt, and the losers, well, they get a white marble marker and a holiday.
There are those of us who don't need an arbitrary day on the calendar to remember; we remember every day, even as we carry on. There is an obligation we carry, to live the lives that they can not. But on this day in particular, that pain of loss is more urgent, more demanding, more accusatory. Large or small, everything you do matters, and the flip side of that obligation is to make the sacrifices of the past and present, both yours and theirs, worth the price.
So, what does Memorial Day mean to you?
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sins of the Past
Time is a funny thing. So real to us that it dictates the tempo of our lives, yet so ethereal that it can slip away between your fingers like grains of sand at the beach. Both it and we have no meaning, no context for us before we are born, it has none after we are gone, and we can never get enough of it while we are.
I found out today that someone from my past, someone that, at the time and in my own, poor way I cared about, died. I don't know what killed her, or anything else except that at the time it happened I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn't even notice her passing.
I don't know, maybe that's a good thing given my track record, maybe it's not. I've had friend die in the cold, bitter mountains and arid deserts of far-off lands, but there's a distance to that, both physical and emotional, that buffers the blow. But this one . . . this one strikes somewhat closer to home, literally and figuratively. There's that one small part of my soul that examines what I am, and doesn't like what it finds.
The sins of our past, our sins of commission and omission, always come back to haunt us, ghosts as ethereal and as real as the time we grapple with. We can seek refuge from them in our friends, in the arms of our lovers, in whomever we please, but that is only an illusion. We can't redeem ourselves from ourselves.
She died, and I had no idea she died. Just another ghost to stand in silent accusation, to show no mercy in my fevered dreams. The man who said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all was a dreamer, and a fool. Is it really? For if one never loves, than one never has to feel the exquisite pain of loss, that sharp knife that cuts so cruelly. Yet if one never loves, then one can never really call themselves human, and loss is a part of the bargain. You pays your money, and you takes your chances.
Would it have been better to have never known, to have gone on deluding myself that she was living a happy life somewhere? I truly can't answer that. All I know is that it feels like another part of my life has been chipped away, that I should have paid more attention before it was lost beyond recall.
Ultimately, we can't hide from the sins of our past. No matter how many times we stand before those ghosts and plea mea culpa, there is no judgment that will satisfy them and wash away the guilt. The evil we do under the Sun comes back to inhabit our nights, and all that we do is all that we will ever do.
I found out today that someone from my past, someone that, at the time and in my own, poor way I cared about, died. I don't know what killed her, or anything else except that at the time it happened I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn't even notice her passing.
I don't know, maybe that's a good thing given my track record, maybe it's not. I've had friend die in the cold, bitter mountains and arid deserts of far-off lands, but there's a distance to that, both physical and emotional, that buffers the blow. But this one . . . this one strikes somewhat closer to home, literally and figuratively. There's that one small part of my soul that examines what I am, and doesn't like what it finds.
The sins of our past, our sins of commission and omission, always come back to haunt us, ghosts as ethereal and as real as the time we grapple with. We can seek refuge from them in our friends, in the arms of our lovers, in whomever we please, but that is only an illusion. We can't redeem ourselves from ourselves.
She died, and I had no idea she died. Just another ghost to stand in silent accusation, to show no mercy in my fevered dreams. The man who said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all was a dreamer, and a fool. Is it really? For if one never loves, than one never has to feel the exquisite pain of loss, that sharp knife that cuts so cruelly. Yet if one never loves, then one can never really call themselves human, and loss is a part of the bargain. You pays your money, and you takes your chances.
Would it have been better to have never known, to have gone on deluding myself that she was living a happy life somewhere? I truly can't answer that. All I know is that it feels like another part of my life has been chipped away, that I should have paid more attention before it was lost beyond recall.
Ultimately, we can't hide from the sins of our past. No matter how many times we stand before those ghosts and plea mea culpa, there is no judgment that will satisfy them and wash away the guilt. The evil we do under the Sun comes back to inhabit our nights, and all that we do is all that we will ever do.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Friday's Child
Friday is finally over. Goodbye, and good riddance to it.
As hard as I try to wish that day away, it just keeps coming, like some nemesis out of an old, dusty myth. And, like that nemesis, it is as equally unforgiving. There have been thirty-four of these days so far but, I think, the ones that arrive on their yearly date on a Friday are the most poignant.
My father died on the third Friday of May in 1976, a Friday just like yesterday. Thirty-four years and, somehow, the scar tissue never formed, that wound is just as raw as the morning I found his body in our living room. Since I looked into his eyes and saw eternity staring back at me, the impossible, bottomless emptiness of forever.
That morning he taught me the last lesson he would ever teach me, and perhaps it was a lesson that no child should ever learn. As God wills, insh'Allah, maybe it's all just random chance, maybe it's not. When my friends and peers were still safely living out the last days of their childhood, I was pondering the last of our days. Personally, I would have preferred to remain blithely ignorant for a while longer.
All that remains of my father are a few old photographs, and a warm, vaguely comforting sense of great warmth. I remember specific incidents, but I have long ago forgotten what his voice sounded like, the smell of his aftershave, even the features of his face. I remember him holding me in his arms on the deck of a car ferry travelling to Michigan, the irrational fear that he would drop me over the side, his reassurances that he would never do that. I remember sitting in a back room of his office suite as he saw his patients, surrounded by model kits to keep me busy. I remember him walking me to school every morning and that day, shortly before he died when, with a wisp of nostalgia in his voice, he lamented the fact that I was probably too old to kiss him goodbye. And I remember talking to him on the phone every night, before I went to bed.
I talked to him the night before he died, too, and the bitch of it is that I knew what was going to happen. It would be easy, I suppose, to write that off as hindsight, as the confusion of a long-ago memory, but for the fact that when I hung up that phone, I knew that I would never speak to him again.
I wanted to call him back, to tell him, to plead with him to do something; what, I don't know, and what exactly does a child say to a parent at that moment? I wanted to call him back, to hear his voice just one more time, but I talked myself out of it, shook that cold feeling of dread off, and went to sleep. Perhaps the last peaceful night of sleep I ever had, for the next morning, on that Friday, the world irrevocably changed for me.
I should have done it; I should have called him back, and I will bear the burden of not having done so until the day I, too, shall end. Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not, but it is real and just as heavy as the one Atlas bore. My father would have been 91 this September, and maye he would have been if only I had been a better son.
Thirty-four years, and that knife still twists just as exquisitely as the day I found him. I miss him terribly, and I've spent a lifetime trying to redeem the irredeemable. But, somehow, I've found that while I can put the broken pieces of other people back together, the shards of my own soul have been shattered beyond recall. My father would have hated that, which means I've failed him yet again.
Of all the days in the year, I detest this one the most. Some people wonder what they would do if they only had the time to correct just one mistake. I've never had to ask myself that question. I love you, dad, and I miss you, and I'm sorry.
As hard as I try to wish that day away, it just keeps coming, like some nemesis out of an old, dusty myth. And, like that nemesis, it is as equally unforgiving. There have been thirty-four of these days so far but, I think, the ones that arrive on their yearly date on a Friday are the most poignant.
My father died on the third Friday of May in 1976, a Friday just like yesterday. Thirty-four years and, somehow, the scar tissue never formed, that wound is just as raw as the morning I found his body in our living room. Since I looked into his eyes and saw eternity staring back at me, the impossible, bottomless emptiness of forever.
That morning he taught me the last lesson he would ever teach me, and perhaps it was a lesson that no child should ever learn. As God wills, insh'Allah, maybe it's all just random chance, maybe it's not. When my friends and peers were still safely living out the last days of their childhood, I was pondering the last of our days. Personally, I would have preferred to remain blithely ignorant for a while longer.
All that remains of my father are a few old photographs, and a warm, vaguely comforting sense of great warmth. I remember specific incidents, but I have long ago forgotten what his voice sounded like, the smell of his aftershave, even the features of his face. I remember him holding me in his arms on the deck of a car ferry travelling to Michigan, the irrational fear that he would drop me over the side, his reassurances that he would never do that. I remember sitting in a back room of his office suite as he saw his patients, surrounded by model kits to keep me busy. I remember him walking me to school every morning and that day, shortly before he died when, with a wisp of nostalgia in his voice, he lamented the fact that I was probably too old to kiss him goodbye. And I remember talking to him on the phone every night, before I went to bed.
I talked to him the night before he died, too, and the bitch of it is that I knew what was going to happen. It would be easy, I suppose, to write that off as hindsight, as the confusion of a long-ago memory, but for the fact that when I hung up that phone, I knew that I would never speak to him again.
I wanted to call him back, to tell him, to plead with him to do something; what, I don't know, and what exactly does a child say to a parent at that moment? I wanted to call him back, to hear his voice just one more time, but I talked myself out of it, shook that cold feeling of dread off, and went to sleep. Perhaps the last peaceful night of sleep I ever had, for the next morning, on that Friday, the world irrevocably changed for me.
I should have done it; I should have called him back, and I will bear the burden of not having done so until the day I, too, shall end. Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not, but it is real and just as heavy as the one Atlas bore. My father would have been 91 this September, and maye he would have been if only I had been a better son.
Thirty-four years, and that knife still twists just as exquisitely as the day I found him. I miss him terribly, and I've spent a lifetime trying to redeem the irredeemable. But, somehow, I've found that while I can put the broken pieces of other people back together, the shards of my own soul have been shattered beyond recall. My father would have hated that, which means I've failed him yet again.
Of all the days in the year, I detest this one the most. Some people wonder what they would do if they only had the time to correct just one mistake. I've never had to ask myself that question. I love you, dad, and I miss you, and I'm sorry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)