The year my father died I wrote an essay betraying his love for me and mine for him. Yes, the valley of the mind bleeds, the spirit sweats, the heart beats like skipping stones.
There was a time before his death when I blanketed my thoughts and held my words. I never told him how I felt or asked him how he felt. Now I look with the eyes of a damp sun, bright and curious, sad with regret, at his little brown box of ashes, wishing I’d asked. Wishing I’d said.
I sometimes feel that everything he possessed I have somehow lost. It’s an effort to consider. My father, I imagine is a very gentle ghost, swan colored, norwegian spruce scenting his travels.
Where is he now, I wonder? Like the poem by Anatoly Steiger that asks:
Where is he now, I wonder?
And what’s his life like?
Don’t let me sit by the door
Expecting a sudden knock:
He will never come back.
Now, on a May night, I sit and think of you. Of him. Of my childhood. Of him, I can remember plenty. His great city of ideas, gone now in a cloud of dust. Of my childhood, a kiss goodbye. Of you, invisible guide to my fate-filled highway, where all the trees are immense, where my dreams are better than my memories, where twilight alters shapes into shadows and sunlight distorts my focus. Where I walk under God. Where I walk between laws, moral, political and incidentally otherwise. Where I fatten the scapegoat of my lies so I can get on more peacefully.
Everything works. Everything makes a great story. This rebellious body of mine, beginning its decline. This great mind, regarding the possibilities. My idealism, always different than what I expect. One moment absent minded, the next all penetrating and focused.
And so, another ashen day is forming. Or should I say, another detestable day full of long intervals and waiting. I never mean to sound audacious. You seem to me well-seasoned, not stubborn for nourishment like me. You seem to me beyond madness, beyond what has happened and onto something else. Not like me, starved for a new proposal, seeking understanding in anything that moves, then apologizing for being so aloof.
Sometimes love comes to us in degrees. As if God believes, this is how much you can handle.
My father used to conceive of life on his own behalf. I think God took him to teach him that life and love must be lived on another’s behalf. I think, someday, he’ll come back. Perhaps as a bird or a butterfly.
And so I try to learn, in this life, to regard each possibility and to know each dawn as a golden string.
I miss you always. I’m so glad you came into my young life and that you will still be there in the evening.
Do me a favor, because I love you and because so many people love you, sing forever. Sing until eternity, through calamity, resilience, exile, whatever. Just sing.
I dreamt of tomorrow and you were there, blowing my mind out, as usual.
all my love.
lisa
