Yesterday

Yesterday, I got some inspiration to purge... and pulled out some boxes from the garage with the intent of clearing them out and consolidating. Everybody has some stupid cardboard boxes full of stuff, you know. Old stuff that seemed too important to toss but not important enough to have sitting in the room with you. Usually the stuff remains in the cardboard box forever, being dutifully moved from home to home until you die and then your offspring become in charge of tossing it out unceremoniously whilst muttering under their collective breath. This is the way of stuff.

However, I seem to have some odd recessive gene that occasionally prompts me to rid myself of the weight of some of the stuff. Unfortunately, this gene is not of the sort of nature that might suggest that I just march into the garage, pick a couple of boxes at random and heave them into the dustbin without a peek. There must be peeking and consideration, lest I might divest myself of something of deep and irreplaceable value. This is a good thing, as in this last batch of peeking I finally located my long lost divorce decree - which does indeed have some value and although not irreplaceable, could lead to a good deal of unpleasantness if suddenly needed and not available.

Within this box of divorce decrees (keep,) notebooks of adolescent poetry (pitch!) the first board I broke with my fist in karate (PITCH,) tax records from 1998 (still have to keep?) and such, was a rather nondescript envelope. And within the envelope was a photocopy of a death certificate and another copy of a handwritten note. And then I was crying and the purging of stuff came to an untimely end. Like the life described therein.

I wonder if I will ever really heal from the loss of my father. It's funny that I didn't miss him until I was 32 years old. Until then, I had this sad dream of a daddy who died tragically just before my arrival on the scene - snatched from life by an untimely accident. I spotted him occasionally in the pain in my mother's eyes, but beyond that he was only this tragic and beautiful fellow in my dreams. Then, as an adult with children of my own, that death certificate came home to roost and answered my questions once and for all. My father wasn't snatched from life at 25. My father took his life.

So, who am I crying for? Not sure about that. Suffice it to say that I have come far enough to say that I can understand the wish to have it end. Not so much a wish for death... just a wish for an end to the pain of living. Buddhists suggest that we embrace the pain; accept that pain is the whole substance of living - I haven't figured out how to do that. Not by a long shot. There are days that I open my eyes and my first thought is one of dread. Joy feels alien. Sunlight makes me wince. I often wonder if the one cell that my father gave me held all his pain as well. I often wonder if I didn't pass it on to my son.

In another nondescript envelope are some photos of my dad as a kid. As I rifled and sniffled one photo jumped out at me - like I'd never seen it before. Suddenly on a mission, I found another photo from another box and laid the two side by side. My dad at 15. My son at 15. I never noticed how much they looked alike.

I'm crying again. I'm still not sure for whom.