When Your Father’s Ghost Visits You Part 2

You could say the first part of this story started over here or you could say it started in May of ’69.

Almost a full 56 years later I wonder if my parents were to watch me go about my daily life if they would recognize the boy I once was.

Would they remember how I broke my crib in the middle of the night because I kept jumping, how I used to climb on the stove or the time I managed to lock myself in a dresser drawer.

Would they see the face of the boy in the man I am now and recognize expressions made decades ago on the bearded face I carry with me.

Been a parent long enough that I expect they would just as I do with my own children.

Run Towards It

Some people run from the fire and avoid the pain it brings but I am not that smart, I run towards it.

Run towards the ring and hit it hard cuz there is this idea that if I fling myself inside it I can learn to understand it better and master it.

Jump into the fire and scream with rage because it hurts but like I said I always figure I can master it. If I can hold on a moment longer I can beat the pain back and get to that other side where it is just an ache and nothing more.

I can hear my father asking why I do that, feel him staring at me and shaking his head. I can remember being so determined to be my own man I would keep going even if I knew there was a better way.

Why?

Because I hated being told what to do and knew I could find another way. Would like to say I have grown up and learned how to avoid that but it would only be partially true.

There are still moments where that part comes out. It is not often, but every now and then he comes back to visit.

It takes me back to the back half of a post I wrote in February 2020, a month before the lock down

Poetry Break

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

Stumbling Towards The End

Got Bowie singing Heroes on the headphones and am lost in thought. Always liked the song, but it has been sitting in a different place since I watched Jojo Rabbit.

Been thinking about a moment with a 19 year-old boy where I looked at him and said “I have got you.”

He looked at me, eyes narrowing and I stared so hard he told me to stop.

“I have got you. There is no difference between when you were three and now.”

We both know that is not entirely true, there are huge differences but somethings are still as they once were and always will be.

There is this sense that I am walking through the dark to a place I cannot see but have to get to. Been heading that way my entire life and now I am that much closer to the end or maybe the beginning.

It is time to find out.

Walking Through The Dark

Five years later the paragraph above the picture resonates with me because I am absolutely walking through the dark to a place I cannot see but have to get to.

Cue the accompanying soundtrack to this moment Promontory, from the Last Of The Mohicans soundtrack.

The walk has turned into a run like we see at the end of the movie. A month after my liver biopsy, about to begin a new diet I am heading with purpose towards wherever this takes me.

In places there is no trail so I am pushing through the bushes and brush ignoring the cuts, nicks and bruises that accompany that.

Six hours earlier I hit the gym feeling enraged by various pieces of news and used that to sling more iron around than I have in a while.

If the man I was thirty years ago saw me today he would have noted all of the flecks of gray on the side of my head and in my beard but been proud to see the weights in my hands.

He would have felt relief to see what we can do. He would have laughed when I said our arms are bigger than David Rats neck and laughed harder when I said “fuck ’em.”

He might have mentioned it sounded just like Dad and I would have said it is ok because we proved long ago that we are our own man.

But I would have looked at him and told him there is nothing wrong with being like him and to take advantage of the years they still had together.

****

I have been back to LA about a half dozen or so times since Dad died. Not quite enough for me not half expect to see him walking around but enough that I am prepared for that feeling.

Seems strange I can’t pick up the phone and tell him about how my 401k looks like a fool has intentionally tried to wreck it or to hear him say it is ok, I still have some time before I retire.

Seems strange I can’t pick up the phone and tell him a bunch of things even though I know what he would say for each of them.

Though I wouldn’t mind asking him if his neshama really has shown up in my dreams or if it is just my imagination…