I took a family reunion trip last week. I drove for eight hours to get there. The cliche is that road trips “Give me time to think” but the truth is more like it makes my escapist daydreams become real.
What kind of escape was it? Certainly not an escape from ghosts.
I went straight to the oldest living relatives in my family and spoke with them about my past, present and future. Specifically, they wanted to talk about my Dad’s past relationship with me; part out of loving concern for me, part because they miss him. The case can certainly be made that they are now the only people who could do anything like speak on my father’s behalf.
Really? You are not done blaming your Dad yet? Really!
No, its not like that…. or, heck, maybe it is? My hermeneutic of suspicion is poor.
Point is: They didn’t try to answer for him, but they did help me understand the things he said to his own family about his own life, which included his son (me) who he loved but who broke his heart by siding with his mother. They described his anger, which consumed him and destroyed him. They were traumatized by it, and saddened by it.
Inevitably, they spoke about the War. After the war, soldiers are supposed to leave the front. Some go back to the barracks, some go home. But because my Dad was a child when war took his mother, where was there to go? His whole life, he was like the solider who could never stop fighting the war.
For me, it felt like a breakthrough, and an escape from the infinite loop narrative that I tell myself about my life and history.
So it was a real escape, and not just a daydream.
NOW, Lyrics :
We were once so close to heaven
That Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the men
Time won’t mourn our loss
It’ll just sweep up out skeleton bones
So take the wheel and I will
Take the pedals
...All my darkest hours talking like this... 