Holding Place for Sadistic Excess (randomtruth.net/blog)

I’ve hesitated on posting this for a number of reasons that I don’t care to go into.

The drive has been coming for a while; I’ve not been in years.  This time it began as dreams of the location, not the man himself.  My father’s ghost is a dormant one, and just stirs ever so softly when he rolls over to remind me that he is still there.  I rarely dream; something I’ve long considered a gift rather than a curse, and so often I remember details, but not this time.  I simply remember a place that I associate with him, because it is for him alone.

Is it cruel that his body should forever be surrounded by strangers, or a fitting justice?  The answer depends on my mood and just how favorable my latest thoughts on him have been.  That I am fickle with his memory rather than concrete is difficult for me considering how when he was alive, I knew nothing more than absolute certainty – in his death, nothing is certain.

The cemetery is located in that undesirable swath of land that cuts through Oak Cliff and looks out onto Grand Prairie with haunted eyes.   In later spring bluebonnets will litter the hills with waves of color punctuated by delicate yellow blossoms and pink little gems; set against the backdrop of neatly aligned headstones.  Not now.  Now the brown-green grass stretches out dotted by dead or hibernating trees and the odd cherry blossom, standing bright pink and proudly stark against the death.  A power plant lurks not far in the distance, its huge stacks reaching into the sky, destroying the serenity were it not artfully hidden behind rolling waves of earth.

The lake it sits upon is a joke, created for the power plant and polluted by the ghost of Hensley Field.  Don’t play in the water, don’t eat the fish – all advice I’d give any traveler foolish enough to be beckoned by its silty brown facade.  Slash and burn finds its subtle revenge.

The main entrance is closed, and I am directed though a side entrance that backs me up to the rear of a funeral procession to which I cannot see the end.  The person behind me goes past them, but I will not.  I wait, just as I would want them to wait, and lumber behind them slowly until they clear where I must turn.  It is their day to mourn, my day simply to remember, and courtesy, a dying thing, is all I may offer them in comfort.

It’s been so long that I cannot remember exactly where he is buried.  I round the bend, following the winding path as it weaves through the hills, and pass by neat rows of headstones and grave markers.  Another procession interrupts my path when I stop next.  Death is the landlord here and there are always new tenants checking in.

I see a turn that looks familiar and head that way, and with crystal clarity I know just where to stop.  I make a note to remember the number and know I will not, instead I pinpoint it with my phone so that I can locate him in another few years.  I find his grave with my eyes long before my feet will move from the curb.

He is on a hillside, buried when this place was still new, still making the papers whenever someone would discuss fallen soldiers.  My father did not die in battle, although he did battle every single day.  The earth is soft and my feet sink in as I walk up to where his body rests.  There are no flowers – the grounds are walked and mementos are removed every two weeks or so to keep it in line with grand military tradition.  Nothing personal, it’s like bird shit on your dress whites.

Eerily, I can make out the sod lines and images of decay wash over me while I stand there.  It is silent.  In spite of the activity in the distance, I hear nothing other than birds and the rattle of trees and bushes.  Lumbering footsteps mark the passage of an armadillo, oblivious to my presence, blind as he is.  He disappears and I am alone.

I think perhaps I should have brought him his favorite bottle of rum, but no, they changed the packaging a few years ago and he’d never approve of the new shape;  I won’t sacrifice my last, untapped bottle for some landscapers’ drinking pleasure.  Perhaps this is a time when the thought truly counts.

A cool wind passes me by and I am calm.  The sun, shining brightly in the sky and yet still far from the heat of summer, is warm upon my face.  I sit down with him and have a conversation.  It is one of the few times in the past few years that I’ve felt anywhere close to God.

What was my father to me?  Not a personal question, but with a very personal answer.  He was everything.  His choices, good and bad, shaped me.  He created me, guided me and put me on a path that I find exceedingly difficult to handle some days.

It was a path he, himself, could not walk.

Is it every parents’ desire to see their children become more?  I don’t know.  I do know that we’ve made a sort of peace with each other.

I know he loved me.

His failures have illuminated the difficult path he knew I should take.  He pushed me when I didn’t want to go.  All this time I’ve spent, looking back, longing for a different life, a different way, and I’ve seen him there, blocking me, still forcing me forward.  I’ve resented him.

There were other ways.  I wouldn’t take them now.  It has nothing to do with measurements of success, that choice.  It has nothing to do with things or people.

He wanted me to have character, to be able to hold my head just as proudly as he did in the face of adversity.  He wanted me to have faith, to trust in ‘this too shall pass.’  He wanted me to be able to defend myself and my family.  He wanted me to be happy.

There were other paths.  There will always be other ways to learn, but this was my path.  He was my teacher, and he instructed me as best as he could manage.  He never faltered, but he failed.  He never wavered, but knew when he was wrong.

My father was not perfect, and he did not expect me to be perfect.  He was a fine man, a wonderful husband and he tried to be a good father.  He simply ran out of time.

The grave does not hold my father anymore than the cemetery holds the ghosts of fallen soldiers and war veterans; it holds their remains.  The ghosts, the souls have long since left with their families in the same line of cars that once followed their bodies to their final place.

For my part, I am my father’s keeper.