The Sins of the Fathers
A dear writer friend calls to say that she's struggling with the death of her father.
Could I recommend someone or something to help?
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| My family outside Church once upon a time...Fascinated by AI's interpretation of Jason on the far right |
I couldn't sleep last night. Another winter storm is raging. It's been a particularly intense June with fierce North-Easters and buckets of rain. The drought that was our concern not too long ago seems laughable now. I lay in bed listening to the dripping from our ceiling and clawing at the bed frame.
For years now nights have turned against me.
As a girl I loved the solitariness of the middle of the night. I read and scribbled away, with no fear of interruption. Now I scroll in a futile attempt to drown out the anxiety often screaming just below the surface. Yet I must acknowledge that I am much better. The horrors of compound loss in shocking ways -- car accident, suicide, murders, cancer, aging -- have become my new normal. They walk beside me always and "healing" is really coming to terms with this ever present grief.
It was my daughter's 16th birthday a week ago and she didn't have an exam scheduled for that day so I treated her to ice skating. It was quiet on the rink, not the usual mob and disco vibes of the weekend. There was one very graceful young woman training with her coach. That night I woke up crying from the pain in my lower back. I could hardly move or breathe or speak.
Since movies have been such a huge part of my life, I immediately thought of William Hurt in the wonderful adaptation of Anne Tyler's 'The Accidental Tourist'...he injures his back and is bed bound. For years I assumed it was typical cinematic hyperbole for dramatic effect. Turns out not since I was in labour with my son have I felt so incapacitated.
Cinema isn't my only point of reference. I remembered rowing my dad in a little dugout canoe on the impossibly beautiful backwaters of Kerala in India after his back went out while we were staying on a dreamy riceboat with private chef. Chiropractors were illegal there but we found them listed for cats in the phone book, a cover for practicing on humans. So off we went. Laughing at the preposterous circus of life.
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| My dad in a canoe in Kerala seeking a Chiropractor...laughing through the pain |
I'd forgotten that The Accidental Tourist is at it's heart all about Grief. And how it changes us. How there is a before and an after, although no smooth trajectory between the two, no real satisfying narrative closure. I have always said that the path is spiral... in other words we don't get "better." We just circle and see from fresh perspectives something we thought we knew or were done with.
This Father's Day I want to thank my dad for his resilience. He is currently building a new house for my little brother. No small thing. In his 70s he still has more energy than I'll ever have. I respect his can-do attitude through loss and the vicissitudes of life including the hardest of them all, the loss of a child. William Hurt's character lost his son in the film. The world lost Hurt last year, although his art endures. And hurt is often what helps heal us.
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| Breaking ground under a full moon |
Out of curiosity I fed AI a family picture taken outside of Church back when my brothers and I were the age my children are now. It's interpretation of my brother Jason was particularly fascinating...he seems to dissolve into Blake's sublime vision of Jacob's Ladder. I have written a bit about that and the stranglehold religion has had in my development.
In the biblical tale Jacob, son of Isaac, is running from his brother Esau whose birthright he stole.
"And he lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." (Genesis 28:10-19)
A rough night that leads to a tete-a-tete with God himself and a promise.
Different religions have made a meal of that, but basically the ladder could be seen as souls coming down to be embodied and rising up again to heaven. Some religions say the ladder is a metaphor for the "straight path" which I think is more fittingly represented, as Blake chose, by a spiral.
We went to listen to the Cape Town Philharmonia Choir perform Carl Orff's Carmina Burana at the City Hall last weekend. This collection of medieval morality poetry is chilling in that it completely nails the human condition, which doesn't seem to have changed one bit in the 1000 or so years since it was written. I wept more than once...as soloists and children's voices dropped some major truth bombs in the sweetest voices. I have always loved this piece of music and remember using it during a scene of war I directed for the stage as a school girl...not knowing what the lyrics meant. Here's just the opening and closing O Fortuna! A meditation on the wheel of fate. What a ride.
And now it's Youth Day in South Africa. The annual rememberance of school children who rose up against the evil of Apartheid and died the same year that I was born. This land of such beauty and suffering, no different from any other or life itself I suppose. Now the Mzansi Youth Choir brings the world to tears ~
And a courageous group of our firefighters arrived in Canada to help with the devastating wildfires ~
I love the land of my birth, even as I grapple with the sins of the fathers.
I am grateful for my birthright, even as I wrestle with it.
From the frailties of the flesh to the more harrowing (at least in my experience) traumas of the mind, I try to cultivate grace.
The name given to me by my family means Holy Grace. May it be so.
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