The Black Hole Closes

My father is the only one left alive, besides me, who remembers what it was like at 824 Elizabeth Street. 

Maybe he remembers.  He’s very close to the end, and I’m not sure what he is still holding in his mind.  If he does remember, his memories must have a very different quality than mine.  He was on the opposite end of it all.  He was the black hole of my childhood.  His mental illness caused a lot of emotional suffering, and his inability to work added poverty to the list.  When he wasn’t in one of his paranoid rages, he was closed in on himself, sitting in a dark, brooding state, which we didn’t want to be anywhere near.  He was terrifying when he was raging, and scary when he was quiet.  I hated him. 

That kind of daily tension and intermittent terror leaves its mark. But everyone else who was there is either dead, or 90 years old with no memory of having once been married to that person.  And he’s not that person anymore.  So the other night I suddenly realized I am completely in charge of that story, and I can just release it.  If any of my sisters were still alive, it would still be important, because they would still be suffering some of the effects of all that craziness, and I’d still want to discuss it sometimes.  But I’m the only one left, and I’m letting it go.  Sure I have a little PTSD, and all kinds of unconscious patterns are still operating, but when the beauty of my father’s true nature is right there right now, and the love is so uninhibited, and we are saying goodbye for good, I just have no need to hold onto it.  I understand it enough.  That awful world we lived in is way in the past.

I am not one to be dismissive of the past.  Humans are designed for learning, so what happens to us matters.  We construct beliefs about what the world is like, who we are, and what to expect from life, out of our early (and later) experiences.  And we usually have to work pretty hard to change those entrenched beliefs even when the evidence is in.  But I think I’ve mined that vein of my history far enough.  Maybe more will reveal itself, but that will just be grace on top of grace.

Being with my father this last month has been so pure, so unguarded, so full of love...I have to use the word ecstatic.  A taste of what it might be like on the other side, when our egos have fallen away and all that’s left is our essence.  If it’s a healing, it’s gone pretty deep.  I’d guess that’s why I can suddenly just let it go.