Reply #31: Everybody does it in his (or her) own way [View All]

[ashling]

I don't know if this will help, but I was cleaning out my desk today and found something that I wrote in 1999 (yes, I am THAT messy) after my dad died. He died Thanksgiving weekend 1998, but I didn't get around to this till the next summer. My brother and I were preparing to scatter our parents ashes. I read these, and other, words at that time.

I had a love/hate relationship with my father. He was a large personality and at times so large that I had to shut him out of my life altogether just to exist . . . or so it seemed then.

Again, I hope this helps. And I apologize for usurping your thread, as it were, I will try and not type the whole thing here, but I am e - hoping that it will help me too ... in a way you never get over it:



I've been thinking about writing this for weeks now, but keep putting it off, I guess I've been avoiding it for a variety of reasons ... mainly, though, I don't know what to say here.

It was pretty easy for me to write that personal essay for Glenn. This is not that easy. My relationship with Daddy was very complex ... he was very complex.

Thus far in my life I have been fortunate to know more than a few friends and loved ones ... both close and casual. I have had teachers ... some good, some bad ... mentors and helpers. I have also known enemies and detractors both petty and malicious.

Daddy was the biggest of them all in a way. He was certainly the largest personality I will likely ever know. I have loved him and hated him, learned from him by his word and example, both good and bad.

Even when I hated him I loved him ... wanted to please him, impress him, win his approval and respect. For a long time I was unable to come to terms with all of this. I probably never will ... completely.

But I think that all of us are, somewhere deep down, made up of the same stuff. That stuff gets acted upon by outside forces both before and after we are born. We are pushed and pulled, prodded, kicked around, and beat up on in a thousand different ways by others, by ourselves, by life. The way we respond to each one of those pushes and kicks is determined by something we call personality or character which is itself in large part determined by things outside ourselves. If all of this sounds confusing or even incoherent, that is only because it is.

In the final analysis, all any of us can do is the best we can with what we have, things both physical and metaphysical. And because of all of that stuff above, no two of us will ever have the exact same combination of things to work with. So there is really no point in judging how another of us handles his lot in life. After all, we are all accidental tourists.

Shakespeare said that the evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. However, I prefer to remember the good man. And in remembering that person I am persuaded beyond a shadow of a doubt that that good was, and is, the balance of the man.