I fell asleep again last night, unfortunately, in a chair.
I love to watch Hallmark Christmas specials on TV this time of year, because they are about love, family and relationships. These things are all we will have in the end anyway, when this earth passes away from our eyes, and we enter into a more authentic reality.
But chairs are uncomfortable, and I love my real family, alive in Heaven and on earth, more than some virtual reality on TV. So, painfully, (I keep aging, imagine that) I got up from my chair to spend a little time focusing on them, in prayer, before drifting off to sleep once again, this time in my bed.
I must admit I don’t like background noise, because when I close my eyes in that semi-slumbering state, I often find myself drifting into conversation with my father, and he, inevitably, answering my questions.
I still need his fatherly advice.
His words then come silently.
They come in actual fragments of sentences that ring true, though correct interpretation and understanding often remains mysterious, until things happen in my life later, that renders their real meaning and authenticity, startling and obvious.
I cannot vouch however, for my own subconscious, or tricks it may play on me in the night, but it does not feel like these words are interiorly produced.
Not at all.
Or I’d never have the audacity and confidence to publicize them, and give my father back his voice, which he lost through aphasia.
Last night I asked my father if he saved during his life, or wrote down, all that my mother had done to me, her abortion and my live birth. When I was a teenager, he had tried to tell me how much I was her victim, and just how serious was her mental illness, but I didn’t believe him.
I didn’t want to believe him.
Below are his words, and my thoughts.
My words are sandwiched in parenthesis.
I don’t have proof
If I told you, how could I be blamed?
I love you
Bite around her heart
Bite around her strings
Do you believe me now
when I tell you the truth?
Good fathers don’t lie
In the end they die
Laugh at the world
where it steers you wrong
ride your horses
straight into my arms
Trust the Source
The Source is God
Discover the reason your dreams
sound like they do
to untrained ears
listening to death
like flies buzzing about their ears
The answer’s in the pudding of life
the joy they do not know
Show them it
for that is real
(But did you write it down, did you preserve the history of what she did?)
Yes
I showed it to you in the desk
(I do not know if she took something out. I do not know how to put the puzzle pieces together.)
He will
Larry
brainwashed at birth by a mother
who couldn’t see what she had done
The blind learn to fly like monkeys
to peck you to death
but your righteousness
is not theirs to take
Victim’s lot
property
money
and land
Let me explain something to you Larry
Roosevelt lied
Truman’s a dick
and an asshole is of his own making
The village green is made for the people
so they can be set free
from the ties that bind them to the earth
like slaves in a pen
Victims’ ghosts are like lovers
in the night
the kiss from a face familiar
watching over her
while she sleeps
I love her
like I loved you
in the world where I tied your shoes
and combed your hair
before mine fell out
from what your mother
had done to me
Be a good boy then
and listen to the words
of one much older and wiser
with a song in your heart
take your sister’s hand
instead of smacking her
in the face with it
Courage is like a red flag
to the young
when it should be embraced
The only sin is in its lack
victims’ disgrace
does not exist
don’t be a fallen soldier
before you’ve earned
the family name
It’s in the land
It’s in the plan
It’s in her hands
not yours
Show up this time
Remember when you didn’t
in church?
(My father asked Larry to meet me when we were little, after Sunday school, in church, and he never showed up. I had to sit with a strange family I did not know as mass was starting. I was scared.)
I was scared too.
It was like my whole world
was sitting in the balance
Reignite the flames of love
for what you lost
through indifference of heart,
a shadow boxing match,
and a car sitting in a parking lot
going nowhere
Your sister cannot get out of bed either
but she does anyway
She’s driven by truth
in her heart and her mind
and her soul and her touch
Her mind is like fire and ice
to equally driven hearts
that expand in the rain
and expand when they thirst
the brink of disaster not a plague
but a blessing
that brought them together
I love you son
be good
Unraveled and the Birth of Joy 