Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The mark that still remains

Song Of The Moment

Yesterday was Fathers Day.

My Dad died when I was in my 20's. I never met him until I was 16, even though he lived 8 houses down from where my Mom and I lived. I seen pictures of what Dad looked like in his day. Grey and hazy pictures of a stocky man in a sport jacket, standing by a railing on a boat. He looked like a boxer or a gangster.

Mom and Dad split up when I was only a baby. Mom took me and my older brother and moved out of the family home in the country. Mom rented a 2 bedroom apt. in the city and I lived there until I was 19, my older brother moving out when I was 4. Dad, apparently, went insane after Mom left and went to what is called "Unit 9", ie the mental ward. He spent a year there and, according to what my brothers and sisters say, when he was let out, was a completly different man. Paranoid and ansty, depending on prescription medicines to keep his thinks straight. Eventually, he took to the bottle. I guess it cost less then the drugs. He stopped taking care of the family home in the country, leaving its upkeep to my oldest brother, who lives beside the house to this day. Dad moved into the city with another woman who took care of him. When I met him at 16, he had shrunk a foot from his hazy picture and the strong, square boxers jaw had been replaced with a limp, given-in look of age.

I remember borrowing his old '85 Granada shortly after meeting him. Fresh new drivers license in my pocket, girlfriend waiting by the door for a drive. For borrowing it, he asked me to give him a drive. To the liquor store. Kings Ransom Scotch Whiskey. This is how I remember my Father. Crouched down in the passengers side of that Granada, asking me to "park aways' from the door so's no one sees him". Well no... I remember him in one other way. I remember tears falling from my eyes as the bagpipes played at his funeral. Looking up at my Uncle with "Why am I crying?" questioning eyes.

I am a Father and I have a little girl.
And I'll be damned if I leave her with the same memories My Dad left me.







Ciao

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

There's a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt

Song Of The Moment

Trying to fix burnt bridges is almost impossible, so I have learned. Re-building them is the same. But, even though, I am trying to do that exact thing. At least to make ammends with myself. Yes, I have wronged a few people in the past. Almost everybody has. What I want to do right now is make up for the badness I have bestowed upon them.

This does not apply to everybody I have done wrong. Some of them?....really?....they deserved it. The wrong I did was more of an "eye-opener" that *I* thought they needed. And to those few people, I feel no need to fix what was torn up.

But some I need to. Some meant something to me at one point in my Life. And something I did or said erased that. It won't come back, what was erased. I have learned over time that what was lost is better off lost. But, in order to fully be at peace with myself once again, I need to do some things to make ammends to those few chosen people. Thats a driving force with me right now.

Other then that?.... things are going pretty much as normal. A friend of mine said recently that "Life is what it is...not good, not bad...just something I am doing right now." Sounds kind of bland but its true. Oh well, boring days are better then STRESS-FILLED days.









Ciao