Friday, June 9, 2017

Chlorine mixed with tears

I walked down a winding lane today and watched a couple, grey-haired, kissing one another goodbye. Yet they could not be content with one kiss, but shared in three. I saw a mother holding the hand of a small boy, blonde curls framing his face and the remnants of lunch on one cheek. A messy little angel he was. I watched cars drive by, one after another after another and I wondered at their mysterious and complex lives. 

I thought to myself, but life is beautiful. There is so much to love and so many to be loved by. 

I am not angry with you, yet at times I am furious. The feeling that predominates is a greater weight in the region of my heart. You let me down, but more importantly, you let two curly-haired, dimpled little boys down. Little boys who looked out their window and dreamed of the far reaches of the galaxy. Little boys that I am supposed to protect, that I cannot protect from what you did to them. I did not have to bear such truths when I was their age. 

Why? I wish you could tell me. Was it isolation? The inevitability of oblivion that your world-view had convinced you of? Was it your health? What was the pain that you felt you had no other escape from?

And my biggest question... how could I have lifted this pain for you? What have I done?

I could have done more.  There is always that truth, that bitter seed of knowledge. Yet, I know it was not down to me. It was down to you and your burdens.

Was the weapon really lighter than the weight you bore? I am sorry and I am angry and my throat is much too tight.

You knew the God of creation, you saw Him in the mountains out your front window. I don't know how to pray for you, but I pray for the wife you left behind. And the two little boys and the little girls you hurt. Their precious tears mixing with chlorine, it is all much too terrible. I pray for it to become a gentler pain washed softer with time. 

I hope to see you again, I hope you are alright, and I hope.



2 comments:

  1. I remember waking up with my father kneeling at my bedside, weeping (and he was not a weeper...or a kneeler), telling me he had to kill himself because he couldn't live without my mother (she had just left him.)

    Maybe at age 17 I was old enough to take the situation in hand and talk to him. But I couldn't. I guess I wasn't old enough.

    I got dressed and ran across the street to my uncle's house and asked him to talk to my father, which he did. I didn't go home that day--stayed with my aunt. Really did not want to see my father.

    And, really, I never forgave him for that--for kneeling, crying, threatening suicide. It wasn't forgivable, for me, to have put me though that, to have put me in that position.

    He didn't kill himself that day, but he did everything possible with alcohol and nicotine to conduct a slow-motion suicide and was dead within four years.

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  2. I'm terribly sorry. The notion of life being "fair" has always seemed a bit ludicrous to me, yet something in me cries out at the injustice of this.

    Adults are supposed to take care of kids, not the other way around. He should never have done what he did. The selfishness involved in some people's choices is hard to comprehend.

    We live in such a broken world.

    Then again, as has been observed both recently and thousands of years ago, man is born unto trouble.

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