Forgiveness

A reflection on family hardship and coming to terms with parents who aren't perfect. Written from the perspective of a nature-oriented human being.

I don’t know if this is a tale of forgiveness. The clouds will drift and the stars will shine brighter than ever before once they are finally uncovered. The rocks in the canyons will glow like beacons of truth at dusk. The frost on the tips of tree branches will sparkle in the rising sun. We will enter the fog and exit in the shining glory of those who have seen the world with newborn eyes. There’s a truth to this life that doesn’t require forgiveness. It doesn’t include the past. There is only right now.

I’ll try to tell this story with newborn eyes. I’ll tell it as though I’m emerging from the murky depths of the Colorado river, about to glimpse the clean blue sky, the giant slabs of rusted sandstone looming over me. Keepers of history: unbudging, objective. I’ll try.

I remember the moment he became my dad. Then, blanketed in darkness, I doubt I had any idea of the significance of the moment. I had fallen asleep in mom’s bed. He took me in his arms back to my room. I woke up on the stairs, carefully cracked my eyes to see his silhouette. I pretended to be asleep, so he would keep carrying me. So small, so innocent, I trusted him in that moment completely. I don’t remember reaching the top of the stairs.

So it shocked us all, all these years later. In those fifteen years he taught me the truth of the world. He taught me the perfect stillness of the desert, the bliss of brown-green river water, carving its way into the sediment of the earth. He taught me the sacred beauty of the sandstone, the sage, the bull snakes, the mountain goats, even the rattlers. Sunshine, rain, the washes as they flash flood in all their intensity, the deep boom of tumbling boulders. The life of the desert. And in that brief, idealistic childhood, he was the perfect dad.

The other day, we were with friends, and we left the group for a little bit. We went outside where the sun was shining down on a world where winter had finally picked up and left. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Lit one. Bliss. “They’ll kill you.” “They help with the urges.” The sun beat down. I went back inside.

He almost died, not long ago. I wasn’t there when it happened. My mother texted me something cryptic about spending the night at a hospital and then silence. Thousands of miles away on a night train speeding through the darkness, I laid in a blackened sleeper car, unable to sleep. Hospital? It was my little brother who finally answered my texts. Dad had had a bowel obstruction. Almost died. Was airlifted to another hospital so they could perform an emergency surgery. He was alive. The invisible hands released my heart, and I was able to fall asleep.

It’s amazing how little information a text can convey. My mother knew this so she told me to call her. I took my time. I thought I was busy, off living my whirlwind life. I could’ve taken less time. It only took her fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes can cut into fifteen years like an axe into the base of a tree, each minute a swing of the blade until the whole thing comes crashing down. “Heroin.” “One year.” “He was mourning his mother and his brother.” “They cut his pain meds.” “Never the needle. No, never the needle.” “Nobody knew.” The tree groans and cracks, branches thwack against branches as they gain momentum on their way down, and then it hits. Harder than you ever expect.

I cried. I was staying with a family who I hadn’t known until days before, and suddenly I was a brooding mess, simultaneously singing, laughing, drinking and crying my way through the five colorful, loud, wonderfully blurry days of carnival. I was happier than I’d been in months and yet a part of me was far away, scouring the details of my childhood, wondering if I’d ever really known him. Wondering if everything was changed.

Author's Note

This is a very rough draft, and certainly not done. It's pretty all over the place, so it would be great to hear what you, as the reader, would like to hear more about.

Reviews

[ruth]

DUDE. ok this was so good especially because i'm a nature-orientated person as well. i loved the way you used nature to reveal your plot. also the line "the invisible hands released my hear." dang. this was so good. 10/10 would recommend.

[ethelkingsley]

Thank you so much!