When I was a 13, a girl in class was telling our circle of feathered hair wonders about how her daddy pulled out a gun on her and her mother. I started to tell her a similar story of my own. She said I was lying and I just wanted to get some attention. She was half right. (that didn’t make my reality any less).
Three years later, when I 16, my mother left my father and I was not allowed to go home. I cursed the guidance office at Massabesic High School for not ‘letting’ me go home. They called me down to the office the day after my mom told me she was leaving, over the school intercom, “Blah, blah blah, please go to the guidance office?” I stood shaking my head as my ‘trying too hard’ blew carnivorous breath into to seemingly innocent questions., ” do you have place to go?” – “Yeah, my home.” — “No, I can’t let you do that.” –”too bad” — ” No I don’t think you understand, I can’t let you leave the office until I know you will be going elsewhere..”
Luckily, I caught on quick those days and provided a reference to a close classmate. I wouldn’t have gone home except by the graces of the ‘good graces’ of a senior who drove me home quickly to retrieve some clothes… He did however extract his dues years later on a ‘catch-up’ date where i found myself grappling with his slimy tongue. AH. Boys and piranha share similar genes..
Post this… they tell me my daddy pulled a gun out for my brother when he went to visit while we were gone…. “Please shoot me son..”
what sorrow beget this/
He died of cancer when i was in Florida being a kid. It was five days before my 21st birthday. The one that know how to comfort me through that time committed suicide not a few years later.
I flew home just in time for the funeral. I stared at the plastic figurine that they had stuffed and placed in the coffin for me to day goodbye to ( for my personal comfort) and thanked God he had been delivered from his tragic life. My eyes ere dry. I hear my aunt was there by his bedside with her bible telling him it was still time to for him to be saved…right up tho the end… I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE. to save him from all the people that didn’t recognize the tragedy was not in his salvation… but in the lack of recognition of his greatness.
I met my bible school teacher and other strangers and i did my best to be polite…
..not too many years later I find myself holding the head of a boy whom entered my self-container life in Portland, Me.. He was crying. I was crying. It was not later than 10 days after the anniversary of my fathers passing. I hadn’t even visited his stone.
The boy had been living with me on and off because he had just returned from California and the home he had to go back to was terrible..when he wasn’t at my home he was at a friends or maybe a shelter.. I didn’t know.
He told me of his father’s death. I fought with him for days over whether or not he should go to the service…what he should wear..the day of the service finally came and he refused to go. At the last minute I convinced him to let me bring him to the burials. It was cold, a good reason not to get out of the car. We pulled up across the dirt cemetery path from the internment.. A group had gathered around it. He would not get out of the car so we sat and watched the weeping figures as the casket was lowered into the ground.. He told me who was who; aunts, mother, etc
A month later I drove a couple of friend to a dead show in Memphis. On the way home a woman accelerated on the on ramp and then stopped dead. I was sucked in an read ended her. He was still my comfort zone so I figured I’d call for him. His friend (with me) said, “I think he is at his dad’s” I didn’t think too much of the fact that he refered to a dead mans home as being where Chris would be, after all is was the family home…
I called, “brring bring.. hello is Christ there?” A voice heavy with smoke and alcohol responds, “Nope”. I bite, ” Who’s this this??”" “his Dad of course…” (OH – GREAT) I respond, “I heard you went in the hospital…” –”Yeah, for awhile I had some problems..” (the heroin caught up with him?) “OH” I say, “But you’re feeling better now huh?” – “Yup”//
