What We Were

My mother called on a Tuesday night to tell me my dad was dead.

I can't say with certainty it was a Tuesday. It may have been a Thursday. At any rate it was a night I'd made quick plans with friends. I made them before the announcement and kept them even after. In fact, I was on the elevated platform at Damen, waiting on a Blue Line to take me into Logan Square - to the California stop. A squalid area of town, over trodden by gear-less bicycles and remnants of scattered street gangs.

Courtney had called. She was broke and thought to order chinese. She asked me three times what I wanted to order and discerned the exact amount due, down to the prorated delivery tip. She'd be there with Tyler and Jason, additional friends who had become my friends by default. Their gang of three was how I'd spend most weekends.

We drank a lot, most weekends. Sometimes I lost track of entire evenings. I'd often awake, on their sofa, too-early for notice and would leave amusing notes on their refrigerator door. I never really had much to say to them, nor they me, but we kept each other company, for what felt like half a year, the year I returned to Chicago, following my college graduation and the impending death of my father.

I suppose I should speak of my anger. Not the anger that surfaced then, but the bottom-heavy, spit-fire rage that surfaces now. It’s now six years since that night, and I'd all but forgotten the set-up. And I can't attribute some bad memory to this instant recall. Rather, Jeff, a friend of late, made mention of how he was leaving for the weekend to attend a friends' father's funeral.

“That's a good thing to do,” I said.

“I don't know what to do. I hope being there will help.”

“That's a good thing to do,” I repeated. “You are a good friend.”

This was recorded on online chat during the early working hours of a Tuesday. They say memory is what you make of it, but I refuse to believe it, because if I could make what I would of it, I'd make it lovely. I'd surround myself with comfort. I'd charm with witticisms and seek condolences from thoughtful friends.

But instead I arrived, swollen eyed and lost. No one knew what to do. Jason and Tyler were entertaining further guests. Courtney tried to talk, but found little to say and only succeeded in apologizing for asking this, “but could I pay her for the chinese?”.

I ate nothing and left every grain of rice in its box at their house.

Paying for the chinese I left, with little fanfare.

Jeff really got to me. Being so present. Being attentive. But he also reflects the we of five years later. I don't know that he would think to act as he did, were he in that dingy Chicago apartment with a forlorn friend who poked at her fried rice aimlessly in silence. What would he have said, to the father-less me? Could he have comforted me? I'm not so sure.

The gang of four quickly dissipated, but only in my exit. The three still commune, attend one another's weddings and probably, if need-be sit in on respective family funerals. The notion is consoling.

But then, what of this anger? I could compartmentalize, make sense of this flood of feelings, but really, what's the point? I miss my dad, yes, just as I miss the nights I drank to forget his illness. I don't know if that changes with age. Perhaps Jeff is just wise. Or maybe I've soured. Still yet we can consider this an inconvenient recall, and reinvent the narrative. Which might also bring some joy.

The Poetry of Guilt

Guilt is a poetic emotion.

As poetry is about balance, about light and dark, about giving and taking

As is guilt.

Guilt

From action
From inaction

For not providing someone an opportunity
For stealing another’s opportunity

For not being good enough
For being better

For hurting another
For hurting yourself
For not being hurt at all.

Guilt is directly connected to empathy. If we cannot put ourselves into another’s shoes, if we cannot understand their pain – we cannot feel guilty about causing said pain, or failing to relieve it. Guilt makes us human.

Holding on to guilt beyond a natural cycle of intellectual analysis and stages of emotional change, will make us sick. Rot us from the inside. Make us anxious, depress us. It weighs us down, it causes sleepnessness – guilt itself becomes dangerous.

But a lack of guilt is also dangerous. The lack of guilt is an identifiable characteristic of a psychopath.

If time travel were an option we could return to the moment of action (or inaction) and start over. Make a different decision. Be not in that place at that time. Or be there, but let it be someone else who walks away with guilt.

But we cannot look back. We cannot take back past actions.

There is only one direction in which to move.

We learn in yoga to let go of anything that does not serve us.

Letting go does not mean forgetting, but it does mean moving forward.

Poetry is complex, difficult to understand and slow to process.

As is guilt.