30 Non Consecutive Days of Truth: Heavy Edition

So, basically so HEAVY man.

Something you have to forgive someone for? Hello, holy shit do I now have to talk about every bad thing bad people have done to me?

I'll tell you what popped up in my head recently when I read this: I remember the relative who coerced money from my most beloved relation in the world, his father, an old man. Money, every single day to finance his drug habit.

Every day this sweet man would write down his ledger the 'loan' that he had given--a $100 here, a $100 there. Sometimes three times a day. A few hours would go by. Another 'loan,' dutifully recorded.

And then he had no money to see his sister when she died. He had no money for his care when he was falling down. He had no money for his burial. 

The relative--someone pretty closely genetically related to me--was also a gambling addict. So I don't know if he was getting money for drugs or gambling.

He became a loathsome being but if there is one thing I tend to notice is that no one is perfectly irredeemable in every way. Virtually every bastard in this world has some little pocket of humanity, hidden deep within the fetid swamp that is their soul. It often isn't much but I cannot utterly turn from any human being, I cannot purely hate or despise. 

So to continue with the heaviness, the drug addict just died last week. Sort of end of an era of a sort.  And I found myself in great turmoil, crying.

But I could not be mourning him. I don't think it is possible for me to mourn him even if he gave me some stuffed animals as a child or a graduation present. I must be mourning my darling sweet but maybe imperfect and weak person, his father--His father whom he at first made proud and then would have shattered with disappointment if the denial hadn't run so deep.

He knew what a monster his son had become, I think. There was a twinge of bitterness in him that had no other explanation. He had two children and they were as close to worthless as people can be. I can't imagine what that would be like.

The oddest thing is that this man, the father of these contemptible sons, was capable of loving, was loyal to his bones, would have died for his kids, loved them to the end, left them every penny. So how to explain it? He would reminisce about their childhood daily. He changed their diapers. They were his life.

It is the kind of thing that happens in my family.  It gives Eugene O'Neill a run for his money. 

So, forgiveness. I forgive the beautiful loving man who is now gone for...I don't know what, but something. And somehow maybe I'll forgive his miserable, worthless child for being unfailingly selfish and callous and deluded almost every day of his life and for hurting everyone around him again and again.

Or maybe I'll just let go, love eternal for the father, no forgiveness for the addict son. It's all over, except the echo in me that is sure every good and beautiful thing, every love and joy is destined to rot and turn foul and that my own choices will doubtless be implicated.

Comments

[slouchy]

Damn. My uncle did this to my grandmother. And she loved him so. Breaks my heart on a daily basis.

People are so fucked up.

[ozma]

I'm so curious about how someone gets like this. People love their kids. Can you love your kids too much?

Which drugs was he addicted to? Some will totally obliterate the personality. This was crystal meth.

[tuckova]

Maybe some of the anger is to do with now you know he can never redeem himself? Never make his father's love seem anything but unearned?

Do you listen to This American Life and if so did you hear the "Unconditional Love" podcast? It gave me a lot to think about.

I think most good and beautiful things are self-perpetuating. I think we notice when they are not, because it is UNFAIR and we have this absolute sense of justice. But maybe someone not directly in this story benefits. Maybe you know that if your kid came to borrow money like that, you would put that money towards rehab instead. I mean, a cautionary tale is small comfort I know. But still.

[ozma]

Thanks A. But you know the reason I think this is just because some of the people in my family I thought were OK/normal--the 'sane' side--descended into drug addiction and just various kind of weird, weird things...

And the other side was crazy right off. I had always known that. So I can't even really look back at my childhood. I just have to keep running forward.

It's just so odd. Almost every 'adult' I knew as a child turns out to have some horrible mental problem. And a lot of times these things turned up in their 50s even. Some we are talking HORRIBLE--like nightmare schizophrenia or a murder-suicide or a meth addiction. To not be an utter pessimist is a terrible struggle. I don't know any good stories, about anything good ultimately happening to anyone from my youth, any of these people I looked up to.

I keep waiting for the bomb to go off in my life. As if it is all just a semblance of normality until one day POOF.

[Marie]

Who knows why ones parents keep loving us as much as we can do to them. (That's just one thought.) Powerful stuff, ozma.