Family Encounters-F
My father passed on nearly ten years before I got married. He was not present for my college graduation, nor was he alive when I finished high school.
My youngest sibling was nine months old. There was a period of grief at his passing, but then survival demands appeared and said, “Let there be life”. So I moved on.
At the time, his absence never bothered me. I learned to live without him; to leap from boy to man. I never accused or charged him for dying too soon;
OR DID I? I never blamed him for the pains and the wounds; OR DID I?
There were signs that he was becoming a better person to live with;
but I don’t really know how I would have differed had he lived longer.
Many years later I realized that I subconsciously shut him out; I SHOULDN'T HAVE. I angrily charged him for things he did and judgmentally accused him of things he shouldn’t have done. I SHOULDN'T HAVE. Without mercy, I prosecuted, sentenced, and banished him and all that he represented; BUT
I SHOULDN'T HAVE.
Subconsciously, I reacted to his negative ways and rendered him irrelevant.
There were things I did not know, and other things I never considered.
I silently, without fuss or fight, without sufficient evidence, shut him out.
Yes, I rendered him unimportant and irrelevant; anything positive was blocked out, never rising to an appreciative level. It would take years to even realize this. Yes, Father was dead physically, but he deserved a kind memory. However, for years I was as if silent and frozen, unable to remember anything of value.
But then it happened!! Twelve years ago at a family reunion, a younger sister spoke well of our father and sat me straight. She spoke of things I never knew of the man whose memory I had crushed, and whose influence I thought I could live without. She spoke of a man I never knew and painted a portrait of a man that was kind, caring, and sensitive toward others.
It was like a reunion with my long-deceased father; and as if I was
given a second encounter with him. I tell you, I forgave him and consciously let his influence and memory back into my life, and I am the better for it.
07112015
Copyright © Curtis Johnson | Year Posted 2015
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