family notes, loss and reconciliation

this night later towards the early hours of day my father died , 52 years ago in 1965.
the year after he would have reached the age of 70, being older than my mother's father.
I was 15 years old, and i had nursed him alone for all that year.
there had never been one bad word.

for weeks by then he had been yellow up into his eyes.
The evening before a doctor i remember well visited our house and injected
morphine to ease his troubled breathing.

i had been present in his room, and when his breathing ceased i saw and felt
the release death brings.

all after was confusion and loss, for long, and i buried it inside living with it.
i remember even despising other persons talking about it,
and i didn't share my feelings. i closed.

soon after i was asked to move in with my grandparents to look after them, a good stretch of kilometers away.
grandmother was as good as blind, grandfather had only one eye and was
not safe on his feet. it suited me well enough to leave the house and the influence of my mother.

i remember an influence from this time and i see it reaching into
all my adult life. my father had been the one in whom i could confide, who taught me,
who made me look for wisdom and not for power and worldly gains, the one who took out 'stress'.

my mother suffered fighting to bring up the 3 of us and more so she suffered from
the loss of illusions and the impossibility to be a famous painter.
she was eaten by herself more than by her work as a primary school teacher, a true hungry ghost, and she caused continuous tension in our family,  made us close up because of her days long hysteric fits mostly on money.
all of us always felt guilty though we didn't know why.
she always found something and having a second sight for all negative which could happen or which happened there was no space to breathe.
utmost control of all we did or could have done was her daily aim.
her barbaric aestheticism ruled her judgement more than anything else, she was quick to classify us and all other people.
presents she returned as unfit.
we lived as disqualified children and saw her as a disqualified mother.
hurt, frustration, anger and reproach was daily business giving an undesirable impetus
to hate, flight, hiding and other stuff.
lacking love she was unable to give it.and unable to take it when offered.
reconciliation took a very long time, our forgiveness we needed to create future in a better way-for us.
for her it was too late.

my father had been my retreat and my balance,
my mother the cause to try and rule my world on my own,
to run, to mistrust, to try and be financially independent which i didn't manage well at all as i despised money and its influence.
the cause for fear to fail. o i would have needed my father longer.
i cannot idealize him, he had been a lazy man, studying all his life, gathering knowledge,
meditating, thinking, writing. but i needed his kindness and understanding.
understanding me the way i could be and helping my growth inside.
without his influence i would have turned to suicide or
to be a criminal and i wouldn't have known meditation nor grace nor forgiving.

childhood and adolescence, no, not easy, not fabulous, only possible to survive well
by escape, escape into books and into leaving and leaving. i forgot so much, and it is good.

now i am old, my mother is 91 and fairly demented, often absent for hours,
then suddenly awake and even smiling as she too now 'forgot'.
the mercy of dementia softening the edges, leading to
a peace in riddles.

i wonder at times where i will go. i see what i did myself. not all has been good.
but somehow an often hidden softness and  joy and love survived.
there is no point in eating the past.
and today is another day, and now is now.
i used to have wishes for another now tomorrow, hope, but this looks now as if
impossible, and i go a way of slow detachment, if necessary to not only solitude
but to chosen loneliness. this i do not know yet. only that i will not run after tomorrow
alone. i just walk.

i asked my dead father, and he told me that what i do is right any way,
not to think but to be-and that i cannot be alone. to be alone is just a thought.
this is recognition and consolation.

note: usually i talk and write about this in an ironic way to take and give a distance,
in honour of my father and truth and honesty i didn't do this today.