upfromdysfunction.com

       “…Hello, I must be going.
       I cannot stay,
       I came to say
       I must be going.
       I’m glad I came
       but just the same
       I must be going …”

(Groucho Marx)

 

Dear Dad,

Comes a time, I guess. Comes a time. Once again you were right!

“All good things,” you’d remind me, “Must come to an end.”

Comes a time.

Koufax and Jim Brown knew it, and they were the best. Me? Pedestrian as I am, I recall yet another of your admonitions: that certain people should leave “before the door hits them in the ass”.

So I’m going, and at some level I’ll miss this venture, but like I said: there comes a time.

Who’d have thought, though, that when first I wrote eight years ago, some 613 entries would follow. (Your father would have liked that number).

Fourteen years from wedlock was I then; (Ed. Note 1: sixteen from the separation). (Ed. Note 2: eighteen from exit of the bedroom). Grandchildless, arm/charmless, and overweight I was empowered by my readings on Stacycelia.com and began what for me has been, among other things, a therapeutic journey.

Sharing stories—from the sandlots of South Euclid to the naissance of adolescence… from coming of age in college to perhaps growing up in middle-age…

I’ve opened up, I think — not so much with a devotion to the past as a reverence for it. Not so much in worship of friends and family as love of them.

I embrace it all, Dad. I’ve been graced, and cherish I do both the loyalty of my clan and the purity of enduring friendships.

Blessed I’ve been to grow up in a true neighborhood —- where you knew all the players, and the players were all characters, and yet the characters had character….

Blessed more, I’ve been, to never in six decades/plus take one breath without well knowing full well that I had a mother, father, and brother (among others) that loved me.

Always.

From my core friends to my core existence my glass has never been less than half full. How consistently my cup has runneth over!

So I’m done, more or less. How many more times can I speak to the twinkle in your eye and your eternal wisdom? To Mom’s fealty? To Hal’s honor, wit, and sustenance?

To the treasure that is Carrie or the pride in my children and joy from their children?

How more often can I revel in Bobby and Stuart and Alan and Arthur and Walt and Ermine andthelistgoeson? Or the faces of Mt. Rushmore that I’ve met in recovery?

Even Aunt Helen called it quits. (Comes a time).

So, write you I will, but not from here. And speak to you I will, from my heart.

— Until once again I climb upon your knee,

Love,

Your Sonny Boy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2017 at 2:46 am and is filed under Up From Dysfunction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.