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“How did it get so late so soon?” ― Dr. Seuss
I recently heard from a person I hadn’t spoken with in 50 years.
Someone once dear to me and with whom I shared
- my first great adventure
- my first great failure
Our parting left me with a broken memory sorely in need of mending, but one I thought impossible to mend.
Some memories seem beyond mending.
But is that true?
Really?
For on THAT phone call with THAT old friend, THAT broken memory was MIRACULOUSLY mended.
In the words of Theresa of Avila:
A perfect reminder broken memories can be mended. Sometimes the end of one memory is simply the a beginning of another.
I think back over the years.
- moments I regret
- past indiscretions
- things I’ve said and done
Great labors abandoned. Great ambitions torpedoed.
Some of these memories have haunted me for decades, trapping me in a circular loop of regret and remorse.
I can even trace the beginning of my alcoholism to one such broken memory.
It was the memory of my father’s passing, one I shared in an earlier post.
*****
On July 8, 1962, I experienced a moment I grieved for more than twenty years. It happened on a Sunday evening in our family garage. I was 13 years old.
My dad and I squared off, mano a mano.
He had embarrassed me in front of my friends, and I was determined to make him pay for my humiliation.
I threw the first punch. I tagged him squarely on the jaw. He looked at me in stunned disbelief.
Then he left the garage, hurt and shaken.
That was the last time I ever saw my dad alive.
He passed away four days later in Spokane, Washington.
A moment for me forever frozen in time — the one moment I could never take back.
For 23 years, that broken moment in the garage tore away at me. I drowned my heartache with a thousand drinks — and with every drink, I was re-convicted.
Then I found sobriety on June 14,1985.
With alcohol no longer clouding my brain I found a new way of perceiving my life, with a clear mind and an honest heart.
It was in what we called check book honesty —
- where my values were reflected in my actions
- where my inside matched my outside
— that I was finally able to see the truth about my past.
When I finally examined what had happened that fateful night, with a sober mind and an honest heart, I saw a different picture of that remorseful, scared 13-year-old boy.
Time and maturity gave me a deeper understanding — of both my father AND myself. The truth in this mature understanding set me free to act less as victim and more as survivor.
From that day forward, I stopped:
- excusing
- justifying
- rationalizing
my behavior and started owning my decisions.
I discovered, in doing so, that honesty is the key ingredient in any successful life.
When I dared to look honestly at that night in 1962, I saw two hot-tempered Irishmen who shared the same affliction.
Because I could finally understand and forgive myself I could finally then understand and forgive my father.
The past wasn’t altered, but the future was.
We became bonded in death in a way we never were in life.
I came to discover over the passing years how different our lives might have been —
- had he found sobriety as I did
- had he matured as I did
- had his memory mended as mine did
Through it all I’ve been able to reinterpret that fateful week in July of 1962.
What once felt like a period in our story became a comma. We’ve become more like fellow travelers on a road to eternity.
He will always be my dad and I his eldest son.
So I ask myself now, are all broken memories lost forever?
Maybe not…
Grace has the power to soften the edges of a broken past, allowing the truth to remain but without the eternal sting of regret.
As my old friend so beautifully shared with me —
Thank goodness for emerging purer and brighter again and again.
Just a thought…
Pat
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