The snippet of the book that I’ve included below is one of my favorite parts of the book. It was the first time I got to really know my dad in depth, after his passing of course; a moment in existence where I got to have this intimate conversation with him just by reading his personal diary. It reminds me that we all have a story, and though it might not be the next New York Times Best seller, each of us has something valuable to say and to contribute to the world. Happy reading :)
--
Searching for a pair of boxer briefs beneath a smattering of unmated socks, a wall of nostalgia washed over me like an ocean wave—reminding me that the bottom drawer was full of my father’s personal effects that I took from his bedroom the day after he died. I hadn’t looked at or even thought about them since the day I brought them into my apartment. Sliding open that bottom drawer, I carefully removed a few old Life magazines with covers featuring Diana Ross, Henry Kissinger, the inventor of the Polaroid camera, and Nikita Khrushchev. I also took out a copy of one of his old driver’s licenses and an enormous, dusty American flag that the U.S. Government gave my father in honor of Haakon’s burial in Arlington National Cemetery. The last of what I pulled out were three old photo albums that I, until this day, had never viewed.
Inside the first photo album were pictures of my father from the early 1970s while on vacation with some of his friends and family, a few years before he met my mother. He had an odd, thin mustache and looked much happier than I had ever seen him. While thumbing my way to the back of the album, a thin leather-bound booklet that I didn’t recognize slid out from between the pages of the plastic sleeves. It was light brown and threadbare. The pages were yellow and tattered, and the whole of it was held together by a rubber band. Inside the cover was my father’s trademark handwriting—neat little words in all capital letters.
This was his old diary. In it were the childhood games he used to play, the names of some of his old neighborhood friends, and the girls with whom he was smitten during his Lutheran elementary school days:
My first cigarette was great. But since I’m thirteen, I was scared to smoke when my parents got home so I threw it inside our piano. My dad smelled it and got it out in time. I didn’t even get in trouble. They just told me not to burn the house down. Neat!
As I flipped through the pages, his writing became more perfunctory and his dated entries were few and far between. Toward the back he wrote about his early twenties and talked briefly about his time at Park College in Kansas City, Missouri.
He listed all of the jobs he had ever held (teacher, substitute teacher, amateur lawn care specialist, store clerk), but what he seemed most enthusiastic about was the law. He wanted to be a lawyer. A few pages were marked only with the words, “I want more out of life,” written over and over again—reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s deranged character in The Shining.
My father almost married a long-term girlfriend, a woman who was in love with him whom he found “utterly beautiful but emotionally unstable.” He also doubted whether he could commit to just one woman, and subsequently broke up with his long-term girlfriend at a coffee shop to keep her from going on a “psychotic rampage.” On the last page was a list of places he had traveled to: Germany, England, and Italy; along with a short list of places he needed to visit before he died: Jerusalem, Norway, and Vancouver.
I learned more about my father reading twenty pages of his diary than I ever had in the twenty-five years I had known him. Conversations about television shows, family members, or his opinions on biblical doctrine always came easy, but we never talked about anything deeper. Who he truly was, how he felt about women, or what he wanted out of life—those were things that only a skilled and meticulous excavator could uncover. And my father didn’t keep company with any of those scholarly diggers.
(—The rotten apple don’t fall too far from the tree, my dude.—)
(—Oh, god, do not say that.—)
This was the first time I had ever met my father, a flawed man, but a human being with hopes and dreams. My chest pounded with sharp pangs of pity, my heart ached for this man. This diary was damning evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had given up on himself a long time ago. He never made a real effort to become a lawyer or anything else for that matter. And he never made it to Jerusalem, Norway, or Vancouver.
What happened to the man in the diary? He grew up, took a dead-end job with the State of New Jersey, married Holly, found religion, had three kids, and killed himself. What turned him into the angry shell of a person who taunted me as a child and who now haunted me as an adult?
I carefully put away all of my father’s personal effects then lay down on my couch. With my hands behind my head, and my eyes closed, I tried to picture what my own life would look like in thirty-five years. Due to my lack of sleep the previous night, I was fast asleep within minutes and toe-to-toe with Ghost Dad once again.
eleven
new waters
This particular dream started out the same as all the others. But this time he wasn’t holding a wad of cash, but a leather-bound diary as if he was preparing to read aloud from its pages. He appeared to be in a foul mood, his face red and covered in sweat like a fire-and-brimstone preacher of old. Before he could say a word, I leapt from the graveyard and literally flew toward a place to which I knew, instinctively, neither of us had ever been. That phantom menace, my dead father, followed me till I touched down in what looked like a rainforest. A massive gorge with a river sprawled out at its bottom separated the luxuriant Technicolor paradise from an endless and ashen, barren field.
Ghost Dad, dejected and desperate, stood on the other side of the gorge, unable to cross over to meet me. Overcome with sympathy for this pitiful apparition, I began searching for ways to help him cross. Just as I turned my back on my father to venture into the rainforest to find some help, a soft wind snuck up from behind and whispered in my ear.
“You cannot help him enter until you learn the secrets of the rainforest,” said the wind, tickling the fine little hairs on my earlobe. I spun around as fast as I could in order to catch a glimpse of whomever was speaking, but the wind grew violent and knocked me to the ground, causing me to wake from my sleep.
Ensuing days were spent ridden with apprehension, while working to decipher the meaning of that dream so different from all the others. For the sake of a good night’s sleep and my personal sanity, these appearances had to stop. I had to uncover the “secrets” of the rainforest before he returned.
--
The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah was recently approved by The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s recommended reading list for survivors of a loved one’s suicide. www.gospeljosh.com
No comments:
Post a Comment