Throwing OUT the parental imperative

[written Oct 27 but not posted 'til today]

and so we are driven
over and over,
and on and on

by the unfinished business visited on us
by our parents.

They know not what they do,
nor did their parents,
nor their parents' parents before them.

So it goes, endlessly, a viciously unbroken chain
down the generations.

Sins visited on sons

resentments visited on daughters.

When, and HOW, does it stop?

Merely willing it does not seem to make it so –
the SOB is ELUSIVE, and escapes our grasp.

But we try.

To push it away, to resist. To be DIFFERENT
than they were.

To not make the same mistakes that they made.

And to stop passing along the pain.


***
People, mostly, seem unaware of what they do, or why

Oblivious to their deepest drives, they pursue their parents’ dreams for them
like blind, deaf and dumb robots

just following orders.


***
‘Forgiveness’ is not the answer.

RELEASE is.

As Vianne finally released her mother’s ashes to the sly north wind in Chocolat, so must I find a way to rid myself of the mantle of beliefs and burdens that my parents carried.

I must cast it away, into the hurricane winds of fate.

Let their unfinished business
remain THEIRS.

NOT mine.

***
Many a child
carries on her parent's business
long after the parent is dead
in hopes of currying the favor
that was never won in life,

It is like a curse
a geas
an ALBATROSS
around one's neck
from which one can never, fully, be free.

It is as if
when you were a brand, new, raw, lump of clay, fresh from the womb

they grabbed you up, slammed you to the ground and
PUNCHED you

leaving the indelible mark of their ANGRY FIST

as if to say,

“I was never free.

And so neither shall YOU escape, either.”

It is as if they are saying,

“As I have suffered, so shall you.”

***
I think I, all unwittingly,

got my revenge on my father, when,
as he lay dying, and was gasping his last breaths,

I said,
“It’s ok dad, it’s ok to go. It’s all right.”

And with what little breath he had remaining,
he made a feeble, what seemed like a terrified, anguished
cry, a sob, almost, wrenched from him, at that penultimate moment of his life -

like a seagull at a great distance.

I have always wondered what it meant.

And now I wonder: Did he see it, as long last

as our recognition

of freedom from his tyranny?

For *all* fathers, under patriarchy,
are tyrants,

no matter whether they wear a sheep’s clothing

or a wolf’s.

***
I think I had felt
that he was hanging on for our mother’s sake
because she NEEDED him so much.

But at long last, he could not hang on any longer.

I meant it as a blessing, a release,
a surcease of sorrow

into peace.

I hope he took it that way.