He posted a piece last week that got me thinking.
I should have told dad I loved him when I left… but the men in my family don’t talk like that. I found it difficult to think, it was bedlam at the home. These are people at the end of their lives, they sing and shout and hoot and gibber and it was incredibly noisy. After awhile we left.
When I got out I just gulped in a deep breath of spring air. You can feel the spectre of death in there. You can see it in the eyes of some of the patients. It warps your soul.
Glen Filthie
My clan calls that emotional constipation. If there’s one thing I learnt is to not let that stuff linger. I’ve learned, but I’m still not very good at it.
Men I my family don’t tend to linger. We tend to check out suddenly. My dad and his dad died in their sleep – at 65. I’m cool with the sudden death. At age 65, notsomuch. Funny thing, my first actual job I had that lasted was cleaning rooms at a nursing home. I’m intimately familiar with the noise and chatter in those places. And that was a nice one. My X-mother-in-law was in a gawdawful one that I hope and pray that I nor no one I love would wind up in.
Some of the comments in that piece were great…
I wish I could tell you the final story of my dad and I.
I can’t do that here…
I wish I had the opportunity to see my pop one last time.
I still talk to him everyday. But I only hear my voice.
Man, I miss my old man. Especially last year. Hell, I miss my X-Father-in-law. Both were men of a different, better generation. They had their shit squared away.
Luckily, Filthie has had more time.
Inspected By Pat 