I had yet another shouting match with my father today. Terrible look for both of us.
We dont see eye to eye on nearly every issue of any real substance or significance. Our upbringing.... our experiences... our priorities... everything about us is different. Uncompromisingly different. There is no common ground other than our mutual love of dogs and gardens. We both adore dogs. We both feel at peace in a garden.
I sometimes think about what I would say at his funeral. You know, when immediate family come up to the podium to speak and hopefully say something meaningful about the deceased. I obviously dont wish him to be dead. I dont know why this imaginary scenario comes to mind. It just does. It feels like the only time I will ever be honest about what I feel about him is after he's gone. How depressing... Feeling more connected with someone only after they're gone. How surreal.
I can't help but recall this excerpt from the novel Gilead:
You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.
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Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!