Sorry

I’m sorry.
We hear these words often, whenever someone asks us about their father. I am so sorry.
And we never know how to respond. We can’t say yes, you should be, even if it’s possible that you should.
How could we face that? The fact that we are people whom others feel sorry for? How could we walk tall, smile, laugh, be intelligent or strong or cheerful knowing  that everyone feels sorry for us? We would have to fit in with their expectations and be lost, heartbroken, and hopeless if we agreed that we should be the subjects of sympathy. 
We don’t ever say, yes, you should be. What we say is: “It’s ok.”

But it is not ok. It makes us feel very uncomfortable saying that it is. As if we are cold and uncaring, as if we never miss him, as if remembering his death does nothing to impair our high spirits.
Sometimes I laugh when I say it. Not always. It doesn’t even matter that laughter is the worst answer, nothing that I have ever said in response to “I’m so sorry” erases the strangeness that enters the other person's eyes when I say it‘s ok.
What is it? That they actually feel sorry? That they are afraid? That they don’t believe that I’m ok? That they think it’s horrible that I am ok? Maybe they’re just uncomfortable like me?

Inevitably, the next question is: how did he die?
My oldest daughter answers enigmatically. Her top responses are as follows:
“From a head wound.”
“From a gun wound.”
“A bullet.”
I believe that this works for her because she is young and quiet. Though they don’t know what they really wanted to know they dare not press the issue. Those brief and incomplete explanations send people scurrying as if a grenade has just landed at their feet. The wideness of their eyes parallels the unblinking roundness of a full moon.

I tend to half whisper:
“It was a suicide.”
I feel ashamed every time I am forced to admit this. After the first answer there is just a certain amount of darkness hovering around us, the general gloom of death. We might have been a nice happy family that suffered a tragedy. People might picture him as a war veteran, or the victim of a sudden car accident, or  as someone that succumbed to a terminal illness.
Then they learn that he wanted to die. Another question springs to their minds of course, but it is not the kind of question one asks.
Why? Why? Why? It is a much greater darkness, a sin, this particular death. And it implies that we were never a nice happy family, there was always something about us which could have commanded sympathy.

Frequently I wish that I would have thought of something else to say. A complete fabrication. A lie, Huckleberry style.

“He was a lion tamer, like his father before him. It was their final act, the famous 'jaws of death', a real crowd pleaser, but sadly, Cuddles, the lion, sneezed at a most inopportune moment claiming my darling husband's life. Cuddles also  had to be put down. Once a man eater, even if by accident, always a man eater.”
“He was walking down California St. and somebody dropped a piano on his head.”
“He was a stunt aviator. A seagull hit his windshield during a loop de loop and he spun wildly out of control.”
“He was a Sherpa. Just before retiring he led one last group into the Himalayas but none of them were ever seen again.”
“He and his party were eaten by cannibals during an anthropological study of indigenous Amazonian peoples.”
“We were at the zoo. An escaped elephant trampled him to death near the penguin exhibit. He ran in front of it actually. To push a baby stroller out of the way.”

I wish I would have chosen one of these and stuck with it until it was as good as true. But I forget that we are shrouded in great darkness and only remember it once the line of questioning brings me back to a half whisper.
We would prefer to be casual acquaintances forever, people you recognize by the way we smile and laugh. People you know who are good at crocheting and singing and giving hugs. People that read a lot and wear funny hats and talk too loudly.
But never people you are sorry for. Never  people who lost someone. That is really never ok.
We say these words often, whenever someone asks us about their father. It’s ok. We say them just as often as we hear these words:  I’m sorry. 
And despite the fact that it never really is, whenever we are asked,  it is always ok.
It’s Ok.

Answers

I have nothing to say that will give you the answers to the wordless questions that burn in your heart. Those anguished muffled screams from your breast and the muted cry of an entire body take shape in the paunch that hangs over the belt and the ache of shoulders and the sorrows whose source seems to be diffused in the atmosphere like vapor. Vapor of my heart suffocates me and I oscillate between desiring affectionate company and craving the solitude of a deep dark warm cave. Perhaps in another way all I am seeking is that same deep dark exile, the reprieve of momentary annihilation.
I don’t have answers for you. My question is my self, the answer is the same. You are out here looking for something that no one can give you. If you want to know the truth then look into the abysmal well of self. It could be that you are happy, and that my dark mood doesn’t suit you. I happen to think, however, that happy people don’t look for answers. Show me someone who is tortured wondering why they are so happy, or why life is so just and fair and lovely.
People with questions are dissatisfied, admittedly to varying degrees. Some are miserable while others have only vaguely disquieting feelings that lead them to search for the source of the disquiet. If I had a greater magick I would never stoop to attempt to say anything directly to any one. I would have written you a fairy tale.
Notice also my need to say that “you” are looking for something. I want to set myself up as someone who knows more and to know more there must be someone else who knows less, so I have invented you. This is the sickness of all those who want to tell you “the truth” or “illuminate” your mind. Everyone who wants to tell you something factual, deliver the answers you seek, is a hungry liar. Even those who are well intentioned are liars. For example they may feel that what they want is to help you when in reality what they want is to be helped. They want to give you what no one can give them. They have made up some answers or been given some “one size fits all” explanations that they hope to pass on to you for your betterment, but one size fits all is the same as one size fits none.
If you want to know what is wrong find a mirror. For so much of my life I have assumed that others felt like me. Only now I see, the impressions which formed me may have varied in innumerable ways from those that formed you or any other given member of humanity. What ails me is a personal affliction, and what ails the world is me and my affliction.
There is always a chance that you feel a little bit like I do. Then in some way you might be comforted to think that you are not entirely alone with your shouting heart, that somewhere out there, someone else’s heart is shouting, and they are scrambling to find the reason, working desperately to save that heart from the terminal illness that filled it with woe.
Good heavens! If only I could lay my face in some grass or press my body against a boulder or a tree. If only I could be free to be alive instead of always fighting for that feeling. If only I wasn’t so angry… then what? What would I be, what would I have to do, what would you be reading now?
And of course there are others who are right now fighting for their mortal lives and some of them feel more truly alive than I do now. I am a spoiled white girl sitting in her high tower willing to dish out her opinions and advice while feeling sorry for her woes. I am like a house cat. I just want to get out. I just want to die so that I can feel alive.
That is my answer. If you want the truth then die or come close to it whenever possible. Turn yourself (hence the world) upside down. Revolutionize it. That is the only choice you have.

Freaked

What could be done with an extended mortal existence?

To become more intuitive, more perceptive, and to experience abnormal longevity, of what use would this be?

Who wants to make it to the dark edge of reason and perception?

Why not allow entropy to work its debilitating magic, stand back and allow all of your senses to atrophy?

Why not smoke another cigarette, watch another episode of your favorite tv show, and eat a snack sweetened with an industrial bi-product?

What is worth doing?

What can really be done?

Why not succumb to apathy and go quietly?

What could be done with a life of any span at all?

Why not trust that you are being cared for by some benevolent being?

Why not ask god to do everything for you?

What could you do for God?

In whom can you place your trust?

The answer to all these questions is elusive and lies in a single chamber, a single space which must be found again and again.