My Father The Illusion My Mother The Mirror

the death of a child shatters memories of an obsessive family

Families are fused by memories. When a child falls over a cliff and dies, his memory becomes so powerful it rearranges past memories. The extreme grief from the death of his only child forces the author to search for a sense of spirituality. That search tears open childhood memories: a childhood juggling between conflicting cultures of parents and grandparents living together in a meager setting, a youth that was sacrificed to support his family during the father’s three-year losing battle with cancer. It traces back through infancy to the present and the lifestyle adapted by a couple that build their love and intimacy into a formidable force to conquer tragedy.

Closure, the expression, intended as an end to uncertainty, became a death call when thrust inside hysteria as parents are told their only child is dead. The inference of finality, emphasized by a grief counselor, became testament to the emptiness offered by tradition. Denying the insensitivity of closure, a couple force themselves in directions they have never considered. Refusing to allow grief to build a wall between them, they open to life to find reason for their pain; reason that is constantly destroyed by programmed ritual.

The search for reason uncovers memories of a convoluted childhood. Grief awakens emotion from a life that began in the Homesteader’s world of parents and grandparents who shared space in a desolate shack without plumbing, electricity or central heating as they fought each other for identity. A masked youth consumed by the cancer and early death of a father is exposed by the brutal strength of uncontrollable grief. A past, dominated by Communism in an Atheist family, collapses from the intense dynamics necessary to create a new beginning. This is not a story of finding the orthodox light in old-world religion. This is an intimate account of seeking a way of life to define a new morality.

This memoir is a remarkable story of how childhood indoctrination and aged dogma is forced forward when victims of tragedy attempt to design a future with hope. For all of us who, inevitably, need to survive grief this autobiography describes an original and provocative journey far beyond the scriptures of parents, grandparents or organized belief-systems.