Book 4, Letter 20 To Dad: Lessons in failure

 

Dear Dad,

I have these things to comfort me. Tonight I am wearing your brown cap and your red woollen poncho. I am sitting in your wooden rocking chair, I am drinking your whiskey and I am reading Plutarch. I wear your rings on a chain around my neck. These things are like magic items, and though I have not felt visibly grieved at your passing, I find myself slumping at odd moments, leaning against the wall or doorway, as if my strength has suddenly slipped from me. I sense your absence, and I feel that part of me that relied upon you, that relied upon your strength...

Your strength is my strength now.

You are nowhere, but you are in me.

The good and the bad.

Your strength and your weakness.

Your confidence and your doubt.

I move with a matured slowness and certainty. My music sounds richer, warmer. Old songs are new again in my hands. New poems pour through me, and new stories. My beard is growing, flecked with white, and I am proud of these snowflakes upon the mountain of my face. Our face.

It doesn't feel like loss, this grief is more like growth. Though I cry, though I collapse, though I am drinking more than I should and feeling both lost and adventurous, I rise each day, myself, only more so.

But...

I am reminded often, that all your kindness towards me, is mirrored black in your hurtfulness towards others. I was the lucky one, to know you as I did, as your son. You raised me to stand up to you, and you rewarded me when I did. This was not the case with others. I am sorry for them, that you felt the need to control them, to dominate, to terrify and hurt, when you gave me so much encouragement.

You who slew a tyrant, became a tyrant, and I loved you.

I love you still.

A man's legacy lives on in the hearts of those who knew him, and there is a shadow now spilling out through the tears of your children. But I will not paint your portrait black with their hurt, and I will not paint it white with my admiration. I only want to draw upon the truth, and with my artful words, to tell the world who you were.

I have been reading On Liberty, by John Stewart Mill. I found it on your bookshelf, and today I read this, which I must share with you.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age as the most virtuous man in it ; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, “i maestri di color che sanno,” the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived – whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious – was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and imorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognised by the State ; indeed, his accuser asserted that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a “corrupter of youth.” Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved the best of mankind to be put to death as a criminal.

Though we strive to be good men, we always fall short of our idealistic goals. You are the reason I know about Socrates, and though I strive to be a virtuous man, life is never shy in offering lessons in failure.

I have so much I still want to say to you Dad, and now I have all eternity to say it. I will see you under another sunrise.

With gratitude, respect and above all, love,

Your son, Morgan.