"And openness is about how to be well and telling the truth is about how to put the broken bits and pieces of the heart back together again. It is about being whole-- being wholehearted."
-bell hooks "Talking Back"
I took this photo of my brother a year ago while we were sitting in the field of our former elementary school.
Today marks the anniversary of our father's death. I wanted to post a picture from our visit to our childhood neighborhood last year but am scraping the bottom of the barrel. This one isn't a great photo either but unfortunately it will have to do. I don't have any photos of me, only photos of my brother. I feel a bit shitty about using his emotion to express my own so I will write something too.
Today his father, brothers, sister, nieces and nephews are getting together to "remember him as he was." We will not be there. There is nothing but fiction for us there. I don't know who he was, I only know who he was to me. It is so much easier to mythologize a person's life once they are gone. I have seen this happen many times. It is astonishing to me how much one truth can be so easily swept under a rug and replaced with a fantasy. I have been grappling with anger about that all week long. But today I feel some resolve. Today I realize (once again) that you can try and tidy up a mess by sweeping it under a rug but over time the rug is going to shift and the bits are going to start spilling out from under it anyway. How's that for a metaphor?
I'm working on a Flickr set so all the pics are in one place.