Although I promised myself after I left his office that I would research my father’s columns, I couldn’t.
I told myself I’d come back. I told myself that one day I would be strong enough. I told myself that I would sit in that fire soon, but I can't yet. It is too visceral to be so close to his voice, his purest self. His talent was the part of him he left to God, and I don’t know that I can be near that yet. I don’t have the luxury of falling in love with him again.
I can’t be coaxed into forgiving him.
I take the streetcar home. As I watch the bright summer day happen to Queen Street, sweat and steam and sunglasses, I think that when he touched people's lives and they were never the same again, after he moved his hands away. The strength of his spirit, its hurting and howling ways, for better or for worse, moved people. He singlehandedly changed things. He mattered.
Maybe that’s all I could ever hope for, to keep mattering.
He left spaces in peoples lives that could never be filled and maybe that makes him a hero.
Then I wonder if he was unknowingly creating a place for his soul to go, if we all do that. I see him because he’s still here, living in these painful sores, cracked feelings, taking comfort in his permanence, the space he created.
He left the legacy of poignancy and maybe that’s okay. Everyone has to leave something behind.
Who wants to just fade away?
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