"Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth. You pull on a finger, then another finger and a cigarette"
Woken by the rain, a rare occurrence of late with the Westen Cape being in drought, the thunder woke me and memories of the highveld came flooding in, Johannesburg thunderstorms border on epic and truly something to behold. Memories like the falling rain wash over me, and my thoughts turn to my farther, in my opinion a difficult man, we had a combative relationship.
I was born on the 8th of June, and I am told that it was bitterly cold and it snowed, rare in Johannesburg, it's said that my parents wrapped me in newspaper as they were unprepared for it. 41 years and 363 days later 7am, I scale the wall of his house, armed to the teeth, the fact that Blaze his blind Siberian huskies pillow was still out in the driveway had made me afraid for his safety. My farther never closed the backdoor to his house, and I mean never, and Johannesburg being what it is, I immediately began to worry, he would always be up at 6am and take the pillow back inside, so it still being out set off alarm bells.
After years of not talking to each other, we had kind of began talking at my mothers death bed a year earlier, obviously we really didn't have much choice as arrangement needed making we needed to face each other, almost a year later he had popped by once or twice, he lived the blocks away, and we had slowly begun to communicate again, being careful not to get into the things that had made us argue before.
Firearm in hand I leapt over the secondary wall into the back yard and ran for the back door, I was hoping he hadn't been beaten and that he had just been robbed and left bound in the house. As I got to the open back door there he was, face down in the scullery, Blaze dutifully at his side, I felt for a pulse but there was none, he was still warm, it was the 6th of June 2004. Reflection isn't something that enters your mind at the time, it's just a series of reactions, calls and panic, the thought that he had passed away alone and I the errant son had been the one to find him had not entered my mind, but when it did, I was angry, I couldn't understand why I was so angry. I had been through the steps of mourning a year earlier, and this anger was not part of it, it was irrational and it turned inward and it gave way to guilt.
It's been 14 crazy years since he passed away, at 62 both he and my Mum were so young. The memories of them are slowly disappearing from my constantly fading ability to hold onto them, memory loss is my burden to carry through all this.
So why this memory comes flooding in, or whether it's all intact, I cannot say, but the emotion attached is, and will always haunt me.
This concept of linear time is the thief of our lives, nothing exists but this very moment, past has happened and gone and has no sway on this moment, the future the same. This moment and only this moment, is real, I want to be present in every moment. The conditioning of linear time will always be a difficult concept to escape, and in this moment I think of you, and I hope that the time you took to read this, has value for you, for me? I'm going to try and be present in the time left.
It's still raining, I'm going to go sit and listen to it.
Woken by the rain, a rare occurrence of late with the Westen Cape being in drought, the thunder woke me and memories of the highveld came flooding in, Johannesburg thunderstorms border on epic and truly something to behold. Memories like the falling rain wash over me, and my thoughts turn to my farther, in my opinion a difficult man, we had a combative relationship.
I was born on the 8th of June, and I am told that it was bitterly cold and it snowed, rare in Johannesburg, it's said that my parents wrapped me in newspaper as they were unprepared for it. 41 years and 363 days later 7am, I scale the wall of his house, armed to the teeth, the fact that Blaze his blind Siberian huskies pillow was still out in the driveway had made me afraid for his safety. My farther never closed the backdoor to his house, and I mean never, and Johannesburg being what it is, I immediately began to worry, he would always be up at 6am and take the pillow back inside, so it still being out set off alarm bells.
After years of not talking to each other, we had kind of began talking at my mothers death bed a year earlier, obviously we really didn't have much choice as arrangement needed making we needed to face each other, almost a year later he had popped by once or twice, he lived the blocks away, and we had slowly begun to communicate again, being careful not to get into the things that had made us argue before.
Firearm in hand I leapt over the secondary wall into the back yard and ran for the back door, I was hoping he hadn't been beaten and that he had just been robbed and left bound in the house. As I got to the open back door there he was, face down in the scullery, Blaze dutifully at his side, I felt for a pulse but there was none, he was still warm, it was the 6th of June 2004. Reflection isn't something that enters your mind at the time, it's just a series of reactions, calls and panic, the thought that he had passed away alone and I the errant son had been the one to find him had not entered my mind, but when it did, I was angry, I couldn't understand why I was so angry. I had been through the steps of mourning a year earlier, and this anger was not part of it, it was irrational and it turned inward and it gave way to guilt.
It's been 14 crazy years since he passed away, at 62 both he and my Mum were so young. The memories of them are slowly disappearing from my constantly fading ability to hold onto them, memory loss is my burden to carry through all this.
So why this memory comes flooding in, or whether it's all intact, I cannot say, but the emotion attached is, and will always haunt me.
This concept of linear time is the thief of our lives, nothing exists but this very moment, past has happened and gone and has no sway on this moment, the future the same. This moment and only this moment, is real, I want to be present in every moment. The conditioning of linear time will always be a difficult concept to escape, and in this moment I think of you, and I hope that the time you took to read this, has value for you, for me? I'm going to try and be present in the time left.
It's still raining, I'm going to go sit and listen to it.
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