The Road to Perdition

 "...I saw then that my father's only fear was that his son would follow the same road. And that was the last time I ever held a gun. People always thought I grew up on a farm. And I guess, in a way, I did. But I lived a lifetime before that, in those 6 weeks on the road in the winter of 1931. When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them... he was my father..." Mike Sullivan - The Road to Perdition

ReRRecollections of a son of a father across the murky currents of memory. Recently I sold our old home where my wife and I last saw our son. I ran across old pictures of him and his friends that had been stuffed in the attic a decade before. I even remember the time clearly of how they got there. My brother and two sisters came to the house to help us put away all the memories. The pictures, the clothes the gifts from them and even diplomas and awards. The sack had been lost in the bustle and sat as a time capsule of life long dead ready to share its secrets on the last night I was ever to be in that house. As I was going through a lost sack of those memories I pulled pictures of my son smiling at a banquet, some pictures with his great friends and two of the hats he wore quite often, One of the hats had a clear slot on its crown where one could put a picture a favorite snapshot to display. There he was with his friends...Joe Cool. Another was a hat I could not help but smile when I saw it. 'Moonpie' I remember that one. In my wading through that bittersweet bag, I realized it was getting late and the house was to close the next day so I hurriedly put all the treasures. I recalled on the night before he left, he said he was going for a drive. I understood that and remembered the many nights when I myself took drives like that when I was young. Just me and the radio and the drone of a Diesel engine it was a respite for the life I was living and I guess the pain of loneliness I felt during my college and post-graduate years. It was a time to pray and to seek God in solitude as songs streamed from the FM and some how I found a pleasure in the pain and I realized I wasn't alone at all. It's kind of corny but in night drives like that I found out God was my co-pilot. I can only hope my son had that same experience on that last drive. The last night we saw our son.    

         Fast forwarding to the present time, a decade forward, I wonder about him a lot and he and his sister are constantly in my thoughts and prayers. It seems the reasons for their departure grow smaller every year in importance while the wound made then is the same or maybe a little more tattered around its edges from being open so long. The demon or whatever I was made out to be then must be a full fledged monster now. A man hell bent with the smell of sulfur that permeates the air around me and leaves its skank on everyone within my circle. on the road to perdition. I am sure some think I have red glowing eyes too. Or perhaps a weak and broken man living out a pittance in misery as a reprobate Job under the curse and pressure of the Almighty's arm.

         I am neither. 

         I am just a man that misses his son and daughter and in that holy act I am as righteous as I ever was or will be. As the years have melted away and I stand in the twilight of my life, I have come to the conclusion that it is fear that keeps them and not some holy quest. What would be that fear? It is the worst of kind that anyone could ever hold or have. It is the fear of being wrong. I know the path of pride well and I wore that garment out years ago. Making a decision stay away from actually the only ones that will ever really care for them because they would have to admit their error...their sin. If I could talk to them only once, it would not be about who was right or wrong, who held the oracles fo God and who doesn't. Our conversation would not be about such things, it would be about how old the children are, what were they doing now, some laughing about old times and looks that would be disarming because it is not the years that have made me bitter at all, they have finally brought my only fond recollections of my son and daughter and how much I love them, even more now than when I knew them. That is what I would say. 

         It has been said that all roads lead to where we are now. Choices we made lead us here. Do I have regrets you betch. But in all that darkness and pain driving thought the blackness, I have come to realize like I did so very long ago, God is still my co-pilot. 

theh

                                                                                                               

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