Throughout my cleaning and decluttering
expeditions in the last long while, I've been evaluating and getting rid
of a lot of detritus, in the 'little picture' as well as the 'big'. However,
there's a conspicuous item, a pair of binoculars, which have been sitting
in my kitchen for a while now – I, unable to decide what to do with them.
Leather casing worn, aged 60 years now, some supple and delicate with age.
They were picked up as a 'souvenir' by my father during the Second World
War, lost by "the enemy". 'Enemy' is rather relative a term in fact, since
he was conscripted by the German Army at the time – he then, just barely
past the age of 21. He, in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time.
Many were. So many still are....
He never did, in all his years that I recall (and I did
pay attention), speak of the war in any significant terms or detail whatsoever
other than how abysmally poor the food was – usually severely berating
his children when not quite, um, enthusiastic about what was on the dinner
table before us. That 'not telling' used to seem a cruel thing to me –
for I never really knew the man – that large part of himself embracing
denial with a vengeance, he with his experience carrying a monumental and
sullen chip on his shoulder (which my mother, conversely, never did – even
though she was at the same time 'conscripted' herself, into the bowels
of a Russian slave labour camp, "interred" no mere euphemism, forced to
toil in the coal mines, and which she has told me much of). These secrets,
according to him, were the like no one else was 'worthy' of viewing, no
one else was entitled to see, the unholy scars surely left within his soul,
suppression of the knowledge of Hell, secrecy justified by himself for
his spite (or not being able to reckon with) – and that the suffering,
the haunting, was something that he and he alone was entitled to – yet
foisting the 'result' on his loved ones for all his years. Not needing
to be offered up to explanation, justification, let alone understanding
or healing, now, now I know and acknowledge it to be a common affliction
(yet no small one at that) – affecting so very countless many, and each
aspect of their lives – their selves – nevermind all their ensuing relationships,
most of all, with their families. Life should go on, wot? Forget. Remember?
The choice more complex than any words or reality expressed can convey.
Yes, I know this now.
I've also since learned, or at least appreciated that
moving 'past and beyond' may not always be quite up to us or our capabilities.
Some scars we are branded with, never do heal from, though for the better
part I believe that at least they should be addressed in effort to heal
– and while better to try, it is not always so. Perhaps I have always sensed
somehow that we each and all carry our own version of the hell we've endured.
However, I've also always had an underlying sense that if a chance existed
to express and overcome it, or at least to name the demons from
the past, as my mother did, it would be better spoken of. Yes, only a start,
to shine a flashlight into the darkness, I know. We, are not however, necessarily
encouraged. I think, that is, I 'imagine' he felt unfathomable shame within,
at never having 'overcome' The Ways of The World, the horrors this race
is capable of. I have felt it too on many days.
These binoculars, once having looked far and wide – who
first looked through them, and for what mission – and was it a willing
mission? What did they see? Who dropped them – were they merely lost, or
relinquished to death by the one who first carried them. Was the view different
than anything they'd see today? Magnifying all there was at the time in
the battlefields – none 'pretty'. No, none prettier now to be sure. They
are like my own haunting, for I saw what all-too-real ghosts unnamed did
to my father. These binoculars (do inanimate objects indeed carry 'vibes',
energy?), manmade but perhaps imbued with Divine Glance, showing the Unwilling
a view of the Unimaginable.
Keep them? Sell them? Rid myself of the past – 'purify'
myself, specifically of that of someone who seemingly purposely caused
so much pain – perhaps because of all the pain that was caused him at such
a young age? Or shall I hang on to a piece of that past as a reminder,
and earnestly meditate on what they have left behind – and learn from what
it, and they, signify.
Hell is, as far as I'm concerned, no "Someday ye be damned!"
far-off place.
And all who have ever had pure and simple dreams, hopes,
prayers of peace realized in and on this plane, on this planet, within
our souls, cannot help but engage in the process – it behooves us no matter
how we participate – participate we must. Each view, unlike my father's
one-and-alone (though one of too many) thoughts never expressed, must be
viewed. Through hell, some will survive, keep on, looking for the nearest
next-best-thing to Heaven – even if making peace with the notion of it
will indeed yet take a lifetime. Perhaps this object might continue to
remind me of the quest.
Yet perhaps I need none, the memory of him alone sufficing.
Eyes of The Soldier
My soul, my own soul
is still too dark, too many days,
to look to the past and reconcile myself with it,
though near an age.
I have seen what no one should see.
Hell beheld as devastating as hidden memory.
Unspoken and unspeakable.
Yet, with tale untold,
will I ~
Will we ever learn
that The Past will
someday
be someone else's Future...
We
always appreciate your feedback!
