iTunes Selection: "Wonderwall" -Oasis.
Before my father died he started his 12 steps over again from AA. He wanted to make amends for being an alcoholic while we were growing up. I thought I had heard him tell me this before so I listened politely as I could and let him go on. He was letting go, letting go of his guilt as if confessing to me.
A couple of years later I was standing in a Dining Facility in Baghdad about to ask the Indian server for an ice cream cone from a 31 flavors freezer and it hit me:
I needed to make amends and move on.
“Praleans Cream sir?”
I hated Praleans and Cream ice cream. It used to be my ex-wives favorite. I remember one night I drove around town going to 31 flavors looking for Praleans and Cream for her. I ended up buying the generic brand at the grocery store just so I could go home and call it a night. That was the reason for that fight.
‘lazy sob, couldn’t even get me the right ice cream, your just like your father!’
I don’t really remember the rest of the argument, but I think i spent the night in the spare bedroom. God I’m glad that house had a spare bedroom.
So there I was, trying to decide between Praleans and Cream and something else and I realized how angry I still was about some stupid ice cream flavor.
Just a little while earlier I had spent some time looking back at my emails between the two of us after we had split up. It was the normal stuff divorcing people say to each other I guess. Except I started to notice a trend about my emails. I had been angry, openly, didn’t matter what she wrote to me I was angry. She tried to say something nice and I had jumped all over her about something worthless.
‘Vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate sir?’
I needed to do something different or it was going to eat me up like it had my father. The last time I saw him he was on a bed in the hospital wasting away. Barely the person I knew growing up he was hooked up to about every kinda machine and device to keep him alive. He came in and out of clarity. At one point he looked at me and for a second realized who i was, i think. I told him how my wife had made it home safe from Iraq, and then he was gone again. God, what had happened to the man I knew.
‘sir? Flavor?’
I was at work when my brother called to tell me that dad had passed. The entire family was there and they had watched him as he had slowly relaxed, looked up at the family and slipped away. My brother was broken up as he called me and told me about it. I tried to say something meaningful, but nothing would help. At which point I hung up with him and focused on getting home . I then picked up my cell phone and called my wife. ‘my dad just died.’
‘thats sad,’ and in the same breath, ‘you can pick up the divorce papers at the lawyers office if you want?’ I was wordless, what do I say to that? ‘ah, yeah, i have to deal with this first.’ and I hung up.
‘sir? Flavor, sir?’
I was still angry with her for dropping that bomb on me. I was angry for not listening to my father closer when he had called in the middle of the night and rambled on about something and the answering machine listened as i feel back asleep. I was angry for not having someone to cry with when he died.
Not long after he died I had a dream about my father. I walked up to his bed in the hospital, my grandmother was sitting there beside him, and he magically got up out of bed like the resurrection of christ. As strong and healthy as when I was just a little kid so small in his arms he spoke to me, ‘I’m at peace now.’
I wrote my ex wife and said i was sorry, and i wanted to make peace with her. I needed to make amends.
I needed to let go of the anger and move on. It was my very own 12th step before I took the biggest step of all and married the most wonderful woman in the world, my lil red head...
‘I’ll have the vanilla.’
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