Melting Snow

Father's Day 2018: Letting Go of Childhood Trauma

Entry nine of ten for "The Bard's Hall Contest" .

Light Surfing  (ASR) A dream of riding a light particle #2161206 by Prosperous Snow celebrating

Life Isn't a Set of Absolute Rules

Life isn't a set of absolute rules!
Isn't it strange that we think otherwise.
A human being can't live so rigidly.
Set the laws of survival loose enough to survive.
Of course this rule doesn't always apply.
Absolute laws have exceptions.
Rules must be loos enough to live by.

I wrote this poem several years ago, I think in the last century. I'm not sure of the specific inspiration, or the reason I choose to use creative style of an acrostic form. However, today, Father's Day 2018, this poem speaks to me as I think back to my childhood. I grew up in a time when one of the absolute rules was family with a father, mother, and 2.3 children (I'm guessing that the 2.3 children had to do with the mother being pregnant most of the time.). The household I grew up in didn't follow the absolute rule. My mother divorced my father because of his alcoholism and abuse.

I don't know how my father's absence affected my siblings, I do know how it affected me. I was traumatized. I remember riding on Daddy's shoulders when he came home from work in the late afternoon. I remember sitting on Daddy's lap on Sunday morning, as he read the Sunday comics to me. I remember watching him drink coffee. I remember pulling his coffee cup off the table and spilling the hot coffee on both of us. I remember Daddy and Mama rushing me to the hospital because of the burns.

I missed Daddy after he left. I still miss Daddy. Daddy died in 1998, and I found out about his death when I did an online search. I never got to say good-bye to Daddy. I never got to say "I love you, Daddy!" before he died. Today I let go--perhaps begin to let go would be a better phase--of the trauma. Today I will open my prayer book and say a prayer for the departed, say a prayer for Daddy's soul.