Final Punctuation

"Guy do you know what the sound of an unborn baby sounds like?"
"Guy where is your spleen?"
"If you play ping-pong on-board a ship and it is heaving in the waves, does the ping-pong ball sway with the ship?"
"Check-Mate."

Tuesday marked the end of a life that I knew, albeit not closely or intimately. I cannot tell you when he was born, or where, what his favorite colour was, or why he chose to live where he did. What I can say is how if affected my world, and the world of his son, my very best friend. Growing up in a world where sexuality wasn't yet someone one would shout out, being afraid of male figures in general, and just wanting to avoid contact with adults, made life for me rather difficult. Holland, as I'll term him, though it would probably come out more as Mr.Holland, was an imposing figure. Loud, brusque, direct, and stupidly smart, he did not stand on the conventions of typical colonial British niceties.

Dinner at the house of Holland was initially a dreaded period. For one of the remarkable traits Mr. Holland and his wife had instilled in my friend and his brothers, was the aptitude to eat fast, redirect questions towards guests, or counter an argument proposed by Mr. Holland with such alacrity and clarity of discourse that I would mumble and shrink and try to ignore Mr. Holland's gaze. But slowly by measured exposure I learned that the question wasn't a test of intelligence, but rather a means to instill questioning of everything from the mundane to the extraordinary.

I would like to say quickly but I think it was more like over a period of five or more years I learned to actually enjoy talking Mr. Holland. Engaging in discourse, testing idea's, and seeing if I could perhaps know something that the old man didn't. I knew he could be ferociously strict, and didn't give ground on principles, but that if the question was academic in nature, I was safe. And if I could talk to Mr. Holland, I could talk to anybody. The legacy that he leaves behind in my little world is one of questioning, asking, accepting, and not being afraid to engage others, regardless of their physical statue, or personal presence.

Mr. Holland also marks the death of the last of the original high-school friends fathers. Over the last ten years each of my four friends has lost a father. I am the only one left with a father. Death could be said to be the final punctuation, the full stop of life's sentence. But we know how the story goes, after a full-stop someone always has more to say. Another sentence is written. Oh it may contain hyphens, colons, or other random bits of misused punctuation, but generally, it goes on.

And my father and I go on. When I chat to my friends most of them talk of finding closure, or finding some kind of peace. Cancer, for all it's evils, sometimes has a silver lining: most of the time there is time to say good-bye. If my father was about to die what would our conversation be? What would he and I talk about? Well what do we talk about now? What is there to talk about? What legacy has my father left me?

This is complicated. Because the legacy is mixed. On one hand it is a legacy of emotional distance which makes it hard to form relationships. One the other, it's an aptitude for resilience, adaptation, and rebounding no matter what. With emotional distance coming individual strength. We both can survive alone. We don't rely on other humans to help us (from the sense of surviving). I rely heavily on my friends from emotional support and my mental well being, but I don't rely on humans for my own happiness. Occasionally I slip into needing someone else to be there, or desire it, as with a few posts ago, but when it doesn't happen, the resilience, the rebound, the adapting kicks in and I move on. Most humans do I guess. I just seem to care less.

So if my father and I have a conversation its one of pleasantries. How are you, all fine, busy, life happens. My world and his are so different is there a common ground? Do either of us want there to be? I am sure my father, who openly supports who I am, and how I am, might like more, but he doesn't know how to express that. I don't his father taught him how. Would I like a father I could turn to for advice on quantum mechanics or how to build a lightsabre? Yes. But then is that a father or just a friend?

Do I want a father whom I can turn to with emotional issues about how I am feeling, why I am sad or why I am happy? I don't see the need. I have my friends, myself, and my blog. As bizarre as that sounds, writing here relieves more pressure than ranting to a family member.

So what is left? Doing things we did together when I was young? Being in one another's company? That very rarely happened. In fact I don't have very many memories of 'good times with dad'. No sepia tainted afternoons spent quietly being together doing things. My father was either away working furiously to pay for my existence, or just very busy and so couldn't spend time with me. Besides I was pretending to be Skeletor, or Prime Evil, or Shedder, or any of the villains in the cartoons I used to watch, and didn't really give a fig about sports, manly pursuits (except for sword fighting), or women - which were and are his bywords.

We didn't ever connect. His interests are very different from mine. His approach to life is the same as mine. Make a plan. Survive. Find friends/lovers. Move on. Never stop. In that we are identical. Which I suppose brings the question around: What is family for? Growing you up into a human until you are about 20 or so. Then family becomes the support from a distance - generally. The phone-calls for help, or for direction. For reassurance or for comfort. At least I suppose that's what it is for.

But is it a family if the calls are merely to hear the voice? Merely to get a truncated news update on the going on of a life that is as foreign as phoning a Chinese noodle maker and asking how their day went? How involved should family be? Is the old aphorism blood is thicker than water mean anything anymore apart from being chemically correct? Should I reach out to my father, try and engage in his world? Should he force himself to start reading Star Trek novels? The answer came the other day: I am on whatsapp, and my father isn't. He prefers phone calls, I prefer whatsapp. And that's the last time we spoke. I won't shift into his world, and he won't shift into mine.

One of the other traits I picked up from him, was that the self is more important than the others. His actions have always seemed to be in survival of self, not others around him. He is a good and kind person, but only as far as he can be. When the ship is sinking, he's in a lifeboat. I am the same. I will help. I will try. But if push came to shove, I'd be one body back from the cliff edge shoving. So I won't give, and neither will he. I suspect it's because we both know there isn't really anything worth giving for. Different worlds, different ideas, indifferent interest, with the tenuous link of DNA.

What are the prospects for finding someone worthwhile in the future? For finding that singular point around which we both agree? Something to unit us? In 25 years of cognitive awareness I have not found or seen or glimpsed a single common interest. There is just too much of a difference of mentality with a mix of too much similarity in operational approach to life to warrant deeper connections.

Is this a sad state of affairs? Is it miserable that this is the mindset of father and son? Perhaps only of son? I don't think it's sad. I think it's life. Some families grow up around a super strong family nucleus. Others, like mine, grow up around a blown up one. Scattered in all directions without a central core. Is it naive of the molecules to try to rebuild the proverbial atom? Or is it impossible? An illusion at best? I am eager to see how things play out. Perhaps my father and I will surprise one another and modern technology will allow us to open dialogue on mutual terms, and to see something of a relationship grow forward. Or perhaps it wont and in thirty or forty odd years when I am seventy and my father is ninety we may have a breakthrough. Until then I don't think either of us really wants to try to hard for fear of finding that there really is nothing at all...

So Mr. Holland whatever you might have been to however many people, you were an engaging man who inspired at least one person to believe in what he says and fights until he is proven wrong. And even then to fight a little bit more, just for the fun of it. Whatever awaits you - be it oblivion or heaven, reincarnation or hundreds of bored virgins, I wish you toodle pip, you won't be forgotten.