Grass on the Grave: Life After Death

They say that time heals all wounds and I once sang that the memories fade. I don't believe that anymore. “I buried the feelings. The memories they come up. But now I see ‘em differently. Love is always love. That doesn't mean that it's enough” (Allie Colleen, Grass on the Grave). Sometimes you can never forget the things you want to and sometimes the wounds heal in a way that changes how you see the world. I beat to a different drum and I know that. I always have but it looks like I've changed sides when the truth is something different. Let me take you on a journey. 

I'm a four year old kid whose normal is daily trips to the methadone clinic with dad, summers recovering from surgery for my Cerebral Palsy and other birth conditions, Sundays at the family Evangelical megachurch (with people who vote to defund Social Security and Medicaid benefits that I critically depended on for two decades). I'm like a lab rat in physical therapy between surgeries, a child of divorce due to Mom's infidelity and alcoholism, with one side of my family being so dysfunctional I cut ties with them in my early twenties out of fear, and the other side of my family looking idyllic in comparison not acknowledging the truth about my immediate family unless they thought no one was listening (I was). Amidst all of that, I'm also being shaped by rock-n’-roll, WrestleMania, and my dad's stories of his drugged out, free love, hippie days when my oldest sibling was born. 

Fast forward ten years, I'm fourteen. Dad's only having to visit the methadone clinic every week or so because he'd earned privileges for staying clean. I haven't had a surgery or physical therapy for two years. I went rogue with church and started attending youth group at the Salvation Army instead of transitioning the to the high school youth group at the Evangelical megachurch (because I had a best friend at the Salvation Army and the girl who promised to marry me when I turned 27 left the megachurch). Mom got sober from the drink and spent a lot of her dad's money trying to buy affections from me and my other sibling. I've stopped splitting holidays between sides of the family because of the side that scares me. My immediate family is the poor black sheep of the other side of the family because we always needed something. Amidst all that, I've added Metal, Alternative, and Rap-Rock to my rock-'n'-roll palette, D-Generation X has spiced up WrestleMania with a two word catch phrase I couldn't say at school, and Dad has chronic hepatitis that's supposed to kill him. 

Fast forward ten years again, I'm twenty four years old. I've been in Evangelical Christian college for two years and fully my dad's codependent (he's still on methadone every day but only has to visit the clinic for refills on occasion). I’d had my ninth surgery the summer before and I spend my summers on campus so I don't have to move back home. I'm interning in youth ministry at the Salvation Army Corp (Church) I went to in high school and had finished an internship with a different Evangelical megachurch because my middle school youth leader worked there. Mom has traded the drink for pills and spent years strung out – until she overdoses and dies that year. Mom's memorial service is the last time I see that side of the family, my dad and paternal grandmother are the only other family in the room besides my sister and I who are on stage singing Amazing Grace (my Salvation Army Captain (pastor) leads the service, love you John). Amidst all of that, I've been writing my own rock-'n'-roll (am onto my second album Custom Tailored and playing live everywhere I could), I'm watching wrestling on the weekends with Dad, helping him to manage his life, using the free therapy at college to deal with my feelings, falling in love for the first time, and being heartbroken for the first time too. 

Fast forward another ten years, I'm thirty four years old. I'm spending my summers working in libraries near the beach. I won't have another surgery for four more years. I'm spending Sundays at a Lutheran church volunteering as Church Council President or something like that because my ministry career was over. Mom's been gone for a decade (both she and Dad missed my wedding and are about to miss the next chapter of for me, parenthood). By this point, I'm barely talking to any of my relatives because years of codependence with my father, religious differences, and political differences made those relationships difficult. I'm rebuilding my professional life, getting promoted, and going to grad school to enhance my career. Amidst all of that, I'd quit writing music because of criticism, I almost quit watching wrestling because it was dreadfully bad at this point in time, and as I would start building my own family my dad's health was rapidly deteriorating towards his death at 72. 

Fast forward to today, I'm forty two, I'm still spending my summers working at a library near the beach because I had a rapid rise to the top of my profession. I left the Church about four years ago. I've spent most of the past two years in physical therapy or some kind of body maintenance for my Cerebral Palsy and back. Both of my parents are dead, I don't know if one of my siblings is alive or dead, and I don't really talk to any of my relatives unless someone is about to or has passed away. Amidst all of that, I listen to music under headphones every day and wrote my first album in over a decade last summer (Resuscitative Efforts because I died at birth and my music died for over a decade). WrestleMania is so corporate that it's lost most of the emotional energy that makes it interesting. And, I'm a dad who's been taking care of my mental health since my dad died and breaking down codependent behaviors for over a decade now.

Coming full circle, I still remember the smell of that methadone clinic that was impressed upon me at four years old. I'm doing my best to take care of my physical and mental health for my Cerebral Palsy and trauma experiences. I'm an agnostic who hasn't forgotten the teachings of Jesus or the scars of religious shame. I am and have generally been a political moderate who's voted Red, Blue, and Gold. I'm unaffiliated and have been minus a short run on the Gold team before it was infiltrated by the Red team. I still believe in the greatest thing about religion, my dad's hippie heyday, and my music. Love. I love my family even if I don't talk to them for complicated reasons. I love the people I met in ministry even if we had to travel different roads. I love my friends from college who stood by me through a lot of shit and I know I wore some of you out. I love my children and I'll do anything for them including the years I spent working multiple jobs, I'll swallow my pride when I want to tell someone off, I'll remain steady no matter what it costs me, so that it doesn't cost them. I am not without flaws and I've been willing to work on that for some time now. For that four year old little boy inside of me, flashing back to Dad's methadone clinic, and the kids who call me Dad today; the “grass on the grave” is a reminder that in life some things die so we can live, sometimes that hurts a lot, and it's also completely worth it for the opportunity to write a different story. I show up to life and work with all of this inside of me and love ahead of me.