best of what we know and let a new crop Ęourish from the ĕeld of our
life?
Craving revenge, holding a gun, picturing himself in his son’s face,
Jason was suddenly able to see the choices available to him. He could
choose to kill or choose to love. To vanquish or to forgive. To face a
grief, or to pass the pain on, again and again. He dropped the gun. He
was crying now, huge, rippling sobs, waves of sorrow crashing over his
body. He couldn’t stand with the immensity of the feeling. He fell to
the ground, to his knees, he bent his head. I could almost see the
different feelings breaking over him in waves, the hurt and shame and
broken pride and ruined trust and loneliness, the image of the man he
couldn’t be and would never be. He couldn’t be a man who had never
lost. He would always be a man whose father beat and humiliated him
when he was young, whose wife cheated on him. Just as I will always
be a woman whose mother and father were gassed and burned and
turned to smoke. Jason and I would always be what every person is,
someone who will bear suffering. We can’t erase the pain. But we are
free to accept who we are and what has been done to us, and move
on. Jason knelt, crying. I joined him on the Ęoor. e people we loved
and relied on had disappeared or let us down. He needed to be held. I
held him. I pulled him to my chest and he sank into my lap and I held
him and we cried until our tears had soaked my silk blouse through.
* * *Before Jason le my office, I demanded that he give me the gun. (I
would hang on to the gun for years, so long that I forgot it was still in
my closet. When I was packing my office in preparation for my move
to San Diego, I would discover the gun, still loaded, in the drawer of a
ĕling cabinet, a reminder of the volatility and pain we oen choose to
hide away, the potential for damage that persists until we consciously
face and dismantle it.) “Are you safe to leave now?” I asked him. “Are