The Reflection in the Windscreen

We, my wife and I, were driving along the M8, Glasgow’s main motorway, on our way to Ingliston — a country club fancier than the places we’d stayed before. The journey was pleasant, though for a while I grew inward, distracted. It was only later, after we’d arrived and before a nap ahead of dinner, that I told her I’d had a strange experience.

I had seen my father's reflection in the windscreen. Part daydream or memory bleeding through to reality. Whatever way you want to explain it, it was so incredibly vivid that it stopped all other thoughts.

My dad, who, in many pieces prior to his death this year, I had made some less-than-positive comments about, was not a perfect man. I have since come to terms with this fact and let go of the resentment and anger I had let build inside me for far too long.

It wasn't just for the catharsis - to save myself from the misery - it was that I genuinely understood him for the first time in years.

It's odd how the map of a parent's life starts to overlay our own. The routes you swore you'd never take somehow appear underfoot.

In hindsight, I always knew that, but the anger and hatred had blindsided me to it.

It's a sad thing. I had to live my own experiences with addiction and almost fucking up my marriage and life, before I realised the truth about Dad. He was not beyond reproach, but neither was he the villainous character I'd made him out to be.

At 45, I was also astutely aware that many others had parents who were closer to actual abhorrence and evil in their behaviour than my drunkard of an old man.

Although none of this is particularly news to me, I've done a lot of soul-searching over the last year or so.

I had started to forgive him before his death, but had never reconciled in person. In my mind, he was too far gone in his dementia for it to make any sense or grant me the full closure I really needed.

But, I felt seismically better once I dropped all that resentment and anger and instead embraced understanding and trying to remember the best of his qualities.

That's what we do, isn't it? When someone passes who we truly love, who did their best for us, we remember them fondly and try not to focus on the negatives.

In the car, that day, that was what was so strange about the sight of his face smiling back at me, aged as I remember him in the mid-90s before everything went to shit.

It was not the daydream apparition. I have a fairly vivid imagination as it is, and I can conjure imagery quite easily.

It was his smile.

I had forgotten how much the man smiled.

And laughed.

Sure, it was often at his own stupid jokes and comments. But I remember how much he loved being at my Nonna's house and how much the family seemed to adore him.

Nonna always seemed fond of him, as did my uncles and aunties.

That smile. Infectious, handsome, and kinda naughty/mischievous, now ingrained in my head.

Although a smile is generally a happy thing, that smile gives me pangs of regret and hurt right now. I can take that - I will work through those feelings. He deserves to have a space in my memory a little longer - for the hurt to not quite die off yet.

I wrote this poem, in my usual professional poet fashion - late at night in a hurry and by hand so it looked like someone had scrawled their last message to a dying world.

-

Until You Couldn't

-

I miss your smile, your laughter

Far too long spent remembering

the bad, it chokes the good

I forgot how much you loved

to smile and laugh

and how infectious it could be

<>

It was easier to hate you

before you died

to catalogue your failings

and hold onto them

as my right, my heritage

<>

It was harder to hate you

when I realised

just how much we were alike

To offer the same grace and sympathy

others offer me with my failings

as a husband, father and man

<>

You were neither perfect or saintly

but neither am I

Is anyone really ever either?

<>

You loved life, you lived life

until you couldn't

Driving along the motorway to Glasgow

<>

But I didn't say

I saw your vision in the windscreen —

but I did.

<>

And your smile now

is forever etched

in my memory.

-

In the end, it wasn't forgiveness I found, not really, but a way back to love — a new route on a map I didn’t know I’d been drawing all my life.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: I was originally going to post the poem separately, but felt it worked better in this larger piece for the Maps of the Self challenge.