living out loud

I was in dream last night.  I was having memories surrounding my father's passing.  I had quite a lot written in my head as I drifted off and in and out of sleep.  Most of it forgotten by now, 8:29 am at the office.  My main point was to live your life out loud.

You see I remember sitting across from my dad in the hospital room in some brief moments alone together.  I was a bit afraid of him at this point.  What I didn't know was that the bleeding on his brain was probably causing him to behave a bit differently.  He was irritable, but he was trying to put on a show of not being irritable.  So he would flip between the two.  Ok/grumpy.

I asked him: "Are you afraid?" He shook his head, he did not say out loud yes or no or I don't know he just shook his head. No.  We both knew he was dying, but there was no words of reconciliation or love or just "I am  human, I am feeling afraid".

Denial, up until the end.

And then there were the moments soon after where dad ended up having to be strapped down.  He was trying to run, or get away.  His skin a dusty yellow, his belly bloated and painful, the pain of cancer ravaging his body and making his brain bleed tormenting him.  But what else tormented him?  He was now in the glass jar of the hospital under florescent light screaming but it was too late.  His voice would not reach those around him - his emotions, his pain and his joy would not be expressed. He was incoherent.  He did not make sense.  He wanted out.

It wasn't pretty. Let me tell you.  I was told his father was the same way when he passed from cancer.  Yelling and screaming and trying to get away.

Finally his body shut down and put him in a coma where his breaths laboured but the rest of his physical self was able to protect him.

I was angry.  I still am.

His life was never lived out loud and sometimes under the guise of poems he wrote there were windows into his soul. In fact his funeral was some sort of staged play not speaking of the man, who he really was, but just strangers, bona fide strangers, reading his poetry in lieu of real human stories.  My mom read the only poem that ever spoke of some family connection that he was never able to express out loud to me or my sons, his grandsons, and still the poem only breezed the surface.  So much left unsaid.

At the funeral I wanted to get up and shame every academic who dared to stand up and read poetry.  I wanted to run, screaming, cursing and expressing myself to them:  I wanted to tell them to get the fuck out of here.

But that wouldn't have been very good of me.

So I ask myself am I closing myself in a jar, muffling the voice of my self to placate those around me?  For the most part I live my life out loud.  I don't only cry in sad movies (like my dad, whose bottled emotions were acceptable to leak out at those times), I don't always say what's right, but try to speak my mind.  I have chosen to live life with a fullness instead of in shadows of secrecy. For the most part I try... I try... and I have a long ways to go.  Hopefully time is good to me.