My lovely Uncle David died yesterday. Too young. Too savaged by cancer. Too quickly to have any opportunity to set his business or his loves in order. Three years ago, my father was given a six-month window. Significantly more than Uncle David’s two weeks which stretched into six brutally painfully weeks.

Thursday I will drive to Andersonville National Cemetery where my grandparents and father are buried and where their youngest son and brother will now join them. I’m looking forward to it. Being at Andersonville…driving to Andersonville is as close as I get to a religious pilgrimage. If you’ve never heard of Andersonville Prison – from Civil War History or from bad, made-for-TV movies – Andersonville was the location of tens of thousands of Civil War “prisoner of war” deaths. Men lived in squalor in tight, inhumane confines with very little food or shelter. The prison staff was not much better off. Today it is a national cemetery and a houses a museum in honor of Prisoners of War and of the men who died and served there.

Before my dad died a friend advised me to express five critical things to him. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t expressed all five and I’m not sure that they helped me manage my anger or grief. But for the record, they were:

1) I love you
2) I’m sorry
3) I forgive you
4) Thank You
5) I’ll never forget

Not necessarily in that order. I wrote it all down and I stood beside my father’s bed in intensive care and carefully delivered my rehearsed speech of the five things. But the truth is – I hadn’t forgiven him. I said I had but I didn’t truly forgive him or myself until earlier this year. And that’s why I’m writing this blog post.

For most of my life, I felt cheated. I felt cheated of my father’s love, respect, attention, affection. I believed he didn’t like me, didn’t always love me, and certainly wasn’t proud of me. Years ago, I learned to turn off the negative voices, the critical voices in my head but I never managed to let go of that one critical and deeply embedded concept. I knew that the extent to which I judged others was a reflection of my own judgment of me. But I never realized I was judging my father.

Several months ago, my chiropractor, Hurst Peacock, asked me to try an experiment. He said to go to bed every night and just before I felt myself drifting into dreams, to say to myself, “My father is proud of me.” Absurd – I knew I would never believe it.

But you know what – I do. I do believe it. I said it nearly every night. I imagined the few times Dad showed genuine affection, love or pride and I repeated those scenes in my head. I can say now with certainty that my father was proud of me and did love me. And that has freed me up to love myself and take pride in myself in a way I never have before. Now when I accomplish something – a workout, a new poem, a small feat at work, a kindness to a stranger – I feel my father’s gaze and, let me tell you, he is proud!

So, whatever voices you have in your head, it is possible this exercise could work for you. I can say it worked for me and it was dang sure worth it!

And now…just cause it’s what I like to do, here is one of November’s poems…

Named

It was all magma, every bit. Every quark
of energy transforming into energy
transforming. Every donut, every toad,
every scrub brush started hot and ember
red blistering into black. And here
we are one link of the molten chain.
The two of us, more powerful than twenty
atom bombs held tightly inside these wet suits.

As poolside children, Carrie and I would tattoo
the names of boys onto our bronzing abdomens.
In bright white paper, neatly trimmed, we stenciled
Dave, Scott, Ben. Month long sweethearts
that rarely outlasted our tans. This was love
as long as it stayed – a mark, a stain
on a girl’s transforming skin.

I am thinking of how the lines of lava script
the earth – first scorched and lifeless then verdant,
ripe with possibility and not just new life
but new forms of life, unheard of possibilities,
primordial, original in the original sense,
amoeba sacks of infinite intention. From here,
it will be billions of years before
anyone knows what to call them.

Melissa Dickson Blackburn is a Mother, Poet, Visual Artist, Blogger, Marketing Director. MFA Poetry candidate at Converse College. MFA, Painting from SVA, NYC 1995.
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