The Echo

A, at Coming to the Quiet, writes:

. . .After I got off the phone, I felt a certain melancholy settle in. At times like that, my thoughts sometimes turn to my father, now several years deceased. We did not get along through much of my youth and into adulthood. Again, I'll not here and now go into the reasons why. Only in his last years did we reach a sort of peace with each other. And I have to give most of the credit for that to him, not to me. I saw him grow and change. Now, more and more often as I get older, I catch his echo in my being, in a certain phrase he was fond of that seemingly starts to appear in my vocabulary, in mannerisms, the way I walk and talk. It is in fact eerie to experience this, especially as my views and life are in most ways an antithesis of his. Yet, I get reminded...I am still his son.

I am fortunate that my parents are still living, yet this resonates so much with things that I have been noticing lately in my own life. I catch a little glimpse now and then of how I am becoming like my father in certain ways, how things he taught me have become part of me. And yet, there is still that distance, a distance which began in my teen years, one from which we never really recovered. How does one bring such things up without it seeming and indictment? Especially now when neither of us is who we were then? You would think this would make it easier, but in some ways it seems to make it harder. Are we willing to remember who we were then, and the mistakes we made, in order to find reconciliation now? Can we overcome our pride?

It's good to know that I'm not alone in this. Maybe you also know all too well this "echo" which resides in many of us, in spite of our distance? We know, don't we, that the answer is reconciliation. But how do we get there? I hope soon to find out.