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Chapter 12
- University of Missouri Press
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153 Chapter 12 And then I knew I was done. Because even though I never quite realized it, it was some kind of an inner peace that I been searching for all along. I had embarked on a journey hoping to find a grandfather and maybe his killer too but had instead discovered something of much more value. I had unearthed a dark side of my family that I never dared dream existed, and through them I inherited a new understanding about myself. His absence had helped shape me into the man I became because long ago I had learned how to live without grandparents. If he was never a part of my past how could he be a part of me now? His presence today in my life only helped unlock the riddle of his death. It did not ease the pain of his departure. Not in leaving this world but in leaving my grandmother and my mother in the first place. In leaving us all. So I realized that the doctor’s daughter was correct. I should let it go. It was time to let it go. And I did. I gathered up the old court records and the census tracts and the newspaper clippings and stuffed them away. I did not go back to the caves, and I did not drive up the hill to visit again the fields of the old Farm. I did not go back to Fifth and Main and hope I might imagine my grandfather alive again in my world. He was never coming back because for me he never was. There was something I did do. I took another long look at the old photograph of James Patrick Lyons decked out in his suit and his tie, from the time he married my grandmother and celebrated in that field or backyard or wherever it was. I saw again what my family says is my own image, my look-alike, the man strong and self-confident in the picture but also wary that hard times are ahead. I placed it back into the box and put the box back on the closet shelf. I put it all away. 154 Richard A. Serrano I picked up the power of forgiveness. Against the long arc of time I had probably gotten as close as possible to what had happened. He went from the bottle to the jail to solitary confinement and in the end to his final prison, the tomb. For me I would have to leave it to dust that someone snapped my grandfather’s neck or tossed him down that flight of stairs. If someone in the night opened the Dungeon door and smashed him against the wall, then so it was. That is past. That is history. Like I said, our strength comes from the things that remain. And even if he were here today and he knew how I felt, what would he say? What could he say? There is shame in all of us, and for many it can be a mighty bitter cocktail, too strong a drink for even the strongest of men. Only in my head can I imagine him trying to face me, wobbly and not sturdy enough to explain his life. I expect he would just wink at me with that thin, bloodshot eye, slur a few words in the brogue his parents bequeathed him, and turn his head in embarrassment. Let the whiskey do his talking. A wink and the brogue and a head turned away. He speaks. “I’m sorry, son. I drinks a bit.” In the spring sixty years after my grandfather died, when he would have been one hundred years old had he lived and had he behaved, I drove once more out to the cemetery. Looking down at his headstone I cleansed my heart. I told him I bore him no grudge for his wasted life; I forgave him the pain he caused our family, the hurt he caused others. Time heals. Sixty years wipes it away. I like to think he is in heaven, if only because there are no guards in heaven. Or maybe he waits in purgatory. That is a jail, too, but with a safe way out. So I thought: Let’s raise a toast, let’s fill our cans, let’s be Irish eyes a-smiling. At last I’ve found my grandfather, and quite the bum he was. Hallelujah, he’s a bum. ...