EXTREMELY CLOSER THROUGH FORGIVENESS - For My Dad

My wife and I have wanted to see the movie "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" for some time now. Tuesday we had the opportunity to see it. A touching film of the events during and leading the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The story develops as a young boy discovers clues left by his father and attempts to pick up the pieces to find more closure from his beloved best friend.

Several times throughout the film as I saw young Oskar in his struggles to find answers, my eyes welled up in tears. His encounters with complete strangers humanized the New York experience as he discovers their shared devastation from the catastrophic events. I reflected upon my own life and relationship with my own father. Though very different, my heart filled with love reflecting on the various good and bad times I had growing up around my father. This movie inspired me to write about my own life, about those people in my life who matter, and about the things in my life that don't matter which I choose to leave unsaid.

As a boy maturing through life's obstacles I found myself quite often in mischief, and what I'd like to call "learning things the hard way." As a child, I remembered as the clock ticked towards that magic time of day, the time of day when daddy comes home. I found myself withdrawing from his return, wishing quite often that he wouldn't make it home. In what seemed to be a daily ritual of fighting, yelling, and exchanging of hateful words, I accepted our indifferences. It wasn't so much the fighting and the yelling that wounded me. It was more the absence of our relationship that ripped at my soul, and knowing I just wasn't going to have that wonderful relationship with my father. Unfortunately in my adolescence our starved relationship became less and less important to me as time went on.

I presently work for a car transportation company, and if you can imagine in that type of business I have had many conversations with strangers. The other day on an hour long drive I had a particularly amazing conversation with a woman. This conversation seemed to be a realization, one of those I've-gone-full-circle type conversations. In our conversation I spoke to her about my father among many other things including her experiences, her family and her life. But about my father I told her of our adventures camping, fishing, of our laughing and joking together. After what I had said about him, it seemed to me she was convinced that I always had this positive type of relationship with my father. I explained to her it wasn't so, but included the following. "No relationship thats worth having is worth me giving up on."

The full circle part, is how I see my relationship with my father today. What matters to me today is that we are extremely loud and incredibly close. So loud, so close that I cannot hear the past. Today there are no empty holes in our relationship, I forgave him.