If We Forgive...

My grandmother moved from Texas to Indian Territory in a covered wagon. She was disowned because she married a man of Indian blood during a time when the only good Indian was a dead one. They struggled to make ends meet every day as sharecroppers. At times, they couldn’t afford to buy their children desperately needed shoes. My grandfather refused the rations and the land parcel that the U.S. government provided for his tribe, rations his destitute family could have used, because he was too proud to take charity. A white uncle took his roll number and stole the benefit because, well, hell, why not.

During the tail end of WWII my mother was born. They weren't prepared for that, they were grandparents for crying out loud. She was informed she had a tumor because the doctors never heard the second heartbeat. She was too sick for them to operate and surprised when she went into labor. A few years later, she left Oklahoma and her lousy, drunken, abusive, philandering husband for California, because living on welfare as a single mother for the rest of her life was a better option. Had she stayed, he might’ve killed her.

She lived long enough to watch man land on the moon.

And even in the end of her days, she never stopped loving him. 

I never knew her. How I wish I had. She died well before I was born. To have been through so much, to have such inner-strength in the face of unrelenting adversity, she was a rare and remarkable woman, with so much to teach me. Mother says that I would have liked to have known my grandfather as well. His stories drew you in and held you there in that world for hours. He was the pillar of the community, doing for others what he didn’t do for his own. I accept him, I even love him, I respect where we came from and I take pride in my native heritage. But, I’m not sure I can forgive him. Times were difficult enough. His wife, who he was supposed to love, honor, and cherish, sacrificed everything to be with him, and still she had to survive him.

And we, who are descended from them, are shrouded in the echo of their pain.

To paraphrase the ending monologue from the movie Smoke Signals (1998): "How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths?

And if we forgive, what is left?"

What is left?

I do not know the answer yet. Maybe I’m not meant to. I’d like to think that love could travel back in time and mend a broken heart. After all, this emotional baggage has been etched in my DNA. If pain can radiate forward, why not love back?

I do know that I come from a long line of prideful people. We are stubborn and fiercely loyal, usually to our own detriment. But if I carry within me any of the emotional traits of my grandparents, let it be that I love unconditionally, blindly, beyond all measure. Let it be that I am generous to a fault, sacrificing for the sake of others, whether blood or not. Let it be that I can spit in the face of adversity without shame or regret.

Let it be that I someday find the inner-strength to survive the aftermath of forgiveness.