Conflagration

Part Two

...I can remember the day they released you from the hospital. There was this misting rain that cut right through you and the orderly walking past us to start her shift saw our helpless selves and agreed to pull the car around from the parking lot down the way. We stood under the overhang for what felt like hours. I recall seeing some of the other staff coming in and out for lunch and what not and thinking that they were crazier than hell to just let us walk out with this child. As if we knew what we were doing. I was standing over you in the wheelchair scared to death when that car finally came around. But as I pushed you and Billy towards the side door I thought about what I was pushing you towards. What world I was walking this baby into. And for the first time I felt like I was failing him. All my life I've lived here and it took until that moment for me to see this place for what it was. 

There are rocks and dirt and trees that'll be here long after all of us our gone. The world changes slower than anything but I think towns like this aren't all that far behind. To be honest, I don't know if any change would help. I sometimes wonder if the community and the rocks and dirt and trees begin to blend until they are one entity, forced out of its current position only by some kind of calamity. To think that this child could stay in this place and somehow experience a greater world was foolish. And as I walked you both out from that overhang I fought the urge to turn around and push you away.

Now I've found that a man in my position weighs these things. These choices that have led us to this point. And then there's what comes next. Sometime in the near future there will be a world where I no longer exist, and as pointless as it is to think about what I would have done if things had come out different I can't help but carry these silent wishes. People talk about the big moments. Graduations, weddings, the birth of his own children, but there are an infinite number of experiences in between filled with emotion that awards life its meaning. Cries of frustration, sadness, anger. Questions. Lord help you I can already hear the millions of questions he'll ask you when I'm gone. And then there's a future where the child will become a man and he will make the choices that shape him. The occupation he chooses. Where he sets his roots. It's hard to imagine a man out of the boy who jams his mouth in the peanut butter jar so deep that it sticks to the tip of his nose, but God willing he will eventually come.

These are the things that I will miss. And as I contemplate them I once again feel like I have failed him. The hard truth is that there will be moments when he falls down and I won't be around to help him back up. To dust him off. He'll have his shortcomings same as everyone else and to see an empty space over his shoulder brings me more pain than just about anything. Surely more pain than this tumor could ever account for. But if I could come back and see just one thing, it would be him getting up after he falls. If I could be there in that moment I would only want to look him in his eyes and hear him tell me that he was okay. That he was good to walk on...