You Can't Go Home

You Can't Go Home Again... and don't bother
March 2000

We're cleaning out the storage shed. We're getting rid of stuff we thought we might need one day and since that day has not come in seven years and we have new stuff we might need some day in the future, it's time to get rid of the old stuff. No doubt we will go through this same drill in seven more years.

In the process of this we came across four large boxes. In them were slides and pictures of our lives from year one, and previously, to year....oh, say eight or nine years ago or just before we met.

So it's old boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, LIFE that we began to dig into. "The History Before Us" is what this all is. And it's pretty grim. For me, I'm sure there must have been good times. But with each old black and white snap shot or colored slide I am able to hook up a before and after memory that is bleak at the very least.

See that one there? That was the Christmas just after my separation from my first wife. Just look at the sadness in my daughters eyes and the brave front we're all putting on in the group shot around the tree.

Pathos.

And here, this is my visit to Chicago when I was so depressed I could hardly open my eyes as the flash went off. That wan smile is the only celebration I could muster. And this one. This is my second wife just before she left our marriage in order to "find" herself. Oh, and here are shots of my backpacking trips during the time I was trying to get over her.

As for Elizabeth; hers is more family-of-origin oriented. The shots of the places her father was stationed and so where the family was taken to live. And all the parties and the drinking and the bad times that followed.

Ah yes, the memories those old pictures evoked. Not just in the moment mind you. No, even our dreaming was effected. For many nights after our explorations dreams were provoked. And not pleasant dreams. Those big metaphorical types that wake one up at three.

The bottom of the stream bed of time had been stirred and up came the muck. Stuff we both thought was long buried. I had one that sent me into the whirl of thinking that if I just remarried my first wife and reconstructed the family and did it RIGHT! This time, then all would be well for everyone involved.

Yeah, would be nice if we could go back and change history. Then all the guilt would go away. I had started the going through process first and after the second day I told Elizabeth that I was now determined to throw out a bunch of stuff. "Oh don't do that. You might want some of it later." "No." I responded, "This is history I don't need a reminder of. I just want to dump it." "OK. I just hope you won't be sorry."

Two days later the heap of discards was growing around her ankles. "Ugh! You were right. I don't want to keep this stuff either. I just want to be done with it." Understand; we have both been through plenty of therapy over our "issues" regarding our past. But this kind of foraging into the archeology of our past was just bringing all the old feelings associated with that Thanksgiving dinner and this two year relationship gone sour and that miserable time in Michigan, and that...well; you get the picture.

It was time to get ruthless. So we did. We're down from four boxes filled with years of struggle to one with some milestones. It's not a matter of denial. It's a matter of knowing when enough is MUCH MORE then enough. And the present need no longer be contaminated with the past.

You know that old homily; "You can't go home again." To that add; "And don't bother." Or perhaps Shakespeare was more to the point; "Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone."

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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