Inverted Blueprints

My pops died a few months ago. In a quiet and shameful place in my chest, I starting thinking about what I might write about him when he clocked out. For the past twenty years, he chipped away at the love and respect I had for him. I can’t tell if it was cowardice or courage which prevented me from telling him. Now that he’s gone, the air has been let out of that ballon; my fingers seem profoundly uninterested in dragging him. The back half of his life was unresolved strife. I do not forgive him, nor do I blame him. He occupies a bizarre purgatory of outrage and pity in my heart. We are not ready to summit that peak.

For the moment, I find myself occupied with the signposts he left behind. He left me with an inverted blueprint, whatever the opposite of bread crumbs are. He was a lighthouse whose light guided adrift ships away from his port. In the first half of his life, he taught me how to be: curious, relentless, and fearless. In the back nine, he taught me how not to be: isolated, contemptuous, and cold. 

While I’ve not absorbed the entirety of the how-not-to-be playbook, I’ve been doing my homework.