25 November, 2005

and the book says we may be through with the past...

...but the past ain't through with us.

It is barely 8am, and this is already a head-fuck of a day. I opened up my email, as I do every day. There was an email from Mr Ryan Mac. He was apologising and saying that he will be coming back to Melbourne soon, and that he was going to work things out with his life. He wants us to catch up and talk. (He has also left a message here on my blog; it is obviously very important to him to get in touch with me.)

Just as I finished reading Ryan's email - and was sitting staring at the screen a little dumbfounded - Mr Jason, with whom patermunkey and I both work, came up and handed me an envelope. "I just found this on the floor of my workshop," he said. It was a small mauve-coloured envelope, stamped and addressed in the unmistakable handwriting of matermunkey. It was a letter of thanks sent to our workmates, after they sent her flowers one of the times she was in hospital. It's difficult to describe what it feels like, staring at this letter (it's still sitting just next to the keyboard, as I type) from beyond the grave. I showed it to patermunkey, and saw the uncontrollable urgency with which he opened and read it when I handed it to him - exactly the same way I had. It is a piece of paper, a collection of words. But it is also a piece of her - my mother, his wife. She is everywhere, of course, in our lives. But there was something about the unexpectedness of this discovery, something about the selfless warmth and genuine gratitude of this small thank-you note. I can't tell you what that something is, but it was written on the face of Mr Jason when he gave the note to me, and it lived and breathed when patermunkey and I held it and read it.

So Now Then

I think I will meet with Ryan, if indeed he returns to Melbourne. I think it would be good to have the closure of talking to him. I will probably cry. I may well scream. I may realise I am not actually able to be in his presence ever again. But I think I need that process, however difficult it is. And even though I don't owe him anything, I want to give him the chance to explain his journey through the past few months. Maybe I can even forgive him, polish the silver-lining and let all of this go once and for all.



How much can you forgive? Tough part of the job.
Tough part of walking down the street
.

~~~~~~~

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