It has taken me a while to process that my search for him is over. I was looking for him through light, through scattered fragments that disintegrated as I touched them, and the found that the only indelible remains were factual and cold, that I had created the past I was searching for, and its reality was as ephemeral as a dream.
We are complex creatures, and there is no tracing (at least at this moment) of our genetic material back through generations, and what if there were? It would no more belong to my grandfather or his father or mother than anyone else, in the alphabet soup that is each of our particular recipe for being. Even that is mutable, and we can raise (or lower) ourselves depending on will, and possibly faith.
When I look at the people in my life whom I admire and love, I don't care in the least from what genetic material they hail; I care about the person and how each navigates the passages of his or her life; I care about the poetry, the vision, the woundability.
From this place where I stand I wave good-bye to my grandfather-- a wave of the innocent young person I was when he had many opportunities to love me, to show some affection, which he passed up. I have continued to try to capture that affection even from beyond the grave--it will not come. But there is much here to love--there is no more time to waste seeking to reconcile what I wish might have been with what actually was.
