On his deathbed he expressed tormented regrets, spoke for the first time of things he’d found impossible to talk about, tried to make his peace.  “I must have been insane to believe I was doing something good when I machine gunned those people into that ditch.  I pray that God will forgive me, for that one, at least,” he said.

“You did the best you could,” his son said, “God will understand.”  He gave the old man some water.  “Besides, since when do you believe in God?”  

“It’s not God so much I believe in now, but justice.  It seems impossible that there is no reckoning for the bad things we do here.”

“It is our pain that makes us do the bad things we do here,” said the son.  

“Pain also brings forth the best of some people,” the dying man observed sadly.  

The son nodded, heard the rest of the old man’s unspeakable confession.  He listened with special attention to the detailed apology for the years of truly regrettable cruelty to his own family.  Knowing that death was about the dying man’s needs and not his own, he mildly told him he would have done better if he could, closed the old man’s eyes after the dying man breathed his last.

At the time he thought of this belated conversation as a blessing to both of them.  Years later he realized the blessing had probably been much greater for the old man, being forgiven and let off the hook as he opened up, for the first and last time, to express his regrets for the pain he’d caused.  He’d given the man an easier death.  “Why was I so mild, letting the old killer off the hook?” he sometimes wondered.

Eventually the son looked at patterns in his own life, questioning his largely unnoticed attempts to be mild above all else.   Mildness is easily mistaken for passivity, which is widely hated in a competitive society where people are judged largely on their ambition and accomplishments in the marketplace.  He wondered if he’d been unconsciously attracted to people like his father, collected as his friends a group of unrepentant sadists who would possibly be filled with regret on their deathbeds, but not a moment sooner.   Had he surrounded himself with smiling but angry friends who were the least equipped of anyone to understand his desire to be mild, the first to point out what a pussy he was when he got in a tight spot and resisted lashing out, as any self-respecting person would?

“It’s an oversimplification to call us sadists,” said the dead man from his grave.  “Do you think we derive pleasure from defending ourselves and our righteousness at all costs?  It’s a reflex to protect ourselves, first and foremost.  It’s not about sadistically taking it out on our victims, for our pleasure.  We feel they would have done it to us if we didn’t strike first, so we hit them hard to keep them off balance.  It’s paranoia, maybe, but not necessarily sadism.  The entire pleasure, if any, is in not being victimized again.  Plus, we are completely overwhelmed by our own demons, it’s not about others, it’s about us.”  

The son was sick of hearing the dead man’s opinions, but they had to be considered nonetheless.  “On the Asperger’s spectrum is probably a better way to think of some of them.  A chap who calls to report on and get solace about his problems but seldom inquires about his friend’s troubles.  ‘Ah, but your troubles are well known!’ he’ll exclaim, full of bonhomie, then back to his recitation, the reason he called.”  

“I have to talk to you, at least you listen,” one tells him, “nobody else lets me talk. Do you have any idea how painful it is not be be listened to?”  

“I never worry about you,” says another, truthfully, but oddly nonetheless.  

There was one with a great sense of humor, an unappreciated person of great talent with an even greater need to be right, who decided the best course, when he was trying to be funny, was to look at him with a slightly disgusted expression and slowly shake her head.  Why laugh at his attempts to make her feel better when it was so much easier, and so much more satisfying, to make him feel like an asshole?  Nobody ever gave her anything.

He was able, without rancor, to shed the most destructive of these old friends when the time came to cut the ties.  No need to curse or express disappointment, it was a rational act of delayed self-preservation.  If a friend acts consistently hurtfully, is unrepentant and ignores requests not to behave that way, it is time to take your leave.   Wish them well and head for the door. Few will wrap their arms around your legs as you go, experience teaches that their pride always prevents this.

As a result of being more selective in his friendships, there were days when the only voices he heard were his own, often asking himself out loud who the hell he was talking to, and the dead father’s voice.  It was a heck of way to take a vacation, but better than fighting, he reasoned.

He could see the old man as a strong young man, setting up his machine gun, hear him cursing the people he was about to shoot, and going about his business feeling quite justified.  “These people were scum, they’d have done the same to me in a second, if they could have,” he said, acrid smoke hanging in the air, his accomplices shoveling soil into the ditch.