“Hitlerious, as you used to say, rage,” yawned the skeleton.  

What I mean is that in the cool dawn of a day long after the fact, looking at the rage and the actions it produced, you can see how ridiculous it was.  

“It sure isn’t ridiculous at the time, though,” said the skeleton.  

“Look, these talks we’re having now, in your head, as it were, they really make me ashamed of myself.  When I think of how I should have been doing this with my kids all along.”  

We’ve been over this, and, as I told you when you were whipping yourself about it on your death bed, to the extent that a man whose strength is almost gone can whip himself…

“It was more like tickling myself, but I take your point,” he said.

…I told you you’d done the best you can.  It doesn’t relieve you of responsibility for the damage you did, of course, but you can understand, with the face whipping you were forced to endure as an infant and all the rest, why you would become an adult filled, in equal parts, with idealism and rage.  

Your man George Grosz observed “in order to understand how a man can brutalize his fellow men it is first necessary to study the humiliation he underwent.”

“Insightful quote,” said the skeleton.

“Well, look, as far as your sister’s wedding, I think it’s safe to say now that, if we hadn’t been so furious at you, we wouldn’t have given Frank such a big tip after the wedding.  We also wouldn’t have apologized to him and your mother wouldn’t have pretended to laugh at his rather lame and witless attempt at a joke.  I realize now we might have been a little cooler toward him, if we hadn’t been blinded by anger at you.  We can agree that he acted unprofessionally, at the very least, in assaulting the son of the people who were paying him a generous fee for some salads and those virtually uncooked birds.  No matter what that provocative bastard had called him.”  

Well, it’s good to hear that, even if it comes more than a decade after your death. It also proves a larger point, I think.  People change.  I’m not mad about it any more.  Your betrayal at the wedding opened my eyes afterwards, and helped me realize how disabling the rage that had been instilled in me was.  I can tell the story now without a flicker of anger at my graceless dance partner Frank.  He was clearly a guy with his own issues.  I wish that punch I threw had knocked him down,  true, but at the same time, I can easily see it was for the best, the way it all worked out.  

Sekhnet was shocked, when I read her the exciting conclusion to How I Ruined My Sister’s Wedding yesterday, at how mean I was to you and mom in your living room that rainy night after the wedding.  She compared my behavior to her insane brother’s, and he had restraining orders against him taken out by his own mother and was living, when last heard of, on disability payments for his psychosis.  

“You were really bad!” she said aghast, and urged me to add some exculpatory sentences to introduce why I had acted so badly to my parents.  I added them, so now the reader can have a better context for why I assaulted my father and unconscionably told my mother to suck my dick.  

“Well, in your defense, it did snap her out of that fugue she had worked herself into– she literally couldn’t stop herself.  Your remark, horrible as it is to say to your mother, really did act like a slap to a hysterical person’s face.  The way it is in the movie, the person freaking out, freaking out, slap!  ‘Thanks, I needed that.’

“And, as for assaults, there could hardly have been a more restrained, less traumatic one, outside of the disrespect, than whipping one finger smartly across an enraged bully’s nose.  I know I was a bully to you and your sister, and your mother at times, and that’s probably the thing I am most ashamed of.  Instead of being an advocate and protecting you guys, and teaching you to stand up for yourselves, I was regularly uncorking my colon and relieving myself upon you.”  The skeleton waited uncomfortably as I took my time, like an Elmore Leonard character.  

“Funny you bring up Elmore Leonard, one of my favorite writers.  I didn’t read fiction, but I read every book Leonard ever wrote.  I introduced you to him and you also loved him.  I’d pass on my copy of the latest to you, and you’d hand me your library copy, with two weeks left on it, and between us we exchanged every book he wrote in those years.   Sam Cooke is your favorite singer, to this day.  Our politics and analysis of human history are quite similar.   Think of how much we actually had in common, but I was too fucked up to notice.”  

Most people, I notice, are too fucked up to notice the most important things in life, dad.  There’s no point being depressed about it once you’re dead.  

“Oh, I’m not depressed about it.  I have no consciousness at all now that I’m dead, actually.  Once you die, in fact, the brief spark that was Irv will wink out with your consciousness.  Once you and your sister both die, of course.  The grandchildren will remember me, but only vaguely.  They were kids when I died.  You know, you and your sister were very lucky to have grandma and pop until you were in your twenties.  Grandparents get a second chance to be good parents and it’s a much easier gig.  Like being an uncle versus being a father, much easier.  Responsibility is what crushes most people,” said the skeleton.

Tis, indeed.