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My grandfather died four years before I was born. They say I am he. My family, especially my mother, sees this strange reincarnation. I never considered myself to be anyone but myself. Despite their declarations, they are very reticent as to exactly why we are the same. I think this is born of the idea that no one wants to speak ill of the dead. It was a reason for concern for my family when I turned twenty-one. He was an alcoholic. It killed him. For years, that fact is all I knew about him. In a way, it became his identity for me. It wasn�t a condition or an illness or even an evil; it was not an outside influence. It was himself: the alcoholic. My mother was very hesitant to hand me his handwritten memoirs. Her resistance fueled my expectation. Is she really afraid of my judgment, or is she more afraid of what I�ll see, what I�ll know about myself? I had only seen photographs [an imposing man who never smiled] to go with the fragmentary memories that were related to me. A torn photograph, pieces missing. His memoirs are entitled �Wire Man�s War.� The manuscript is sixteen handwritten pages (plus notes) on yellow legal paper. I had expected to find the secret, to find what it was that my mother refused to say. The memoirs were written in 1978, retrospectively about 1943, when he was drafted into the army. He detailed his experiences at nineteen years old, his life at basic training. There was little mention of emotional ties, mostly a narrative about wrong shirt sizes and stringing telephone wires. I am still left without answers. |
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