Right of
Return
(January 27
2021)
this one
is for family past, present, future, earthside and otherwise
for the
threads of connection that interweave our memories and identities
into intricate,
undecipherable patternsto which in my human state
I cannot
help but attempt to ascribe meaning
The
decision was given to him. He decided to divorce the family. At this moment, Authority
told him that his family did not wish to have any further contact with him. On
the other side of the Wall, family was told that he wished to have no further
contact with them. Over the years, the telephone would ring from time to time.
The family would pick up the receiver, say “Hello?”, to a pregnant silence to
which none of us could appropriately respond.
Stilted and
categorical language is used to talk around and explain the issue. There is talk
of “bonding” of “acceptance” of “love”, as though these are static and intert
one-time actions, rather than evidence of a spectrum of behaviour that ebbs and
flows between individuals and across time and experience. Authority exerts an
unexpected force, rearranging aspects of our lives that are held in balance
only by virtue of remaining untested.
The silence
on the other end of the line exemplifies the perfection of the schism that
Authority set into place, to divide, destroy, isolate, unbridge and sever the threads
of connection that Authority denied had ever existed between us.
The silence
that surrounds my brother remained unbroken for many years, shrouded in shame,
confusion, fear and rage. Even now, speaking his name aloud shatters the
fragile peace that we have all learned to live with, to walk around and deliberately
not focus upon. Water under the bridge, so they say.
This year
is thirty-four years since we lived in the same home together. I covered up my
shock at his departure with feverish Year 12 exam preparation. To this day I am
unable to access any memory of family therapy, family meetings, that led up to his
leaving. It is conflated with the messy years and experiences of growing up
among a bunch of siblings who all had our own difficulties and things to deal
with.
Many of my
stories bear echoes of his departure – like the day I left home, and was
stopped from farewelling my smallest brother, thus placing what seemed for ages
like an unbreachable barrier between my right of return and my place as his
biggest sister.
Other
echoes live in the experiences and memories of other portions of my family: the
young man whose sudden and violent death fractured what had seemed so solid,
thus exposing those who remained, to a transformative questioning and healing process;
the brother who did return, and remains, with his own family, a treasured yet
lightly held member of the extended family; the many who have married in and
been adopted into the family, causing tensions and loosenings to which we all
have had to adapt; the sister who left to seek her fortune in other lands, and
who continues to fiercely defend her right to remain separate and yet connected;
the father who disappeared right into the Eastern Block, abandoning his
children to their step-father; the aunties who conspired against their sister
to love and nurture her children no matter the depths to which her life choices
had sent them; those whose allegiance to religiosity and matters of faith
either tie them closer to their family, or hold them further apart… there are
so many echoes.
It is hard
to grow up. The kinds of things that make it harder are the secrets and the
lies we tell ourselves. Unquestioned and unspoken ideas, formed before we can
even talk, become embedded in our identities. It takes time, work and
experience to unravel these and rewrite ourselves into the kind of beings we
consent to include in the vortex of our family. Growing up is a process that
never really ends but is at its most intense before the age of 20. Until
Authority intervenes, inclusion of the one in the throes of growing up is a given.
The gift of
inclusion entails rights, responsibilities, behaviours, communication, actions,
reciprocation, acceptance and a struggle to delineate and create one’s space
within the whole, dynamic fabric of family. Some of us do swim into the river
of memory with little turmoil and lots of entitlement. Some of us struggle to
regain our separateness, and flop about on the riverbank for a while, bereft
and breathless before finally plunging back into those turbulent, life-giving
waters of family. Some of us are too afraid to move, lest we disturb the
semblance of sense that comforts our need for stability. Some of us are born so
strong that it never occurs to us to worry about how our choices affect those
around us, and indeed, the rest of us move to make room.
What of
those who separate themselves and decide they do not wish to be part of our
family any longer? Is this a single, irrevocable choice? Do the rest of us get
to deal unwillingly with one other person’s choice no matter how that choice
affects us? Must all of us adhere to a painfully polite, collective forgetting,
and a forgoing of future contact?
The intense
growing up years are often fraught between children and parents. This is the
norm, no matter what Authority likes to pretend. Each of us battles the push-pull
of self. The burdens of our individual past experiences often obscure what
stands and does not stand in the way. As an interested bystander, I find myself
on the periphery, wanting desperately to soften the blows that rain down upon
every party, to smooth the tensions, to wave a restorative wand of justice and
peace and love. My inherited longing for the water to pass under the bridge and
wash away the grit pulls painfully at every fibre of my being.
I know from
my own experience as daughter, sister, niece, wife, aunt, mother, that
relationships do not remain static. Decisions are never final. There is always
room for manoeuvre, for growth, for new understanding. This knowledge does not
arrive at an opportune teachable moment. I work hard for this knowledge. The
work is often painful.
The
consequences of that deep pain belong to each of us. We need to own and
acknowledge our pain. The right of return is the right of forgiveness. Forgiveness
is but one facet of transformation and growth, a gift for which each of us
waits interminably, because only we can forgive ourselves.
Those who
return do so, for their own sake, not for ours. We can hold space for them that
is malleable, soft and welcoming, but that neither neglects nor forgets the
sharp and the bitter. The right of return neither ignores, nor erases the pain engendered
by departure. Upon return, a person can choose and form with intention, their
place within our family that has always been there, whether any of us we knew
it, or not.
I appeal to
my family – uphold the right of return. Tuck up the frayed ends, add a stitch
or two to keep the time, love one another and remain optimistic.
Maybe in
the meantime, our family can formulate some kind of rite of return, in hope for
the future.
