Amazing Grace

By Editor | July 26, 2024 |

Sean of the South

Morning. I am driving two-lane highways in the backcountry of Missouri. I have been sharing the highway with mostly rusty pickups and Massey Ferguson farm implements. Also deer.

Missouri. The place where the western prairie meets the southern cotton patches. It’s a foreign land to me.

You’d never know I was born in Missouri. You’d never guess my father died in Missouri.

We lived in Kansas for a short time. A place where Missouri and Kansas were indistinguishable from one another. And that’s where our lives went to hell.

Daddy ended his earthly career here, by his own hand. I come back to town on a pilgrimage every few years.

It’s weird, because I don’t know anyone here. I don’t have any friends. People listen to me talk, they smile, and they immediately ask where my accent is from.

“Alamaba,” I reply.

Then they nod and edge away from me.

I spent the morning driving around Kansas and Missouri, the place where it all happened. The bad stuff. My father did not simply kill himself. On his last night alive, he tried to kill us too. My mom. My sister. Me.

But it wasn’t actually him doing the bad stuff. Not really. He lost his mind. And when someone loses their mind they lose their wholeself.

Before sunrise, I went to the creek where I was the day he died. I had been catching mudbugs that day. Playing. Splashing. When the shot rang out.

I haven’t been to the creek in over 30 years. Never wanted to go. But today I felt like going.

So, I parked on the shoulder of an old gravel road. I hiked through the suffocating woods to the spot. The same creek where my mother once ran barefoot, in her nightgown, as my father chased her with a pistol. I remember all the shouting and the wailing.

This morning, I looked into the treetops. All you could hear were crickets and cicadas. There were rope swings tangled in the upper limbs of the trees. Frayed with age. Swings I put there a lifetime ago.

And for the first time in my life, it doesn’t hurt. I’m middle aged now. And it finally doesn’t hurt. It aches, yes. But the pain doesn’t scare me anymore.

Used to, I was afraid of everything. Used to, I couldn’t breathe when I thought about this place. From ages 11 until 35 I had night terrors. I used to be obsessed with my own pain.

But now I’m not. Now I just remember the man he was before he lost himself.

Now I remember his laugh, his bushy red beard. And the pride he felt when his Little First Baseman caught the game-winning line drive. I remember singing “Amazing Grace” at his funeral.

A truck pulled over during my moment of reflection, and the driver got out of the dusty Chevy. He looked like a farmer. He was an older guy. He hiked through the brush, straight to me, and asked whether I was okay.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Are you lost?” the farmer asked, his truck still idling in the distance.

I had to smile.

“I once was,” I said. “But now I’m found.”