Déjà vu April 1, 2024

 

When my cousin said his kid was moving to Kingston I looked at him as if I couldn't believe the words.

He said Kingston has become a place where people are moving back to, and he wanted to know what it was like since I made regular trips to the north in the spring each year.

I told him the little I know since my trips were usually tied to Woodstock and part of a two-day event, but I didn't really know much about the town except its history and some of the places I liked.

But the whole conversation had a surreal feeling because somehow this was connected to the past since my uncle his uncle had died in 2012 just the head of some of the most painful moments of my life.

And to hear him talking about this place at this time struck me as extremely odd, surrealistic, synchronistic and a god-like coincidence I could not get out of my head.

This is our Easter gathering of the family something that I made a point of going to each year since my uncle's death 12 years ago in order to make sure that I keep in touch with the remaining family since now I am the elder of the family the “Uncle Danny “who was also the black sheep

My cousin and my other relatives liked talking about my days as a criminal as if this somehow gave me strange credibility when in fact I had long since stopped being that person.

The odd thing is the 12 years ago when my uncle finally passed away I felt the extreme loss as if he was the last tie to a generation that helped shape me and the last member of the clan who had specific memories although two of my cousins were just old enough to remember some of the things that I remember.

But this oddity this strange connection to Kingston this year seemed a little too farfetched even for my science fiction mentality and for some reason the thought stuck in my head the whole drive home why what was the logic what was God thinking on this holy of holy days

as back then I have no clue as to what fate is about why God keeps flavoring life with these odd moments in these are details

Nonetheless it is still haunting me because I never got over my uncle's death and in the aftermath of that death was some of the most painful moments of my life recounted and journals and poetry and yet not fully recovered from.

I had assumed that going to this event this year would help me reunite with the feelings from my growing up instead it only reinforced those moments after my uncle's death after his wake and his burial and the events that transpired.

Why was my cousin asking me about Kingston. What tie to fate did he have, what insight, what kind of things goes on in that strange mind of God on this day when there is no Mass but the waiting for him to be reborn.

All this is of course silly but it's still lingering inside of me this feeling of being lost and seeing things poking out of the fog of my life clues to something I will never resolve.

 

 2024 journal menu 


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dumb and dumber on Columbia U April 18, 2024

Journal 2024

To go or stop that is the question April 24, 2024