When three beloved family members die suddenly in less than a year, and the waves of grief keep crashing on emotionally barren hearts, while the ravenous Covid reigns supreme across an upended planet, the wounds are deep and my scab over but actual healing it never happens.

Am I the only one who longs to be with kin, to gather and share sadness?  Did I miss a memo to forgo solace, to avoid interest in how everyone is holed up?  Maybe I’m captive in a dark fortress of self-disdain built by my ancestors’, a psychic prison, because once again, the familiar nonentity arises within, sporting a rusty shackle, a bygone, worthless old ma locked inside obscurity, her punishment deserved, a lifetime of solitary confinement, out of sight, out of mind, and dare I say, out of heart.

Or is my suffering a byproduct of centuries of unchecked
ancestral self-recrimination, manifested as genetic despair,
a second nature born again into each generation, a blame/shame gene, a gross cellular overload of fear-filled unforgiveness stamped onto the DNA (don’t never answer) when the olive branch is passed, as another hoped for connection, a longing for forgiveness is ****** to hell.

Certainly, clues are found in the Lahti-Riley clan of silent Finns and Irish drunks, who daily suffered remorse, regret, and never-ending regurgitation something essential is lacking like positive self-regard but ****, those Riley’s sure could put in a day’s work, men and women alike, slogged, hell, they worked their ***** off dirt poor farmers, woodsmen, maids, fixers of things broken, never lost a day, paid their way.  

It’s clear my sorely needed amends of wrongdoing never promised a happily ever after, no, my amends were and still are a fragile beginning, a hold out for hope, an appeal to begin anew, an attempt to clean up my side of the street, to own my wrongdoing while knowing I did what I knew how to do, however hear my painful confession, to be cast out, a nonentity, estranged, alone and forsaken, it seems like overkill.