Forgetting is a two-way street

You must learn to take the good with the bad, my father used to say. I was reminded of that not long ago, in an oblique sort of way but with an altered perspective.

I was listening, on a talk show, to a man narrating the harrowing loss of a son to a cocaine addiction. Typically, as a parent he was among the last to know, not that he could be accused of non-vigilance; it's just that the son was expert at hiding the habit.

Typically, too, by the time the truth emerged it was too late. This, in a way, has become a universally tragic tale of parental loss. To the general public, there's nothing new or even shocking about it anymore, it's happened so many times. Yet, to each individual family it's a uniquely tragic occurrence that can set back and retard family circles forever.

A loss, after all, is never more personally felt than in the family within which it has occurred. Until that moment of 'departure' and prior to the aforementioned addiction are the earlier chapters in that young adult's life.

Times when, as this father said, each day was golden with the delight of 'Watching Tom grow'. There was the occasion when, at six, he fell off the swings and bruised a knee badly. 'Don't cry,' he consoled his mother who was tearing up as she washed and dressed the wound, 'It's only a little scratch. It doesn't even hurt. Ouch!'

Then a delighted laugh while mum jumped back with mild alarm at causing her infant further hurt. 'Fooled you!'

He was attached to his mother. In the early teen years, when it was considered déclassé to be seen with one's parents, he pushed his mum's trolley cart all around the supermarket, stopping occasionally to say hello to his peers, without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

"He was a totally balanced kid," said his father, after the event, using the classic past tense "was". Parents, who work so hard to keep it all together, sometimes look back after they are assailed by such tragedy and wonder, 'Where did we go wrong? When was I not looking? When was I not there? When exactly was he needing my help and I failed to notice?'

Self-flagellation

This is the self-flagellation parents are usually left with, post event. Not all the whipping, though, will ever be of use. A life spent is a life irreplaceable. Families have disintegrated trying to survive the fissures and strains caused by the passing of a young loved one.

Watching this particular father struggle and fail with his emotions to tell a 'composed' story of 'Life and Death with My Son' was a riveting experience simply because it was fascinating to watch how the bereaved man wove his way in and out of the 'gold' and 'black' phases of his son's existence, charting a life so promising that suddenly got locked in a downward spiral from which no timely key was able to alter its plunging spin towards the final crash.

For those of us watching, also with children of our own, knowing there's no quick fix solution, aware that the 'dangerous corner' could be just around the next bend, sometimes all one can do is hold the breath and, for the present, thank whatever elements of fate and luck are out there that we've been spared this man's agony. But somewhere in our mental preparation, one senses we all have our whips at the ready, too. And that links with the altered perspective I referred to earlier.

It's to do with the nature of forgetting. One suddenly discovers that forgetting is, indeed, a two-way street. There are some things you just don't want to forget. But there are others you'd like to perish from thought immediately. But it doesn't work that way. We are forever doomed to take the good with the bad.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.