Into This River I Drown

by T.J. Klune

The measure of a man, she said finally, is not the words that mark his end, but everything he’s done since his beginning.

“There is a point to grief,” she whispers fiercely. “But there is also a point to opening your eyes and living.”

It’s almost comforting to know even my father had fears, that he wasn’t perfect. He might have been the tallest, he might have been the fastest, and he might have been the greatest man alive, but he was still a man.

I covered my face with my hands as I cried. “He told me memories are like ghosts, that they will haunt you if you let them. He said it’s okay to be haunted for a time, because it’s the only way a person can grieve properly. ‘But you can’t let yourself drown in them, Abe,’ he said. ‘There is going to come a time when ghosts are all you’re going to know, and it may be too difficult to find your way back.’”

‘If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole world would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.’ It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

I float along the river because I’m bound to its goddamn surface, and these stones fill my pockets, and it’s into this fucking river I drown.