The Reconstructed

I found a picture. Well, truth be told I found lots of pictures. Well, truth be told I found lots of everything. I spent the summer cleaning and going through Dad’s house. There was and is so much. So much from my grandma, so much from him, so much from me. There was so much, that it felt at times impossible to tell whether I got a lot done or if I was at all productive.

I took a break, got lost going through stuff deep into the night, I think hoping for something cathartic, hoping it would bide my time to plan for what’s next, to keep teaching, to stay in Charleston, to gain clarity and perspective. I don’t think I did that. I don’t know what I did.

I did find a picture. I think I’m 2 or 3. My back is turned to a wrestling ring with ‘The Million Dollar Man’ Ted Dibiase with his Million Dollar Belt, Jake ‘the Snake’ Roberts, ‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude and some random thumb wrestler guy I can’t identify and I look happy. And I look like I was almost going to get a mullet, clinging to a container of wooden blocks. I am a cute child, I would hug myself because I look happy and friendly and like I could give a great hug. It’s amazing how many things in that picture I recognize, what might be more amazing is how many of the things pictured from 1990 of 1991, I touched this summer, things we kept. the Santa with the bell, the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer stuffed animal, the records (now sold), the shelving the records were on, the Planet of the Apes tin, the Star Trek books, the books by my butt, one of which was a children’s Bible. Our family wasn’t particularly religious then.

I think I still have all 4 wrestlers, I don’t have the Million dollar belt (otherwise I’d be rich!) and I don’t have the ring. I think the ring broke from too much use early on and was replaced by a blue ring which I do still have which almost everything on it is broken from too much use.

What’s more is I still have the wrestling except it’s not a game where I am playing with action figures, making noise and calling the action for fun, it’s a bit more painful, much less enjoyable, and feels like there is a lot more at stake than a 3 year old could believe or imagine.

The picture is clearly from Christmas as I am decked out in red. My dad always made Christmas amazing. My dad also never ceased to buy me wrestling related things. In college I purged a lot of my collection which you would never know because it’s still too much, but my whole room growing up was wrestling. I have a DVD he bought me 2 years ago or maybe a little more that I haven’t watched, mostly because I could stream it if I wanted to and because it is from the era in which I stopped watching wrestling.

My dad was the best at preserving the things he liked best. I think why he loved getting me wrestling items and going to my wrestling events was he knew how much I loved it. Wrestling is my first memory, seeing it on TV, held in my dads arms. This memory could be all mythology, it might not be how it really went down, but it is how my mind remembers it. And the memory is good and helpful because it is one in which I felt safe and happy and cared for while sharing something I loved and grew to love with my dad who I loved and wish was still here to love.

And that is a large part of the wrestling. There is no loss like losing a parent. That’s not to say it is the worst loss or there aren’t things more traumatic (I imagine the loss of a spouse to be more difficult in an entirely different way) But when I write that there is no loss like it, I mean it is unique. I don’t know how it is for other people. I have watched the Anderson Cooper/Stephen Colbert interview, where they discuss the loss of their fathers countless times, but it feels like part of you is gone, a part of you that felt safe and innocent and forgiven and loved. I felt similar when I lost my grandmother whom I was very close to, who also took me to a wrestling event on a boardwalk in Wildwood, of which I still have the ticket stub too, back in the year 2000. We sat front row, a wrestler yelled at her, she yelled at them. I thought she was super cool.

But with dad, it all feels too soon, the pain too much, like there were things I wanted to show him and tell him and ask him. I wish he was well enough to still be playing softball.

I talk to God about this. In our brief conversations, I let him know I am disappointed. I let him know about a lot of the recent disappointments, and I get angry. Even in trying to take responsibility for my own missteps it feels littered with new disappointments and like somehow some of all of it could have been easily prevented.

When you wrestle, it’s this odd feeling of immense strain towards victory or defeat. My senior year of high school I remember in my first few matches of the year, if they went all three periods and I won, I threw up afterwards; if I lost, I didn’t throw up. What joy! There was actually some relief in defeat but also winning was worth the exertion leading to throwing up. But when you wrestle and exert all and fight til the end and lose, and it is close, if you are like me, you in your head replay the match over and over.

I wrestled my sophomore year in a junior varsity wrestling tournament and in the semi finals I was beating Bill Bickel 15-1, I was one point away from a technical fall. I threw a leg and tried to turn him to his back. I got caught then stacked, then pinned, then faced Billy boy two more times in my high school career and lost to him both times after 3 periods by decision.

I looked him up, he’s an accountant in Charlotte, like my brother he has been an accountant in some capacity since he graduated college, probably contented in his stable career not thinking a lick about beating me 3 times in wrestling contests in high school or writing about how stuck he feels.

Maybe it’s all part of the wrestle, the desire to write again, the desire to reclaim relationship with God the Father, to rest and have a soul heal from too many things at once. Despite the fact that God owes me nothing, I feel some good must come in some capacity for the wrestle to be worth it.