Bird on the Wire

Abstract

This narrative is a work of memory and mourning. In the aftermath of my father’s sudden death in 1988, I had resigned myself to living without the closure of a healing conversation that could break through the cycle of repetition that had defined our relationship. Later, I realized that death ends a life not a relationship and through personal narrative I might be able to find a way to loosen the grip of the past and break free from my psychic inheritance. In this story, I use the moral imagination at the heart of narrative and storytelling to confront and deal with the contingencies of my past, redescribing the history of my relationship with my father in ways that seek fidelity with what actually took place and a chance to remake a self— myself —that can live not against the past but with it.