honey and sting

Does the truth set you free?

Yeah, but sometimes it kind of fucks you over for while, first.

Spent the afternoon reading my father's memoir of his family history, childhood in Hungary, and war-time (e.g. ghetto, forced labor, and concentration camp) experiences.

Suffice it to say:  harrowing.   (In case you are wondering WHY I did this, I know, I know.  In fact, I had procrastinated for ... well, years.  But today my mother needed to have information, dates and things, for a reparations claim.)

I did learn one interesting thing that solves an emotional mystery, though.   In Ashkenazi Jewish families, it's traditional to name a child for a deceased family member.  My father lost so many... his mother and sister Rose being the most obvious of those he loved and lost.  Yet neither my sister nor I are named for them (his mother was named Paula).  Instead I am named for his mother's mother, my great grandmother, Barbola, a Hungarian version of Barbara, whose Hebrew name was Dvorah.   This is my Hebrew name, though I was given its English equivalent as my legal name, rather than Barbara.  It always puzzled me that we weren't named for the ones he obviously cherished and missed the most.

In his memoir I learned today that his mother, Paula, had a baby girl who only lived for a few days.  She was named for Barbola.  

So I am named, really, for my father's baby sister. 

It makes... emotional sense.   And, along with some of the more horrifying details of the story of what he was made to live through, makes me feel a tenderness for my father, who could be, at times, a very difficult man to get along with or feel good about.   As does his tale (make emotional sense, that is), written up to a point, then stopped, mid-paragraph... there was only so much freedom, perhaps, that he could endure.

Does it bind me to this pain, to learn and review these histories?  I've spent great swathes of my life alternating between immersing myself in holocaust stories, and avoiding the whole subject, determined to claim an identity that has nothing to do with such immeasurable pain.  Was I fooling myself?

Is it possible to be fully cognizant of such things, AND be free of the impact of such grief?   i feel weighed down by it, today.  As if suffering is the only authentic vibration.  This is depression, no?

I suppose this is where a good meditation practice would come in handy.   To have a heart that is both broken, and entirely free (that's how the light gets in).   Breathing through each moment, all the darkness, all the light.

I pray for this.