The parade that my Dad took me to see when I was a little boy was a parade of ducks that made its way around a tiny pond near the place at which we used to have Sunday breakfast. Faded, faint, and vague, the memory of those Sunday mornings is shrouded in the mist of time – and well over forty years have passed since those days – yet remnants of it remain. Whether from my mother’s retelling of how much I loved to see the cleaning supplies in the back kitchen of what used to be the Windsor Restaurant, or my own indelible mental imprint of Dad bringing me to see the ducks, just the two of us – it remains a vital memory.

It’s been three months since the day that my Dad died, and on this day I think back to those ducks, to that little parade, to the boy I used to be, and the father I had then… 

When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up
Would you be the savior of the broken
The beaten and the damned?”
He said, “Will you defeat them?
Your demons, and all the non-believers
The plans that they have made?
Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom
To lead you in the summer
To join the black parade”

Watching the ducks waddle from their wooden house to the water, I am entranced by their feathers, especially those on the ducklings, which look so much fluffier and softer. It must have been spring, lending the morning a haze that a summer sun had not quite started to burn away. Such a haze adds to the clouded aspect of the memory, cocooned in the gauze of weather and atmosphere and the love a boy felt for his father. To my side, Dad watched the parade of ducks, as gleefully enrapt as me. Catching the gleeful side of my Dad wasn’t always easy, but it was such a joy to behold that we all chased after it. 

Sometimes I get the feelin’
She’s watchin’ over me
And other times I feel like I should go
And through it all, the rise and fall
The bodies in the streets
And when you’re gone, we want you all to know

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone, believe me
Your memory will carry on

We’ll carry on
And in my heart, I can’t contain it
The anthem won’t explain it

Tracing the line from that little boy to the man that types this today is not easy. It is not even particularly  linear – there have been fits and stops and stalls along the way, restarts and rebirths and re-dos that make it impossible to easily track the journey of a life. Death seemed to be the ultimate halt to that journey, or so I used to think, but maybe life isn’t a line as much as it is a circle, or some infinite, undulating curve. My geometry skills were never stellar, especially when the graphing went off the page with an arrow. I needed some control to the chaos, some finite sense of completion, but that’s not how it works. 

On my last visit home, those ducks were still there at that little pond. Well, different ducks, but ducks nonetheless, still marching in their little parade. There is even a duck crossing sign near the road that runs dangerously nearby. If I didn’t know better, I might believe that those ducks never left. And in some way, aren’t they still there? If I were to bring my godson Jaxon to see them, his memory of them would be the same one I had, and forty years from now he would look back with the same experience. Maybe the ducks never truly leave. Maybe death doesn’t halt life. 

A world that sends you reelin’
From decimated dreams
Your misery and hate will kill us all
So paint it black and take it back
Let’s shout it loud and clear
Defiant to the end, we hear the call

To carry on, we’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone, believe me
Your memory will carry on

We’ll carry on
And though you’re broken and defeated
Your weary widow marches

On and on, we carry through the fears
Disappointed faces of your peers
Take a look at me, ’cause I could not care at all

Then there are days when I feel agitated and annoyed by everything, when the slightest inconvenience or ordeal takes on a magnified feeling of being absolutely unbearable. At those times I feel like one more setback or mishap will have me pick up and leave town without a trace, disappearing with nothing but cash and an untraceable burn phone. My social media accounts would dangle there untended, this blog would be stuck on its last programmed post, and my whole ridiculous online existence would slowly be buried by all the nonsense piling up on the internet. Part of me quite likes that idea of being buried that way by technology, slowly ticking down on some search engine ranking, gradually disappearing until all the links are broken, until the trail has gone completely cold. No one asks ‘whatever happened to…’ when they never knew you in the first place. 

Do or die, you’ll never make me, because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me, We want it all, we wanna play this part

I won’t explain or say I’m sorry, I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scars
Give a cheer for all the broken, Listen here, because it’s who we are

Just a man, I’m not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
Just a man, I’m not a hero
I don’t care

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone, believe me
Your memory will carry on

You’ll carry on
And though you’re broken and defeated
Your weary widow marches…

When the struggle bears down, and the world turns dark and cold – as it’s doing with the onslaught of proper fall – I seek out more than the making of a cup of tea to get me through it – and I cannot say that I’ve been very successful thus far. Some part of me knows that the mere questioning of this – the very acknowledgement of not knowing what to do or where to go or how to make sense of it – is the main key that will unlock wherever I’m supposed to be going. A larger part wants the answers yesterday, and finds frustration so great it brings me to tears. The smallest part, one that I hear in the quietest whispering voice, believes it is enough to simply carry on. 

Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part (we’ll carry on)
Do or die, you’ll never make me (we’ll carry on)
Because the world will never take my heart (we’ll carry on)
Go and try, you’ll never break me (we’ll carry on)
We want it all, we wanna play this part (we’ll carry on!)