“Tears oozed from his eyes, and when one of them fell onto his shoetop, he pitched forward
onto the grave, clutching the grass, remembering the diaper in his grip. Twenty-two years had
gone by, and Francis could now, in panoramic memory, see, hear, and feel every memory of the
day that he let his son slip from his grip…”
~William Kennedy, author, passage taken from the novel, Ironweed
These days, I’m spending a lot of time reading and re-reading William Kennedy’s book ‘Ironweed.’
Set in the waning days of the depression, the novel’s about a washed-up ballplayer named Francis Phelan (a onetime infielder for the Washington Senators) who deserted his family back in the 1910s when he accidentally killed his infant son by dropping him.
Bottom line, the story’s about ghosts–the kind that come back to visit when you least want them to. But more so, it’s about facing your shortcomings, your weaknesses, your fears, and your mortality all in the hopes of one day finding redemption.
The more I read this book, the more I have come to understand that the story line is a path that we are all going to walk. At the end of time, we are going to face our ghosts. It’s imminent. And we’ll do it alone.
God have mercy on us all.
April sundown on an old grain elevator, Clatonia, NE
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