A Free Man's Faith

I do as I am compelled.  I feel it, like I haven't felt in some time.  During Iraq 1.0 I felt a belonging.  It was like a new born breathing fresh air for the very first time and knowing that life isn't a choice, but a right.  It often stifled me though...the uncertainty of reason.  It's a strange sensation to feel liberated by, and yet still a slave to, something that can't be seen.  I believe it was then that I felt faith for the first time.

But now, years later, the faith that set me free has blended into a life that's often been difficult to comprehend.  I know I am not meant to understand that which confounds us all.  So it's not the mystery but the purpose that I struggle with.  I meander and fumble for direction and every now and then I can track the light that leads me to a focal point worth cementing.  Most days I am satisfied with that guide. But on other days I stand on the banks and watch, wide eyed, as the flood rushes by.  I inch close and I long to feel the rumbling torrent's tremor reverberate deep in my soul.  One of these times I will fall in, I'm sure of it.  On that day, for all its goodness, the liberty I've found won't keep my head above water.  Only faith will keep air in my lungs then.  But if I drown I'll do so drenched in my right to live free.

-Jim Franks

Red Sands

You don't fool me.  I hear your thoughts and see through every step you take.  There, left behind in the red sands of ever distancing shores, are your foot prints.  They walk away heavy, with purpose and strength.  I am proud of you so it's OK.  Go there and know I will always be here in your corner.  I love you still, forever I believe.  We are connected and it feels right.  To what end though I no longer know.

-Jim Franks

Hero

The hardest man to find sometimes is the man you are meant to be.

-JGF

I have known paralyzing fear only once as a grown up. Years and years of dangerous situations behind the fence or inside the walls have never frightened me. Gunfire and thunderous car bombs that rattle your rib cage never shook me. I'm not a fool who is oblivious to danger or a junkie looking for an adrenaline rush. I have just never thought of my life, or the circle I function in, as something worth getting riled about. It came to me once though, fear, but wasn't anything that I could see. It wasn't in the sights and sounds of war, or the bloody slashing of convict living. It waited for me in the sterile white embrace of my father’s deathbed and it gripped and shook me like I've never known.

On the day I walked into his ICU hospital room I knew true fear for the first time as a grown man. I was ushered into the room by my step-mother. My grandma and aunt were there too, (his mother and sister.) It's been 10 years and I can still feel death's embrace on that room. As soon as I walked in I felt my bones begin to compact. I felt as if I was being crushed not just from the outside in, but from the inside in too...as if my imploding skeleton would be pulverized, leaving my hollow skin to fall and drape across his bed. My eyes were seared by his image and the ghostly reflection burnt onto the walls of my mind has never faded. He is living death. A zombie who's olive skin is brushed in a dull yellow hue. The body of a man that once existed in my child's memory, strong and handsome, now wanes. He is grotesquely swollen from the poison filling his abdomen. And yet his stature is frail and lithe, reminding me of a vulnerable, dying child. And his eyes are a glossy jet-black reminder of the septic coma in which he now resides. His once piercing, aqua blue lenses are now lifeless and void of color. My view into his consciousness is guarded by two black shiny marbles, the site of which I have never seen before. Their very existence has haunted me every day since.

"Speak to him," she said to me. My step-mother then spoke to him as if he would sit up and speak back. "Jimmy is here," she pleaded to him. And then to me she implored, "Talk to him, say something." But I could not. The more silent I was the more she insisted I speak. I have this memory of me looking back and forth between them with some words, any words, jammed in my throat but refusing to break free. It was so odd, so surreal, so unlike me to not have words to say. But for once in my life I couldn't speak. I was paralyzed with fear. My every thought a reflection of some far away child trying to be the man he was expected to be. But the only real man in the room was lying in front of me inert and disappearing from my reality. I was not only mute, but nonexistent as far as he was concerned. At that moment I was just the little boy of his dreams, forgotten and unimportant. I have never felt as inadequate and ashamed as I did on that day.

Twenty four hours later my brothers arrived and joined me. I tried to warn them before going into the hospital room that what waited was grim. (I have always wondered if my description then would match the way my memory recalls it now.) I think I expected them to be as choked up as I was upon seeing our dying father. My brothers; John, the lost one...left behind as the youngest son. And Joe, estranged and saddled with the weight of being the eldest. My universal assumptions have never served me well, and that day was no different…they were not afraid. It was me who needed the warning.  My grim reality was a reminder that I don’t always know what’s best. When the door opened Joe instantly separated himself from the son I always thought he was; angry at our father and defiant, forever the contradiction to expectations. Right before my eyes he morphed into the strong first born son of my dreams. Our father was dying and in need of comfort and my brother was all at once there to give it to him. A lifetime of conflict and pain was instantly washed away and my brother was simply his father’s son again. Joe confidently, and without hesitation, went to the bed side and took a dying man’s face into his hands with a love and compassion that I couldn’t remember ever seeing him posses before. And then he spoke to our father. Where my voice was frozen inside my chest, Joe's flowed out in a calm, tender, quiet stream of soothing and encouraging words. Joe took our father’s face into his hands and placed his mouth close to dad’s ear to ensure comprehension. Whether death could hear and understand I will never know. But at least Joe tried. He did what I could not muster the courage to even approach. As long as I live I won't ever forget that moment. The mix of joy, shame, pride, agony, and love that I felt ensures this moment lives forever in my heart and mind as a poignant and reoccurring nightmare.

But a hero arose from the ashes of that lurid dream. As a child I idolized my big brother. I admired and wanted to be him. I imagine now that he somehow had replaced our absent father when my immature mind was searching for role models. But as we grew older my esteem slowly turned to loathing. I could never reconcile the differences in our choices to be the men we grew into. I am so judgmental, and sometimes I believe I am as ignorant as a spoiled child. So, on this day my hero was reborn. A Phoenix championing our cause; three lost sons, scattered to the winds but coming together at their father’s deathbed. I was all at once proud of Joe again, and ashamed of myself for ever letting that adoration falter. I so admired his strength, and I wasn't afraid to be in the room anymore. His actions gave me courage. And although they weren't meant for me, I found solace in his whispered words to our dying father. I don't know if Joe realizes what he did for me that day. I have never spoken to him about it or told him how I felt. I guess I have a responsibility to him that I have shunned for all these years. He certainly deserves more from the brother he saved.

Years later I was in Iraq and feeling as alone and unsure as anytime I'd ever known. Joe sent me a letter, the words of which I have carried as a part of me every day since. As I read these words I felt his mouth close to my ear, his soothing voice comforting me from a world away...

"The hardest man to find sometimes is the man you are meant to be."

-Joseph Glenn Franks

-Jim Franks

My Emotional Bouquet

I had a chance to hang out with my brother Joe recently. We haven't really talked much in the last year or so.  It’s mostly because I haven't been around, duh. But he's been living in a vacuum for some time and hasn't been able to punch his way out of that dirt filled bag. Not that the air flowing over my life is all clean breathing. No, I'm not going to point a finger like that. But I'd say when it comes to gauging filth his meter has been pegging for quite some time. So we talked.

As always, his unique perspective caught me off guard. I don't know why it always surprises me when the words that spill from his mouth make absolute sense. It certainly must be because we are brothers. That basic fact makes up 100% of my confusion for his motives, and equally for my astonishment at his insight. For years I have made my bones believing we were totally different men, jabbing and dancing at our lives from different corners. But finally, after all this time, and quite like an Ali hay-maker, I was knocked-out by the simplicity of our similarities. We Are Blood; it not only courses though us, it derives at the same spring. How could I have missed that simple reality for all these years? Of course we think alike, love alike, and hurt alike. It's so obvious now...that I am a complete idiot.

Part of our conversation revolved around relationships. He's finally trying to break free of the one that's been killing him for years. And I, of course, am mired in the ones that torment me. He was very curious about how I maneuver about the complexities of bachelorhood and I could see him searching my face for answers and hope. After I described the loves of my life and how they confound me he made an amazing comment. He likened my love life to a bouquet of emotions and compared it starkly to his own singularly dead flower. He was actually in awe of the fact that I've been able to let so many emotions "blossom" over the past several years. He simply saw my feelings, good and bad, as blessings. The envy is his tone astonished me because I haven't perceived myself that way at all. What seemed like opportunities to him have only burned as trials to me. 

And he cried, for the first time in front of me, about something relating to our father. Dad's been dead almost 10 years now and Joe has never cried about it in front of me. I have never thought to wonder if he ever grieved in private because...well, I don't know why. Because I am a selfish son-of-a-bitch who can't ever see past the end of my own nose. Joe was so strong at the time of Dad's death. He came and was the rock every big brother/oldest son should be. (That's a story for another time.) And on this day, as I watched his face contort into a painful portrait of a son who lost his father, I realized that for all this time I had mistaken his strength as indifference. I was wrong and I felt shame for it, and relief, and most of all admiration.

I am exasperated. There's something here I have to resolve and I don't know what it is. Of course it's something to do with this family of mine and how it's all coming together at this particular time in my life. My father is present and I can hear his voice from the hereafter. I hear his tone echoed in my brothers words. His actions reverberate down the halls of that old house and my soul absorbs them when I walk there. I am confused by it but know I have to face him once and for all in order to find some peace. His sons deserve some peace.

-Jim Franks

Wuthering Heights

She stands before me a looming red stanchion. Her tether to my heart towers at heights I've not been able to reach. Though, if I might, I think about touching her and wonder if it will burn my hand. And will kissing her lips again turn mine to stone? I desperately need to know if when we make love for the first time will the pinpoint of light that's been my obsession explode into a million sparkling stars...falling in arcs and streaks of brilliant white. Or will I die up there in the wind, withering on the line that's tied us together for all this time.

-Jim Franks

Lonely Hearts

I killed myself last night. The part of me that has existed for others to see and admire, or loath and judge, or accept and love, or to know and then forget...is now dead. My digital self is no longer a distraction I want to manipulate, so I deactivated my Facebook account. I know, that's so not as impressive as I built it up to be!

I have been thinking about it for some time now and have been looking for a way to muster courage and rally around a decision to finally act. It shouldn't have been a decision that required any more effort than a mouse click. But it was surprisingly difficult to end that life. I remember when I joined Facebook and it doesn't seem like that long ago. I was in Iraq and I did it as a way to keep in touch with friends and family back home. But it's funny how that part of me spiraled into a whole new persona. It's a part of me that I've grown to hate. A face I feel like I put on for other people's enjoyment, even though I know deep down that it's because I wish I was as interesting in real life as I am in cyberspace. Sadly, I admit that I cannot be.

Do you know what it feels like to fall as a leaf does from a tree? Drifting with the wind, lazily flying to earth in a slipstream of time and circumstance? That's how I feel most days. It's a frightening thing...gravity. How does one rely on nothing but the ebb and flow of their own existence and be satisfied with the patch of ground they've randomly come to rest on? I don't know. But for some time now I've felt the pull and have known that I'm supposed to be doing something more than languishing in the fruits of my sometimes not-so-fervent labors. So I rise and fall in these buffeting winds. There are no coherent rhythms other than the soft beating of a lonely heart.

-Jim Franks

This Must Be The Place

Home, is where I want to be. I don't know where that is these days. I've been reduced to living a nomadic life, wandering and searching for the place I belong. Could it be a place in the heart, mine or yours, that will comfort me? I wish I knew.

The home of my youth is a temporary shelter from the crashing and clanging debris that's falling from the sky. I lay now under the same barefoot sun that once warmed my heart as a boy and chased away the cold reality of loneliness. It's a familiar envelopment that reminds me of my mothers embrace...warm yet unsure.

-Jim Franks