What can we bear on our own?

I'm in the parking lot of the hospital, staring up at the room where my Dad left his body behind. It's become a sort of ritual ever since that week spent sleeping in my car for that week two Aprils ago. From that time onward, I've been drawn to it, somewhat out of guilt I suppose, he was in the hospital for nearly a month, I couldn't visit, and I barely called him. During that time, while I was avoiding the reality of losing him, my uncle stayed out there every night for nearly a month, other members of my family joined, I was the last one to join. I know that my being there wouldn't have changed anything, but I feel this need now to be placed in remembrance, as though I haven't grieved enough. So I'm here, silently staring, standing in the snow and shivering, waiting for the moment when my guilt will let me get back in the car and warm up. The last conversation I had with him was a day or two before he was placed in an induced coma, he asked me why I hadn't been calling, I didn't have an answer. I deserve to be haunted by this, just the thought that he might have felt abandoned by his own son right up until the time of his death, his son who he gave everything for, who he loved unconditionally and with fierce intensity, his son who he taught about music and how to love people. His son never called.

That guilt will sit inside of me and rot until the day I die.

So now, being in the presence of this building, trying to serve a penance for my neglect and selfishness, my thoughts turn to God. I think of my creator, and the sacrifice that Jesus made for the salvation of mankind. How he bore my sin as well as the sins of everyone else who was, is, and will be. How do I deserve that? No amount of standing in the cold or beating myself up will ever bring me to salvation from the guilt of my sin. God did it for me. I think this, and I know it, I believe it and try my best to act accordingly, but in moments like this, when the snow is piling up around my feet, and my hands begin to numb against the cold, I can only see the overbearing darkness of my foolishness and I stand smack in the middle of the moment, feeling entirely deserving of whatever suffering I might endure for the next few minutes. Somehow I am not dead, the evidence is in my face, and the blood rushing to my hands to warm them.

Why do I do this? How can I accept forgiveness if I feel I don't deserve it? What kind of God could possibly feel love for me? And I start walking, down by the waterfront just across from the hospital, a park I used to play at as a child which at this particular moment seems almost purposefully void of familiar warmth. I know that I'm torturing myself, I know I have no right to judge my actions. What good does it do to walk down into these pits of darkness when I know that they go on forever? What good comes from exploring the intricacies of shame and guilt when they warp and wrap around like endless mazes? Who am I to suffer so greatly at the hands of my past, who am I to bear this minor burden with such misery and dismay, knowing full well that it is just a reality, and a part of who I am. It is just one of many examples of my inability to save myself from the nature of humanity, which is to fail at almost every opportunity for success, especially when alone.

I do not need to be poisoned by this any more, I have the ability and freedom to accept it and move on. I don't need to keep coming back here to worship my mistakes and live them out over and over again. I am not perfect, nor was I ever meant to be. But I am also not here to die to sin, to test the limits of what a person can bear on their own; that is not my responsibility.

I'll carry on, I'll be sad, I'll remember with a realistic understanding of the truth, but I won't be back here.