Faces.

I had always known that. There were two distinct faces that were revealed by him. One that all members of his immediate and extended family saw and the other that the non family connections saw. The former was mostly one of a selfish, often brutal autocrat who wanted things just his way or the other could take the highway, and the latter, a very charming and helpful go getter who could get things done.

The immediate family suffered but grouped together after early family commitments were met and learned to ignore him till fate intervened and brought him back into the immediate family. One member of the family went through an extended period of suffering again which included seeing the old man suffer indignity and shame, till finally death overtook the old man.

When people called to condole, the response was inevitably “rejoice, he is free and so am I”. But the other face kept making its appearance over and over again too with many calling to condole singing paeans for the departed. Difficult to accept but gracefully done so nevertheless. And that grace was the second face that the sufferer showed too.

Yes, the old man was my late father and the sufferer was me. The point is that to some extent or the other, we are all two faced.

Why couldn’t he have been this?

Okay, having ranted about that not very pleasant topic, let me lighten matters a bit with this famous quote.

“First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.”
~ George Burns

I hope you enjoyed reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where twelve of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Padmum. The eleven other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Anu, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, ocdwriter, Padmum, Paul, Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!