The Words That Formed Me

The silly songs assist because they arrive beneath that standard. They do not demand courage, insight or transformation; they ask for almost nothing beyond recognition. A few notes can confirm that the station remains connected to its library, that memory is still moving and that some inner part of me has not surrendered its capacity for association. The broadcast may be ridiculous, but it is still a broadcast.

I also hope my children will see, not a man attempting to replace their childhood through the next generation, but a father still capable of learning. Grandfatherhood should not become an improved performance staged in front of adult children as evidence that I finally understood the part. It should include them rather than bypass them.

Writing has become the place where some of those unsaid words can exist without requiring a reply from people who are no longer capable of giving one. It does not recreate the conversation, and it does not place my parents in the chair opposite so that I can manufacture the apology memory failed to provide. It allows the child’s evidence to enter the record after years in which only the adult version was admissible. That is not reconciliation, but neither is it silence.

Yet unfinished does not necessarily mean failed. A life may remain incomplete because life itself is not designed to provide the tidy conclusion we demand from a story. There will always be conversations not held, places not visited, friendships not deepened and ideas not given enough time to become books. The existence of what remains does not erase what has been done. It simply prevents gratitude from becoming complacency.

The concept of becoming local still amuses me. I can contribute, serve, know the roads, recognise faces and accumulate stories, yet some longer-established resident may still introduce me as the accountant fellow who moved up from Sydney. That does not need to be an insult. It may simply be the community’s way of acknowledging that belonging develops through repetition rather than announcement.

I cannot promise that understanding this will make me fluent. Habits formed in childhood and rewarded across decades do not disappear because they have finally been described accurately. I can, however, stop pretending that silence is strength, that usefulness is a complete vocabulary or that private rage is harmless because the public never sees it. Robyn deserved the song on our wedding day, but she also deserved all the unremarkable sentences that should have followed it.

Writing has become the new broadcast, although it operates on a slower frequency. I send out stories about childhood, work, depression, family, foolishness, intelligence, ordinary courage and the ways people reduce themselves to survive the rooms they enter. Some are read immediately, some may wait years and some may remain silent objects in a world already overflowing with words. I cannot control the return.

This is where this chapter belongs after the preceding one. That chapter asks whether I can begin again without pretending the working years did not matter, while this one asks what happens once the page has turned and the missing answers remain missing. Retirement does not automatically return the parts of a person surrendered to work, conformity or survival. It may simply remove the noise that prevented him hearing how long they have been absent. The rain sounds louder when there is no office door to close against it.

The Black Dog does not appreciate that kind of patience because its strongest arguments depend upon urgency. It says the feeling must be resolved now, the failure is complete now and the burden has already become permanent. Time threatens that conclusion by allowing circumstances, chemistry, conversation, sleep, treatment or simple human interruption to alter the evidence. Even a small change exposes the claim of permanence as an exaggeration, and depression dislikes having its language audited. The next day may not defeat it, but the next day can force it to prepare another argument. Sometimes making the darkness repeat itself is the beginning of hearing where the reasoning fails.

That does not require me to accept the institution, only to respect the need from which it may have grown. Faith can be an act of courage when it admits uncertainty, while religion can become an act of control when it disguises interpretation as command. Scepticism can protect thought, but it can also become a shield against wonder, dependence and the possibility that another person has found meaning in a place I cannot enter. None of us is improved by replacing one rigid certainty with another.

That may be more difficult than it sounds because solving things has long been part of my identity. Listening can feel inadequate when no decision has been made, no strategy adopted and no action item allocated to a responsible officer. Yet some people do not need to be fixed by the person in front of them. They need evidence that somebody has noticed there is more than the image being presented.

I also have to allow that same possibility for myself. The accountant, mentor, writer, husband, father and volunteer need not be dismantled merely to prove that another Jeff exists. They can remain genuine expressions of the person while surrendering their claim to be the complete explanation. The task is not to extinguish the public image, but to stop using its brightness to hide whatever is standing behind it.