"Look. Forgiveness is easy. At some point, you just have to get over it. Maybe a time of twisting in the wind may be appropriate in some circumstances, but once someone dies, you can't ask for their forgiveness. I just cannot understand how anyone could let such a period of time pass between speaking."

I wrote that in a past rant, the one called "So That Was Christmas." I wrote it because my sister had been taken to the hospital on Christmas Eve and I started thinking about a rift in the family that existed back then. As an aside, that rift has been closed, I am happy to say. My sisters illness helped close the gap.

But let me say this: Forgiveness is NOT easy. I must have been on drugs when I ever thought it was. It takes time. But what happens when you do not have much time left? Let me be clear here. I am the one who cannot seem to forgive someone for what I perceive as wrongdoing on their part. In fact, it has been close to two months since I have laid eyes on this person. And this rift, within my own family I must add, is causing a rift between me and the rest of my family as well.

Let me get off on what may seem at first to be totally unrelated to this rant. You may know me well enough to know I am a fan of the daytime soap "General Hospital." On that soap, Jason Quartermaine was once thought of by his family as being something of a saint. And then he was in a car crash. In typical soap opera melodramatics, he lost part of his brain, the part that was supposed to know the difference between right and wrong, the part that was supposed to show emotion. His family began thinking of him as damaged goods. They began preparing him for life as something of a subhuman.

Not surprisingly, he lashed out. He rebelled and became a mobster, and a good one at that. But that's not the point. The correlation between him and me is that I felt my family has labeled me. My fate, I felt, had been determined by them. I resented that then, but there was not much I could do about it at the time. Financially, I needed them. I needed them to get around town as I did not have a car at the time. And, of course, I loved them.

But something happened a few months ago that would soon dramatically change my life. The one person whom I thought would never help me out of the hole I was in did just that. This person came along at a point in my life where I thought no one would and has helped me significantly, with a single signature on a bank withdrawal receipt.

The reaction from my family, specifically my father, was anything but positive. I was making the same mistakes I had made before is what he said. I had to give the money back, not to mention the new car I had already bought with it. Why? That is still a little hazy. Perhaps the reason is that it was my ex-wife who had given me the money, money she said she was giving to me because she felt she owed it to me after the twists and turns my life took as a result of our divorce.

Whatever the reason, I walked out of his house. I was determined that I would not walk back in until he made a show that he had over reacted. You know us men. All these silly resentments. In any event, that was two months ago. Since then, my sisters condition has worsened and my father has developed cancer. And still I can't get over the feelings of deep resentment and anger I feel toward them. Why? Am I an asshole? Well, yeah. But still...

Forgiveness is never easy. And usually the only thing that will ever lift it is the passage of time. Time is something the people in this soap opera has precious little of.

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