My story relates a bonding tale between me and my father, a broken man for most of his adult life who was just coming out of the throes of alcoholism and trying to regain his dignity and re-establish a relationship with his family. Especially with me, his only son. “Secret Heart” tells the true story of when I was in the 10th grade (1972) and my dad asked me to accompany him on a drive down to Mississippi to pick up the corpse of some old-timer who was to be buried in our county cemetery (Indiana). My uncle ran the funeral parlor but he, too, was an alcoholic and on a bender, so it fell to my recently sober dad to make the drive to Mississippi in my uncle’s hearse. I had just gotten my license two months before. On the journey, my dad lets spill some war-time revelations (and other secrets) that contributed to his PTSD and alcoholism.
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