On the last Friday, as Donna and I fought through the senseless fender benders on the highway coming home from Longleaf, the hospital in Wilson, in the pouring rain, I had this reoccurring, overwhelming, trenchant litany, echoing through my head,…my father died today,…my father died today,…my father died today,…my father… has died… today. This man…this man who died this day, was the supposed patriarch of my life, the custodial male, the man who through genetics’ affected how I physically appeared to the world and through parental influence affected my social and emotional interactions with the world. But this statement, swirling through my mind, was not legitimate…not my truth. I felt, that this man who had died today, was merely a man, a biological contributor, and not really my father at all. This man who died today was not like our grandfather who taught me morality and respect…on how to find the joys of life within the living moments. Nor was he the man who filled the father role within our family like our stepfather, the man who was there for our family, every day…a real dad who taught us honesty and lovingly found humor in the fact that mechanical objects break only when I touch them. My only certainty on this day, was that this man who had died…was the man who married my mother and created me, and my siblings. That this was the father figure who had grappled with his own insecurity and psychological issues in life, and while under that pressure, that this was a man who punished others for his pain. This man, who died today, was the man who taught me fear, uncertainty, and anger. A hatred I have lived with, struggled with…a nurtured anger, colored by constant frustration which I expressed openly. Bitter causing animosity I turned inward to create insecurities that twisted themselves into a blistering self loathing within an uninspiring sense of self worth.
As we rode down that highway I was able to devise and accept that maybe today, since those daily living reminders of those insecurities of the past, were gone, that hopefully along with them, would go the pain of living with hurtful feelings. Peace, oh how I yearned for the sensation of calm, liberation, quiet…but on that ride home, I found myself grappling with feelings of sorrow and remorse. That time of death had arrived…and I was not sure how to resolve the old injuries with the sadness of losing someone I had come to care for. A someone with whom I had made a concerted effort…an effort to see beyond the ugliness of the past…and through to the potential, to the good, to the right now. I tried not to dwell on my father’s misdirected life, time squandered, misread…angry…but my old wounds still hurt, and the grief caused by those incidents, renewed every time I thought about them.
I rode home in that car, through the eddies of wind and rain, revolving through feelings of anger, then sorrow, then relief. When quietly, and without fanfare, for the second time in my life, a feeling of reconciliation, harmony, a calming peace…seeped into my soul. I could hear my father laughing, whistling, and I began to see clearly…that the man, who had passed away today, was not the man from my childhood…but the man who had told his adult daughter that he was sorry for all the pain he had caused…and he had meant it. As my mind wandered and wallowed, I remembered that this was still the man, with whom we had had to handle and settle circumstantial fall-outs when his compulsive behaviors over-ruled his better sense. And that this was still the man, who had continued to grapple with his own cognitive and mental deficiencies…that life for this man, had been a continued scuffle, a parley with a lifelong illness...a man with his malady which had contributed greatly to the personal mismanagement of his life.
I remembered and I settled into certainty, that this was also the man, who finally, though late in our lives, honestly and desperately, felt regret…and wanted to be let back into our daily moments. Our father had said he was sorry, he had asked for forgiveness…and that was all he knew how to do.
It seems, whether, right or wrong, that even in abusive situations, all humans, have this pervasive innate attachment to parents…so we had all looked for a way to help. All of us in our own way. We tried to help our father survive through his every-day struggles. We tried to understand our father’s limitations and shortcomings. We all wrestled with trying to reconcile feelings of detachment, memories of resentment…and anguish…all with what was to be the decent course to take. Though I had actively forgiven my biological father years ago, to be able to eek forward in my life, so that I might also forgive myself for my own shortcomings...on this day, since path marks never totally fade, I found myself searching for a way to find the strength, from somewhere, to once and for all, accept the truth. The truth that my father was never the man I needed him to be. My father… was never the man… I needed him to be. I needed to understand that on this day, I had to forgive him…not just for the pain we were made to endure as children, but for the truth that he had not been a respectable father. I needed to stop resenting the fact that our father had not been a good dad. I needed to accept and understand that somewhere in his soul; he could only love us with the best of his imperfect abilities.
I had heard the stories, my whole life, of my father’s biggest fear, and that fear was that he would die a lonely, broken old man. And I had decided to not let that happen. I’m not quite sure what fed the determination…maybe I had to prove that I had been able to reasonably break the injurious chain of maltreat. Maybe because, no matter what any human being has done in this life, since we all start off as someone’s innocent child, no person in this world should suffer and die alone. Maybe I wanted to do this for him because our father had apologized, with all he was capable of, and I didn’t want those old hurtful feelings to rule my life any longer. Or damage anyone else’s. Maybe because in this life, in the end…it matters… what we do every single moment of every single day.
Maybe because it was just the decent thing to do.
Maybe because it was just the decent thing to do.
Finally I realized on that long ride home that I wanted to thank my father, for making the effort these past few years to share his pangs of guilt, for speaking aloud his words of regret, and for saying, I love you,
… thank you, daddy.
And I want to thank my family…Jeff, Tricia, Emily, and Savannah, for hauling our father and his things back to Apex, and opening your home and hearts to him, and thank you Donna, for being by my side, and with Nate, Stella and the kids, and Jon, Amanda and Joey, for making a cheery, caring home for him, too. I want to thank Nana and Papa for your continued sincere concern for our father, for helping with the haul and finding our father room and board. Thank you Pepa and Mema for the help with the gas money and listening to me when I needed compassion and thank you Chris, Robin, Kayleigh, Jacob, Newby and Troy, with more love than words can express, for the seamless blending of our families. And I especially want to thank Zeke and Eli for loving Pops and allowing him into their lives. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to see, my father, truly concerned with my children and their well being, and knowing that my children, never, ever, heard my father speak an unkind word. I want to thank my friends for their sympathy and kind expressions, and I just want to thank everyone, once again, for all that they have done. Thank you, all so much, for supporting my efforts with kind acts and encouragement these past several years...but most of all, I have to thank Reid’s wonderful family at Longleaf. I want to thank them for caring for and loving my father…and most especially, I must thank them for showing me that I could love my father once again.
