I am going to drive north tomorrow to spend a few hours with my Dad. It will be our last Father's Day. I confess, I am a stew of mixed emotions. He is my Dad, and I love him, so there is a lot of sadness here as we face the inevitable. He is suffering, so there is a small thread of dread that wafts through our encounters. But I am also grateful, because we are getting a chance to have one last Father's Day together. So many other emotions, as well. Then again, my father is a rather complicated person, so it is no surprise that my emotions mirror that.
If you would indulge me, I'd like to introduce my father to you below.
My father was born on the 4th of July in 1924, (and has always been fiercely patriotic and a flag waver, maybe in part due to this quirk of fate,) almost 3 months premature at a time when medical technology had few methods for dealing with such a fragile infant. It was a tenuous start. I've always suspected that the sheer stubborness he evidenced throughout his life contributed to his survival. Against all odds, he clung to life and surprised everyone.
His father was an angry man. My grandfather had an ugly childhood, lost a hand in WWI, and lost his first wife to disease, leaving him with two young sons. He married my grandmother, a much younger woman, to procure a mother for them. He went on to have four more children with her. His anger typically erupted in brutality, which he inflicted primarily upon the children.
My grandmother was a very talented artist and she and her sisters had in fact attended a prestiguous art college in the east. She had aspirations that dissipated upon her marriage. I'll never know why this tiny woman, who disliked children, married this man and relinquished her hopes of an artistic career. Then again, at that time, that is what women did. She carried her disappointment visibily until her death from breast cancer when I was 16. Although she never participated in her husband's brutality upon the children, she did little to protect them. Some times, she would sneak food to them but generally, she was remote, unaffectionate, and prone to reminding them that she had never wanted children.
Despite my father's honest intentions to be a better parent than his were, in some ways, he is very much a product of that environment. Always the tough guy, the manly guy often to the point of foolhardy (despite his short stature, or maybe because of it,) and lacking in affection, intolerant of emotional displays, wih serious anger issues and a desperate need to always be in control.
Although possessing a startling inate intelligence, he was carried a great shame that he was poorly educated. The Great Depression hit when he was a child. My one-handed grandfather could not feed a family of eight and my father left elementary school to work. I always thought that was a terrible loss, as my father would have made a brilliant engineer.
As a young man, despite having some physical problems, remnants of his premature birth, after several failed attempts he managed to join the army. It was WWII and they were becoming desperate for soldiers so he snuck through the standards. Shortly after he joined, the military made sure he got the surgery he needed to repair some issues and when he recovered, he went overseas. There, he witnessed some horrors, received some wounds, and became even angrier. Some part of him still sought peace and love though, and after the war when he returned home he met my mother.
He still says that my mother's smile was like a beam of light. He just knew by it that she was a kind and good person. Perhaps partially as a result of her own brutal father, she was also a fiercely devout Christian. In wooing her, my father embraced her faith, which later would become a cornerstone for them in raising their family. Tomorrow, as he does daily, he will tell me that she was the best, the finest, the only good thing that ever happened to him. He felt that she was too good for him but he pursued her, won her, and married her a mere few months later.
As an adult, he developed epilepsy, which he despised as a weakness. It was a direct result of one of the many vicious beatings he had endured as a child. There was one particular time, when he was three, where he had been repeatedly struck in the head with a wrench for not moving quickly enough when told to retrieve something for his father. He had been left unconscious in a puddle of blood, lying there for three days. The end result was scar tissue on his brain that later caused the epilepsy.
Although I was only 11, I still vividly remember how terrified I was when I saw him having a grand mal seizure. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the car and my parents were bringing me home from a piano lesson. All the neighbors heard my mom pounding on the horn and came to help. One held my father down, not realizing what was happening, and the end result was that the constricting muscles crushed multiple vertabrae in Dad's back. He was unable to walk for a long time and ultimately was never able to return to work. A crushing blow for a man with his pride and sense of duty to support his family. He became even angrier, feeling that he had to rely on my mother instead of himself, like a real man.
Perhaps because of this history, my father never hit us in the head; never starved us or locked us in rooms for days at a time. But he was angry. He had an explosive temper that terrified me as a child, because it could so easily be set loose at the slightest provocation. The wrong look on your face, fail to push a chair in to the table, leave a door ajar, being "insolent" or "disrespectful," punishment was harsh and immediate. I was terrified of my father, as a child. To this day, yelling or aggressive language evokes a physical response from me, but I have a high tolerance for physical pain.
It was years before I understood why my father was the way he was. Things that frightened and confused me when I was small, just became terribly sad as I grew older. And, over the years, he did mellow, just a little bit. Just before my 17th birthday, he hit me for the last time. He thought I had lied to him and was intent on punishing me until I confessed. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," dontcha know? By then, I had developed a stubborn streak of my own and something inside snapped. I simply was not going to admit to something I hadn't done. The worst he could do was hurt me, and I knew I could take that, as I had so many times. He used an electrical cord on me. Finally, my older sister told him if he didn't stop, she would call the police. He was just so ANGRY, so determined that he was going to exert control, that he was going to win, he didn't even realize how far he had gone. A few days later, I was just starting to move around again, but couldn't bear to be touched so I had my legs and back exposed. He saw for the first time what he had done. The bloody welts that covered me were ugly. That was the first time I saw my father cry and it was the last time he hit me in anger.
Oh, Dad still had his temper and was still stubborn, no doubt. But he had a rude awakening also. After that, from time to time, he even made a point of telling me that he loved me. He really tried to be better, to rise above all that had been taught to him.
So many times over the years, I'd hear my father say some awful "Conservative" thing, or some bigoted statement, and I would cringe. If it had been anyone else, I'd have struggled to maintain a relationship. But, this was my father and for all the unpleasantness, I knew about his good qualities too. His loyalty, his work ethic, his dedication to caring for his family, his undying devotion to my mother, how he never turned down a neighbor in need, his charitable contributions, and how he stayed by my bedside when I was in the hospital. I believe he truly did the best he could and he tried hard to be a better person.
The night my mother died, a little over two years ago, I had this incredible, overwhelming urge to sit by my father and have his arm around me; to be comforted by him. Of course, it didn't happen, it never had happened and it certainly would not this late in life. It was a bit of a rude shock to realize that even a woman of my age would still crave that. But that night was all about comforting him. He became a man lost, destitute and broken, with the loss of his mate of more than 60 years, "the best thing that ever happened to him," was over.
That was really the beginning of the end for my father. He has not recovered and spiraled down in a way terrible to see. We are now giving him the end of life care that we went through with Mom, not so long ago. And he has no fight in him. All he wants is to leave.
So yeah, when it comes to Dad, my feelings are incredibly mixed and complicated. Wistful and sad, sympathetic, frustrated, regretful, but most of all, I simply love him.
I think that the greatest lesson I am trying to embrace right now when it comes to my father is the reminder the absolutes don't really exist. That what one sees upon first glimpse is merely the surface of a deeper pool, filled with currents and eddies bearing diverse flotsam. So when someone engages in a behavior that bothers me, I cannot judge the entire person by that single behavior. I can condemn that act without condemning the whole individual. I can try to remember that the act is merely a reaction that grows from that person's past experiences. That in itself does not excuse the act in question, but serves as a reminder that we are human, frail, inclined to err, and most importantly for me, allows me to respond constructively, rather than solely with anger and frustration.
When I hear someone say something hurtful, I cannot help but wonder, what happened to them to allow them to be cruel, without empathy? And yet, in their own convoluted way, they really seem to feel what they are saying or doing is the right thing, as my father so often did. My choice comes down to allowing them to anger me, which only eats at me, or trying to understand them, even feel some empathy for their interior pain that drives them to behave so. For me, sometimes that is a battle. It's so much easier to just get angry. Angry. Like my grandfather. Angry. Like my father.
To anyone I might one day lose patience with, might one day respond with a flip or painful retort rather than trying to disagree with understanding, I apologize in advance. I'm still fighting the battle, trying to be a better person than those before me. It's a daily thing and I'm not always successful, but I'm trying.