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I wish I had a didactic memory, that I was able to recall with precision every moment of my life. But I don’t. If my memory was any type of photograph, it would be a faded Polaroid stored carelessly in a closet box. The memories I do have are blurry, captured moments shaded by whiteness. These are the things I remember.
I got Christmas presents from you when I was young. I believe my mother actually addressed them from you, but at this point I don’t recall if that is a memory or something that actually happened.
The first time I remember seeing you, meeting you, was when I visited you in Las Vegas. I think it had to be 1979 or 1980. I remember being in a casino and being a little shit and reading my stepsister’s diary and talking about it and I remember discovering you kept nude photographs of your wife/ex-girlfriends. Apparently I had quite the thing for snooping when I was younger. I remember we went to a drive-in movie. I think Zulu Dawn was playing on our screen, as well as some other movie I no longer recall, but there was some type of sex movie being shown on another screen I ended up paying more attention to. But when I think about you and me, that’s when the photograph fades. I can’t recall anything particular about the two of us then.
The next time I saw you was at my great-grandmother’s funeral, when we stayed with you for it. I had to be 15 or 16. Somehow it was agreed that I would spend the summer with you.
I was your son. But I heard you say that you really didn’t get me. You felt I was lazy and strange, which was not untrue, but what I was most of all was a teenager, and you hadn’t had much experience with one of those. It’s almost fitting that of all the things you could have given me, I’m left with this: without you, I would have not been able to be that close to hardcore drugs or VCR porn. The cocaine never again wandered into my life, but I guess I can thank you for Kay Parker.
I don’t remember how much longer later, maybe a few months or maybe six, but you had agreed to come see me in Arkansas. The day you were supposed to be there, my mother talked to me after school and said you weren’t going to be able to make it. I no longer recall if there was a valid reason or not. Perhaps there was. I do know that was the last time I cried about you until last night.
One last memory. I know you talked to my mother on occasion in the following years, but you and I never talked until 1995 or 1996, when I received a call from you out of the blue. I know I wasn’t the most cordial. And I know I took it out on my mother for giving you my phone number. That was the last contact between us. It’s amazing to me how often I think of this and wonder if I should have been warmer, more conciliatory. I had done nothing wrong in our relationship, and yet even now I wonder if I should have done something.
I’ve always defined myself by you, which is similar to defining myself by meteor showers, as both have spent roughly as much time in my life. I’ve lived my life as “I’m not going to be the father my father is.” In my late teens and early twenties I created a dictionary’s worth of horrendous poetry, often dedicated to you, to showing you what you missed, to create the violence on paper that stormed through my mind. Someone told me last year that I shouldn’t let you have that much control on my life, and she was right. But it was hard.
I don’t know how I would have felt about you if I hadn’t had a daughter whose mother did the same thing to her that you did to me. Every day with Robyn, with her wondering why her mother didn’t love her enough to want to be with her, reminded me of you. No child should ever have to wonder that. I blamed her mother for that, but I guess I also blamed you too, somehow.
I didn’t know you. I never spent enough time with you to really know you. What I saw from you could have been no more than the face you show a co-worker or a stranger on the street. I never really got to know you, what made you you. And you never got to know me, either. You never got to meet your grandchildren. You weren’t there for birthdays or Christmases or my graduation from high school or college or when I graduated basic training or when I retired from the military or when I married or when I divorced. You never got to see the man I became, a man that in some way is because of you.
The truth of the matter is that, whether or not we want, our parents have an influence on us. If we have loving parents, that influences us. If we have abusive parents, that forms an everlasting impact on us. When we don’t have a parent, it does, too. I miss my daughters every day they are not with me, and I could say that is because of you. I told Robyn today about your passing, and she asked how I felt. I told her my feelings were confused. She said, if it were her, she would feel angry.
But I don’t feel angry. In my life, I’ve longed for your love, for your admiration. I’ve hated you. And “hate” is a word I don’t apply to anyone. But I don’t hate you now. If anything, I feel sad for you. To spend over two weeks in a hospital without a member of your family there to help you, care for you, to love you, that fucking sucks. When I was younger, I, in my writer’s fancy, imagined a deathbed scene in which your dying breath was beat down by my scorn and hatred. Now I just wish I had been there, that you had somebody for you.
I wish it didn’t take almost two weeks until somebody in your family found out you had died. Your body already turned to dust. I think of you, and I think of my son, Dane, and I think of my fear and my hope, burned away in flames.
I found out shortly after midnight. I was okay when I called my mother and told her and hung up after saying goodbye and hearing her voice break. Then I shook. Tears fell, and I shook uncontrollably. I thought about how young you were. You’re only 19 years older than me, and 19 years isn’t much. It’s just a breath of time. How can that cover where I am now and where you are? And all the words I wanted to say...
And I can no longer say. Except these words. Whether it would have mattered to you or not, you are forgiven. Let the flames that shed your skin and the waves that will cover your ashes also take away my anger. I’ve heard you were a good man. I’ve heard you were a bad man. I believe both these things equally. But you were my father, whether you wanted to be or not. You were how I came to life, how I came to love, how I came to have my daughters. So I thank you, no matter how that came to be or whether or not you were in my life. For me, you did at least one thing right.
I do not know what, if any, afterlife awaits us. I hope that, no matter what, you are at peace. Let my hatred rest, let my anger rest, let my sorrow rest...let my father rest.
I got Christmas presents from you when I was young. I believe my mother actually addressed them from you, but at this point I don’t recall if that is a memory or something that actually happened.
The first time I remember seeing you, meeting you, was when I visited you in Las Vegas. I think it had to be 1979 or 1980. I remember being in a casino and being a little shit and reading my stepsister’s diary and talking about it and I remember discovering you kept nude photographs of your wife/ex-girlfriends. Apparently I had quite the thing for snooping when I was younger. I remember we went to a drive-in movie. I think Zulu Dawn was playing on our screen, as well as some other movie I no longer recall, but there was some type of sex movie being shown on another screen I ended up paying more attention to. But when I think about you and me, that’s when the photograph fades. I can’t recall anything particular about the two of us then.
The next time I saw you was at my great-grandmother’s funeral, when we stayed with you for it. I had to be 15 or 16. Somehow it was agreed that I would spend the summer with you.
I was your son. But I heard you say that you really didn’t get me. You felt I was lazy and strange, which was not untrue, but what I was most of all was a teenager, and you hadn’t had much experience with one of those. It’s almost fitting that of all the things you could have given me, I’m left with this: without you, I would have not been able to be that close to hardcore drugs or VCR porn. The cocaine never again wandered into my life, but I guess I can thank you for Kay Parker.
I don’t remember how much longer later, maybe a few months or maybe six, but you had agreed to come see me in Arkansas. The day you were supposed to be there, my mother talked to me after school and said you weren’t going to be able to make it. I no longer recall if there was a valid reason or not. Perhaps there was. I do know that was the last time I cried about you until last night.
One last memory. I know you talked to my mother on occasion in the following years, but you and I never talked until 1995 or 1996, when I received a call from you out of the blue. I know I wasn’t the most cordial. And I know I took it out on my mother for giving you my phone number. That was the last contact between us. It’s amazing to me how often I think of this and wonder if I should have been warmer, more conciliatory. I had done nothing wrong in our relationship, and yet even now I wonder if I should have done something.
I’ve always defined myself by you, which is similar to defining myself by meteor showers, as both have spent roughly as much time in my life. I’ve lived my life as “I’m not going to be the father my father is.” In my late teens and early twenties I created a dictionary’s worth of horrendous poetry, often dedicated to you, to showing you what you missed, to create the violence on paper that stormed through my mind. Someone told me last year that I shouldn’t let you have that much control on my life, and she was right. But it was hard.
I don’t know how I would have felt about you if I hadn’t had a daughter whose mother did the same thing to her that you did to me. Every day with Robyn, with her wondering why her mother didn’t love her enough to want to be with her, reminded me of you. No child should ever have to wonder that. I blamed her mother for that, but I guess I also blamed you too, somehow.
I didn’t know you. I never spent enough time with you to really know you. What I saw from you could have been no more than the face you show a co-worker or a stranger on the street. I never really got to know you, what made you you. And you never got to know me, either. You never got to meet your grandchildren. You weren’t there for birthdays or Christmases or my graduation from high school or college or when I graduated basic training or when I retired from the military or when I married or when I divorced. You never got to see the man I became, a man that in some way is because of you.
The truth of the matter is that, whether or not we want, our parents have an influence on us. If we have loving parents, that influences us. If we have abusive parents, that forms an everlasting impact on us. When we don’t have a parent, it does, too. I miss my daughters every day they are not with me, and I could say that is because of you. I told Robyn today about your passing, and she asked how I felt. I told her my feelings were confused. She said, if it were her, she would feel angry.
But I don’t feel angry. In my life, I’ve longed for your love, for your admiration. I’ve hated you. And “hate” is a word I don’t apply to anyone. But I don’t hate you now. If anything, I feel sad for you. To spend over two weeks in a hospital without a member of your family there to help you, care for you, to love you, that fucking sucks. When I was younger, I, in my writer’s fancy, imagined a deathbed scene in which your dying breath was beat down by my scorn and hatred. Now I just wish I had been there, that you had somebody for you.
I wish it didn’t take almost two weeks until somebody in your family found out you had died. Your body already turned to dust. I think of you, and I think of my son, Dane, and I think of my fear and my hope, burned away in flames.
I found out shortly after midnight. I was okay when I called my mother and told her and hung up after saying goodbye and hearing her voice break. Then I shook. Tears fell, and I shook uncontrollably. I thought about how young you were. You’re only 19 years older than me, and 19 years isn’t much. It’s just a breath of time. How can that cover where I am now and where you are? And all the words I wanted to say...
And I can no longer say. Except these words. Whether it would have mattered to you or not, you are forgiven. Let the flames that shed your skin and the waves that will cover your ashes also take away my anger. I’ve heard you were a good man. I’ve heard you were a bad man. I believe both these things equally. But you were my father, whether you wanted to be or not. You were how I came to life, how I came to love, how I came to have my daughters. So I thank you, no matter how that came to be or whether or not you were in my life. For me, you did at least one thing right.
I do not know what, if any, afterlife awaits us. I hope that, no matter what, you are at peace. Let my hatred rest, let my anger rest, let my sorrow rest...let my father rest.
Scott,
As I read this, I wept. My tears were for you, your father, and perhaps even for me. In our lives, we choose how we will cope with the situations we've been given. I'd say, that despite the lack of parenting you experienced from your father, you've become a better father. We can choose our reaction or we can become it. I, too, have choosen a different path than the one I was given. Unfortunately, you both did lose something. You didn't grow with your dad at your side. That's tragic, but I'm sure a great deal of your strength came from that. Your father missed many occasions of pride, joy, and support of you. The result of his actions found him alone at his end. That's sad too, but it was the way he choose to live. I feel badly that you didn't get to sit by his side, because those moments are freeing to the soul. I would bet that he knows you forgive him since he now rests in God's loving care. The last words my mother spoke in this life were, "I love you, Debbie." That was the first time I'd ever heard that, and the last, but what a gift. I wish you'd have had that. I love how writing our truths has the potential power to free our souls from some of the pain we carry around. I look forward to reading your other writings. My site is whomechickapea here at blogspot.