Dad
1926-2007
On Father's Day, we celebrate the role that fathers have played in our lives. I hope you have had a wonderful father and you use the occasion to express your gratitude. If you are a father, I hope that you take your responsibilities seriously and that your children make you feel appreciated. Unfortunately, in my case, there is very little to celebrate on Father's Day.
To understand my father's failures, you need to know a few things about his life; he had a few problems in his early years that bothered him greatly. As an adult, he was 5' 1" "tall." He was short all of his life. Most men who are that short feel inadequate and I know that this bothered him. Who wants to have the nickname "Shorty?"
Due to being struck by a drunk driver when he was in the 8th grade, my father had one leg about 1" shorter than the other. This meant he was rejected when he tried to enlist in the Navy during World War II. Being rejected for duty was a severe blow to the pride of most young men in that era (times were different back then!) These are the problems over which he had no control. Sometimes life deals you an awful hand of cards. There's not much you can do about that.
And then there were problems over which he did have some control. My father was already a very poor student and the accident caused him to miss a substantial amount of time from school, so much that he fell behind and dropped out without completing the 8th grade. He ran away from home and traveled 1,000 miles to be near his 2 brothers who had both enlisted in the Navy and were still stationed stateside. Within a few months, they were both sent to the Pacific and my father was alone, 17 years old, and 1,000 miles from home.
He apparently lacked any sense of guilt about being unfaithful to my mother as he engaged in numerous affairs over the course of their 34 years of marriage. Sometimes he was not very discreet about his amorous adventures. My mother suffered needlessly, thinking that she should remain with him for the sake of the children. The result is that I grew up in a home where I saw almost no affection between my parents and, in fact, they sometimes acted like two acquaintances sharing a house. My father did not impress anyone as a likely "Don Juan"/player figure but, for his generation, that is what he was.
His idea of being a father was giving my mother money so she could buy groceries and clothes for us. He worked 2 jobs, and sometimes 3 jobs, not because we needed the income, but because he wanted to spend time away from home. When he retired from his primary job after 20 years of service, he took a 3 month vacation . . . without his wife or children. He then returned home briefly and decided to try a job that was about 500 miles away from our home and he stayed gone for about a year before he returned home.
When he eventually divorced my mother, he remarried 8 days later! His new wife had borderline personality disorder and she made his life hell but he stayed with her because she had money. It was not a match made in Heaven. When he got older and his hearing faded, he rarely wore his hearing aids . . . and he confided in me that the reason for not wearing them was not forgetfulness.
I left home when I was 16 years old. I didn't run away; I started college at a university about 350 miles from home. While I was away, I missed my mother.
My father took me fishing twice in 16 years. If he was at home, I sometimes followed him and watched while he was engaged in household maintenance projects. He sometimes attended school functions in which I was participating or being honored, but he did not attend about half of the events. When I went to college, he drove me to school. On the way, he bought me a package of condoms and said, "You'll probably need these in college." That was all he ever said to me about sex.
My father died on December 30, 2007. He had prostate cancer which meant he had a slow but relatively painless death. As his condition deteriorated, I spent more time with him, though he lived about 100 miles away from my home. On December 24, 2007, I left my friends and the remainder of my family to spend Christmas Eve in his hospital room (his wife refused to do it.) On December 30, I held his hand as he died; again, his wife (who I affectionately referred to as "the bitch from Hell") was not there, of course. Two weeks later, I learned that I had been written out of his will because his second wife did not like me and he did not have the testicles to stand up to her. Since his second wife was an Army nurse during World War II, both of them are buried in a national cemetery about 150 miles from my home. I have never visited his grave.
How do I celebrate Father's Day? If the woman in my life truly cares about me, she does something to make the day special for me. I don't have children, so I don't get remembered by anyone else. I have mentored a number of teens through a local volunteer opportunity but none of those kids say anything to me on Father's Day.
Do I remember my father on Father's Day? Of course I do; I can't forget him, but I don't remember my father with great fondness. There are very few warm memories from the 52 years that he was in my life. I have forgiven him for being a flawed human. In his defense, I know that his father was a poor role model for my dad, my father was not a very bright man, and he apparently lacked the capacity to understand the awfulness of his conduct.
I'm not sure if that exonerates him from culpability or if it qualifies him for a special place in Hell, but there is no useful point in maintaining anger at my father. Life dealt him a bad hand of cards and life dealt me one or two bad cards as well. If I am angry at him for not trying to be a better person, should I not expect myself to try to be a better person?
In our lives, we encounter many situations that could be called "unfair." I recommend that you drop that word from your vocabulary, because complaining about life being unfair is SUCH a waste of time. Instead, I try to look at such situations as opportunities to become a better person. In many instances, I have thought about my father and said to myself, "I NEVER want to be like that."
I have never been unfaithful to a spouse or a partner in a committed relationship. When I was married and had step-children, I tried to spend time with them (to the extent that they wanted me involved in their life.) I have never used work as an excuse to avoid responsibilities at home. I think I have become a better person not because I have some inherent goodness that resides within me, but simply because I have cared enough to try to be a better man. These are not lessons that my father intended to teach me, but this is what I learned from my father.
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
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