So this is it. The moment after the call came in. The moment after my dad has finally died. What is in this moment? I can’t call it pain. I certainly can’t call it joy. Confusion might be overkill. I know what this is:
It’s the end of a man to whom I desperately tried to connect as a child, and haven’t really even spoken to in 10 years. It’s not completely true, of course, the 10 year bit. I spoke to him for about 3 hours this past Christmas. I spoke to him two hours ago as my sister held the phone to his ear in the hospital as he lay in a coma, dying.
What did I say? I don’t know if I can remember it exactly. Ever since I was a child I can remember him telling me how he would be dead in a year or two. I lived in fear of that moment for most of my childhood, and I clung to every thread I could find in the desperate hope that he would hold as much concern as I did for him in those days. He never did, of course. There’s no sense in romanticizing the reality, pretending he loved me to death in his own way. He really didn’t. I think that what he felt for me was resentment, and it showed in his actions. It showed in the way he knocked me senseless time and again. It showed in the black eyes, the bloody lips and the broken nose. It showed in how he conspired with my son’s bipolar psychotic mother to keep my own son from me while he simultaneously arranged to visit with him behind my back.
My father did not love me, not in the way fathers are supposed to love their sons, not in the way I loved mine. Not the way other dads love their sons. I accept this reality because what the hell else am I supposed to do? I know, I know: I’m supposed to pretend his was a life of sublime beauty and affection, that he was a great hero or some such nonsense. I can’t do that, though, because I’m not willing to lie about it. My father was, and I don’t enjoy this fact, a bastard. He had issues, not the least of which were drug problems that recurred throughout his life even after he’d struggled to get off of them. He was bitter and angry at everyone and everything. I feel parts of that inside me, and I struggle to overcome it because as much as this world pisses me off at times, I don’t want to spend my entire life feeling pissed off. Sometimes I can’t escape it and I hate the fact that part of him has managed to remain alive inside of me.
What did I say? It’s almost surreal. I almost don’t believe it because…he was always dying, to hear him tell it. It was always just a short ways off, that dreaded end at which I would not know what to do. He was the boy who cried wolf for the last 30 years of my life, and somewhere along the way I just stopped believing the story. Of course, that’s the moral of the story isn’t it? Cry wolf for too long and nobody will believe you when the wolf really does come home to roost. Yeah, that’s a mixed metaphor, but just try to picture a wolf with one of those dangly red things under its chin. It may be ridiculous, but at least it’s sort of funny.
So what, in the end, did I say? I said the only thing that made any sense to me. I told him he was a bastard and that he pushed all of his kids and family away. I told him that I’m sorry his life was so fucked up and that it was ending this way. I told him that I don’t believe in an afterlife, but that if there is indeed such a thing I hope that he finds a place of peace and understanding. I told him that even though he wasn’t much of a father, I forgive him, and I love him anyway.
A part of me feels like I should have called more often or sooner of late. But mostly, I think I said what I had to say, and he was still breathing when I said it. We could debate endlessly and fruitlessly about whether he heard or understood me, and either side of the argument has valid points to be made. I don’t know for sure, but I do believe he heard and understood me. It wasn’t long after I talked to him that his brain function
began to shut down, and about an hour later he finally died. About an hour and ten minutes ago, in fact; it is 11:53 AM on September 2nd, 2008, and he died at 10:42 AM Pacific Time.
I don’t really believe in heaven or hell, and God, if you’re reading this, I don’t really believe in you either. But on the off chance that any of it is real at all, I hope very much that my dad is able to find the peace and understanding that he never found in life. I hope that he will be able to release the anger inside of him. I hope that I will be able to release that angry part of him that still lives inside of me, because goodness knows that doesn’t need to survive to another generation. I hope that he finds whatever forgiveness is out there to be found, and not because he particularly deserves it, but because he really needs it.
And maybe I do too.
