My father had a rough childhood but I do not really know anything about because we never talked about it. I know that both my biological mother and father completely self-destructed when they met, got pregnant and had me, their lives changed forever. My father ran away from his entire life the world he knew and disappeared for many years from his entire family. When I met his family, they were scared and sad about his renunciation of his family and their love. His absence was the center of his mother's life and left his sister to clean up and care for the destruction that he left behind.
The first time I met him was for dinner in Las Vegas while I was at a work conference. We had talked a few times and it was interesting but awkward. I was very nervous when we met and I did not show any emotion and acted far away from someone that was excited to meet him. I was understandably cautious. He brought a package of old photos that he showed me with pride and pleasure these pictures of my very early childhood. He spoke of it with fondness and joy in a way I could not really digest. My childhood was not very spectacular either and after seeing the wreckage caused to all the families by my birth and mere existence I could not understand how he could have the sparkle in his eye when recounting this time.
We did not really talk much or see each other because we lived on different coast and had very different lives. I realize now I was angry at him for being so romantic about what I had seen as a very painful period of so many peoples lives. It is strange to me now that thing that upset me most about him was his inability to express the pain of my very life.
I met with him on Father's Day in 2010 with his sister in his home town and it was a very difficult weekend for me. He was a wonderful host taking us around to introducing to his friends and showing us his world. He seemed happy and settled but there was still this tainted view into his version of the past and how we were all interconnected. He refused to go see his mother who was getting older and longed for a glimpse of him. He spoke of the time with my biological mother as if it was an epic love story. He remembered his multiple wives and times in jail with a cowboy outlaw renaissance that was unnerving. Did his life really feel wonderful to him or was he in such denial that he had created a fantasy version of everything? He wrote haiku poetry and shared it with me but we never talked about it. We never talked about anything. I never asked him about how his memories were so rosy compared to our lives. I never asked him about why he ran away for so very long and how he felt about his new life. He only shared these portraits of his life he displayed for me that had no connection.
He asked me to call him before his death. I did not. I had solidified my belief that he was not good for me and it was too painful. I responded by detaching and ignoring and I felt justified as he was someone I needed to protect myself from. I walked away from him and left him there alone. In November, he took his relatively normal stable life and shook it like a snow globe and once again self-destructed. He first took everything he had and made it impossible to live his life and then when caught against the wall he took his own life. He is gone now and there is once again chaos, pain and destruction in all those who knew him. We are left in the wake wondering what we could have done differently.
Reach out. Let go. Connect. This is what in the end his death has taught me. If I can live a more connected life, maybe his pain will be worth something in the end.
