Father's Day: My Dad

I haven't written much about my Dad, and there is a very good reason for that.  I was never allowed to know him.  My parents divorced when I was about a year old.  I was way too young to form any memory of him.  And that was bad.

My whole life, all that I ever heard about him was bad.  The reviews came from my mom and grandmother, and brother, who was only 6 when they divorced.  They talked about him often, obviously having a lot of dislike for him.  I never once asked any questions about him because I was afraid it would open up the snakepit of hate.  My uncle was the only person that never spoke badly about him.  They had been childhood friends and remained friends throughout my mom's marriage.

I didn't even know what he looked like in person.  When we lived in Dallas for a while, I got to see him twice.  He lived in Florida but had gone to Dallas to see his family.  When he found out we were there, he asked to come and see us.  I remember the commotion around that.  My mom was screaming that he couldn't see us unless he brought her money.  They were fighting back and forth on the phone at my aunt's house.  It was hideous on my side of the phone line.  I never heard so much hate coming out of my mom and my grandmother.  It was a good old Texas cussathon.  I heard words that I had never heard before.  The hateathon continued long after the phone call ended.  I made the mistake of saying that I wanted to see him.  And that started the screaming all over again.  My loyalty to my mom was questioned; how could I ask to see him?

The next day he just showed up at our apartment.  He was not allowed in.  The arguing started again.  All he wanted to do was take us out for a while riding around in his jeep.  I was skinny enough to squeeze through the doorway and hugged him, and said I was going.  I was going, make no mistake about it.  So my mom made my brother go, he didn't want to.  And before we left, my grandmother ran outside and copied down the numbers of his license plate.  Like he was going to steal us!  When we got back home, I knew that there would be a price to pay for what I did.  I didn't care.

We rode around Pleasant Grove for about an hour, just talking, and then he took us back home.  As soon as the door closed, all hell broke loose again.  I was a traitor.  I didn't care.

There was one more time similar to that time that I saw him.  I was about 11 at that time.  And it generated the same hissy fits that the previous visit caused.  It was an instant replay.

And then I didn't see him or hear anything about him again for thirty-something years.  Christmas Day of 1994, he showed up at my Mom's house in Dallas.  I was living in Tennessee, but we were in Dallas at my in-law's house for Christmas.  My son Jeff called me and told me that he was there and wanted to see me.  By now, I had forty-something years of hearing hate speech about him.  I didn't want to go over there.  Not because of him, because of the uproar that would take place after he left.  I declined the invitation.

After Christmas had passed and we were back at home, Jeff called me and gave me my Dad's phone number.  He told me that he really wanted to talk to me whenever I was ready.  I couldn't call him.  I had too many things to think about, too many feelings to sort out.  By now, my uncle had been deceased for quite some time.  He was my sounding board.  But I remembered some of the things that he had told me about my dad over the years, and they were not bad things.  He had told me that my father was broken-hearted over losing me after the divorce.  He said that he had worshiped me.  When my mom and dad got into the final fight that generated the divorce, he had wanted custody of me.  My mom told him that he would never see either my brother or myself again.  In the divorce, he had won visitation rights, but she refused to let him see us.  My uncle told me that if she refused to let him see us, he would not pay any child support.  And they were both hard-headed, and the end result was not having him in my life and living a vicariously poor life.

I sorted all of these things out over and over in my head.  Finally, in June, I called him.  He started crying when I said, "Daddy?"  It was an emotional moment for both of us.  We talked for a couple of hours.  He wanted to know all about my kids.  I sent him pictures, and he mailed me tons of things from his life.  He was sick; he had psoriasis of the liver but was under medical care.  It seemed like he was holding up based on what he told me.

In September, his wife called me and asked me to come to Ft. Myers, Florida.  He wasn't doing well.
He wasn't expected to live much longer.  This was shattering news for me.  I didn't know if I could get off from work, Kevin was in school, I would have to rent a car, it was a long drive.  I had to work things out.  I called back in a couple of days and told his wife that I would be there as soon as I could get there.  At the last minute, my brother decided he wanted to go.  He and my mom had just moved to  Tennessee.  I let him tag along.

It was a very long hot, and humid drive.  Florida in September is scorching hot.  As soon as his wife opened the door, he said, "That's my daughter!"  The first two days, he did pretty well, but he was in a lot of pain.  His sister Micky had come to see him also.  He handed her some money and told her to take me to buy me a birthday present.  My birthday was just days away, but I was touched by his gesture.  That was September 20th.  His wife had pretty much stopped taking care of him when I got there.  My brother was farmed out to the stepdaughter's house to stay. All he wanted to do was eat and run his mouth at whoever would listen to him.

His pain on that day had become unbearable; he wasn't able to lay on his back anymore.  My aunt Micky and I moved him to a recliner and padded it with pillows.  He couldn't eat anymore.  By that evening, he couldn't speak anymore.  I told his wife that she needed to call whoever needed to call to get him on some decent pain medication.  A hospice nurse came and brought morphine for him.  After he took it, we moved him back into his bed.  I sat with him for the next 2 days.  He just held onto my hand until he would finally be pain-free enough to sleep.  He woke up one time and tried to reach for something in his nightstand that he obviously wanted to give me.  His wife closed the drawer and told him that he didn't need anything out of it.  I don't know what he was looking for, but it seemed important to him.

That night he started having trouble breathing.  I made his wife call the nurse for oxygen.  Even with the oxygen, it was hard for him to breathe.  Friday, his condition was very grave.  His wife feigned exhaustion and slept in another bedroom all day.  I sat beside him on the bed.  I gave him his pain medication.  I watched him struggle to breathe.  I knew that he wasn't going to make it much longer.  His bedroom faced the west.  I had the blinds open to see the sunset.  He loved the ocean.  I sat with him for a long time.  I got up to eat a sandwich that Micky had made.  We were sitting at a little table less than 10 feet away from him.  I saw him take his last breath.  I told Micky that I thought that he had just passed away.  We went to the bed and sat down next to him.  He was gone.  But he was out of pain now.  We waited about a half-hour before we told his wife.  We tried to calm down and consoled each other.  Micky went to the bedroom and told his wife that he had died.  Enter the drama queen.

She threw herself on his body and started screaming.  I asked her to please get off of him before she knocked him off of the bed.  She called her daughter, and she and her family came over, including Ronnie.  Ronnie was given a book and told to call people.  Thirty people showed up.  It was a madhouse and irreverent.  It was a sideshow.  I had to leave; I went outside and sat on the hood of a car and cried and cried.  When I went back in, I ran into the men from the funeral home.  It was a high rise building, and I had to show them the way.  My brother never shed one tear, never said one nice thing.

We had to leave the next morning.  My dad would be cremated and would not have a service until it could be arranged with the military.  It would probably be weeks.  It was a long quiet drive home.  I had a lot of things going around in my head.

I was glad that I was able to be with my father.  I had been denied a relationship with him my whole life.  It was ironic that I was the one taking care of him in his last days.  Parents, don't deny your kids an opportunity to love both parents.

I loved my Dad.