Reconciliation and Acceptance
Sometimes forgiveness comes in forms you might not expect
“Yes," he said, without looking at anyone; "it's a misfortune to live five years in the country like this, far from the mighty intellects! You turn into a fool directly. You may try not to forget what you've been taught, but -in a snap!- they'll prove all that's rubbish, and tell you that sensible men have nothing more to do with such foolishness, and that you, if you please, are an antiquated old fogey. What's to be done? Young people, of course, are cleverer than we are!”
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
My father, whom I’m named after, died a year ago today- July 23, 2020. Dad was 82 and frail, so his passing, while a shock, wasn’t surprising. However, I knew the day was coming; it was only a matter of when. I’ve reached the point in life where I’m losing people I know and love. Eventually, they’ll drag me out feet first…and I can only hope I’ll at least be doing something fun when that moment comes.
Circle of life, right?
Dad and I had never been terribly close. Truthfully, I’d spend the better part of my first 18 years at war with him. We were two stubborn rams who refused to step off our own patch to understand the other’s perspective. As a result, I fought a war I could never win, just as he did…though we both lost for very different reasons.
Growing up, I was too young to grasp that Dad was a product of his environment. His own father had possessed the charm and grace of an SS colonel and the tenderness of Torquemada. Nevertheless, he was married at 21, I was born a year later, and he had to learn how to raise boys (three more would follow over the next five years) on the fly.
Unfortunately (for me), I was their “starter” child. This meant that everything- good, bad, or combinations thereof- was tried out on me first. Versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 came out when my younger brothers came along.
I came to resent that reality tremendously as time went by. When I got my driver’s license, I wasn’t allowed to drive by myself for six months. Then, when my brother, Mark, got his license a year later, he drove solo three WEEKS later. That I remember this so clearly should be taken to indicate just how much I resented what I perceived as a clear double standard.
It probably wasn’t, but try telling that to a stubborn 17-year-old boy conditioned to take everything personally. Whether it was or wasn’t personal hardly mattered because everything seemed as if it was infinitely more difficult for me.
While my other brothers all fell into line when it came to paternal diktats, I was cut from a different cloth. I didn’t set out to deliberately disobey Dad; I wanted to understand the WHY of his commands. From his perspective as an Army Reserve officer, when he gave an order to jump, the only response he expected was “How high?” Me? I just wanted to know why I was being asked to jump. It wasn’t disrespect or even disobedience; I wanted to understand the “why.”
I resented feeling like I was a private in his personal platoon, with the only expectation being blind obedience. That didn’t mesh with my desire to understand why things were as they were…and so I asked questions. Rather than seeing my inquiries for what they were, he interpreted them as challenges to his authority, and so he doubled down on the pain. Thinking I would cave to his commands, he was enraged when I doubled down on the resistance.
And so it went. Despite the beatings and the physical abuse, I was determined not to let him win. In the end, both of us lost more than either of us could’ve possibly known.
A child of the 60s and 70s, I was all about rebellion. We fell out over my music, the length of my hair, and pretty much everything else under the sun. Nevertheless, rebelling was what I did, and I was pretty good at it. Or so I thought.
One day, I locked myself in my bedroom after Dad ordered me to get a haircut. Game, set, match…or so I thought. Then I remembered that the bathroom AND the kitchen were on the OUTSIDE of my bedroom door.
(This was my final dig at Dad…he was a Packers fan.)
Eventually, I began to disagree because I could, and it was all I had to hold on to. If Dad said it was black, I was determined to prove it was White. If he said it was up, I argued ‘til my last breath that it was down. And so on. It was unpleasant. It was beyond pointless. And there was no way I was going to give in. I wasn’t about to give Dad the satisfaction of declaring victory.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here. I have neither the inclination nor the space to revisit much of what happened. With Dad gone, it no longer really matters…and it hasn’t for quite some time. There was a 20+ year period during which I had no contact with my family. The reasons are no longer important, but my mental health was precarious, and I needed to establish my own independent existence.
Looking back, all of that may or may not have been true, but we’re past that now, and I’m grateful to my wife for helping me to negotiate that path. As a family, we’re not close, and we never will be, but there’s love, biology, and commonality, which are all good things.
There are conversations I wish I could’ve had with my father, but he had a stroke in 1991 when he was all of 53. That stroke left him almost completely unable to speak save for a few short sentences here and there. It precluded the possibility of any meaningful conversation, which was probably just as well. I suspect those discussions, had we been able to have them, would have been difficult and painful. They almost certainly wouldn’t have provided the resolution I might have sought.
Sometimes the past is better off left behind you.
I was left with nearly 30 years of Dad communicating as best he could. When the dust settled, that was enough because it had to be. I accepted that the past was a long time ago and that I couldn’t fully enjoy what we had of him unless I put the emotional and physical pain behind me. Not that I’m ever going to forget the beatings, the conflicts, and the internecine warfare we engaged in for so many years. There’s no way I could ever forget any of that, but hanging on to it and living in that past won’t going to do me any good.
I found a way to forgive him for the things he did to me. The man I saw laying peacefully in the casket on a hot, humid Wisconsin morning was no longer the man I’d hated and feared. Instead, he was someone I loved and knew I’d miss, though I didn’t then realize it would be more than a month before I’d be able to shed any tears.
I have a few reminders of Dad in my home office, and I can think of him now with love instead of anger. I wish I could’ve told him that when he was alive, but I think he understood. He knew that I loved him…because I told him so. I knew that he loved me…because he told me so. It was one of the few complete sentences he could speak. That might not seem like much, but when you consider that we began with the emotional equivalent of trench warfare, it’s everything to me.
Today, then, I’m pausing to pay homage to a man I loved, hated, and, in the end, loved again. Not an atypical story of a father and son, I suppose. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that I didn’t win…because we discovered too late that no one was keeping score.
I never had children because I was terrified that I would turn into my father. I couldn’t bear the thought of doing to my own son what my father had done to me. It took a long time for me to realize that I didn’t have to repeat what I’d experienced, that I could break the cycle. By the time I came to understand that, though, I understood myself well enough to know that I’d never trust myself enough to commit to raising a son.
I suppose I’ll always wonder what sort of father I would’ve been. It is and will always remain the great unanswered question of my life, but I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t regret my decision not to have children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way past the trauma I experienced.
When all is said and done, I’m a 61-year-old man with more than a few miles on the odometer, along with the requisite dents and scrapes. I am who I am because of my upbringing, my experiences, and the decisions I’ve made along the way. Like anyone else, I’ve made mistakes, experienced some triumphs, and had my heart broken a time or six. In short, I’m trying to tapdance through this minefield that is life while hoping I make it through relatively intact.
And, like everyone else, I’ll eventually be dragged out feet-first, just like Dad.
——
Thanks for tuning in. This is Dick Metaphor signing off. Have a great Friday!!