Deconstructing My Father – Part Eleven
Deconstructing My Father is a linear narrative about a weird point in my life – late 2018 / early 2019 (I’m not entirely sure) – where my estranged father developed dementia and I had to take over running his life and the lives of both of my little brothers. I started documenting it in a weird journal using pseudonyms for my brothers and family. It was probably the most stressful time of my life.
You should probably start with part one if you want this to make any sort of sense.
Conclusion
I have written and rewritten the conclusion to this story probably a dozen times because there’s always something else to cover. Because it’s been almost five years since it finally ended. Because hindsight provides guidance and clarity. Because life can only, truly, be understood backwards.
“Don’t be first. Don’t be last. Don’t volunteer.”
“Never pass up an opportunity to eat, sleep or take a shit.”
These are the only two pieces of advice that my father ever gave me. This was as I was headed to Air Force basic training. There were no words of wisdom when I moved out on my own for the first time at eighteen. Nothing when I found the girl who would be the one, who ended up as my wife. When my first child was born I already learned a lot of what I needed to know because of his weird way of parenting. My wife had never changed a diaper; I got the opportunity to show her the rotted fruits of my upbringing.
Enlisting in the Air Force was probably the only time my father was ever truly proud of me. The two quotes above are the only things my dad ever said to me with any sort of importance.
This picture is the happiest my father has ever been to have me as a son.
When I was a little boy I saw my father twice a year. On my birthday and Christmas. Briefly. An exchange of obligatory gifts and an unfulfilled promise for further visits.
The first real, significant, visit that I can remember having with my father was around the time of the first Persian Gulf War. My father picked me up from my house and drove me to the Air Force Base right by where we lived. It was the same base where he and my mother met. She was a teenage candy striper, he was a wounded Vietnam mess. He drove me around the base. Showed me the squat cinder block house that he and my mom lived in when they first got married. Showed me where the BX was, told me that, as his son, I was going to get to come on to the base whenever I wanted.
“You see,” he said staring straight out the windshield, “we’re gonna get you a dependents ID. It’s like a military ID for kids of service men. Does your mom let you watch the news?”
“No. Nana and Grandpa watch it, and if it’s on I watch it cause it’s the only thing on.”
“You heard about what’s going on? The war?”
“Kinda.”
“Well I’m getting sent over there and it’s important that you have this ID.”
My dad was getting sent to war. I’ve talked about how that turned out before.
As I got older my father used to text or call me every year, the day before my birthday, to wish me a happy birthday. My wife and I made a joke about it. The yearly “so close but so far away” attempt at being a caring father. Swing and a miss Pop; but I guess, at minimum, you tried.
In your way.
In the latter part of 2019 my father took a severe turn for the worst. His body was shutting down. He had cancer that the doctor told me they could operate on; but his chance of surviving the surgery was less than 10%, his chance of recovery, if he beat that, even lower. He was placed on hospice. It was time to wait for him to die.
I took Ryan and Patrick to see him at the home I had placed him in. We knew, but didn’t acknowledge, that this was likely the last time we would all be together. He had no idea who any of us were.
I was his brother Mickey. They’d had a falling out. He was not pleased to see me.
He didn’t recognize either of my brothers.
He didn’t ask about any of his sons.
He asked about his daughter.
That was, indeed, the last conversation I had with my father.
To this day we wonder if there’s a sister out there that we don’t know about.
There’s a Facebook group for the now defunct Air National Guard unit that my dad, stepmom and I all belonged to. It was a very close knit unit that my father had been in, or around, for the better part of thirty years. When he got sick I posted an update on there because there were people who I had no other way of informing of what was going on. People who had been my mentors and superiors. People who were both at my StepMom’s funeral and a few who were at my wedding.
Unexpectedly there was an outpouring of not only condolences; but also stories about how much of a father figure my dad was to various people over the years.
”He taught me everything I know about….”
”He was like a father to me, he was always willing to listen….”
”He was always there if I needed anything.”
So he knew how to be a dad, just not to the people he was supposed to be a dad to.
Thanks for that Pops. I’m so glad that everyone else got to experience what a great dad you were.
We didn’t get to have a funeral because of the state of the world at the time. After reading all of those positive comments I’m not sure I could have dealt with a crowd of people lionizing a man who never existed for me, or my brothers.
My father died in March of 2020 – two days before the lock down to flatten the curve. We joked that he died on what he thought was my actual birthday on purpose.
I turned 40 the following day. My wife managed to salvage what was supposed to be a very fun evening by having our first Zoom happy hour.
The day after that my family and I went to the theater for the last time in 18 months. We watched Pixar’s “Onward”. A story about an older brother, helping a younger brother, dealing with the loss of their father.
Later that night California went into lockdown.
And then the whole world went to absolute shit.
I don’t want to have another Zoom happy hour.
I will never watch Onward ever again. It hits too close to home.
When I first started writing this I thought it would be a chronicle of unraveling the secret society that my father had built up around his life. It would be a story of how I navigated deep waters of a very complex and complicated scenario and came out triumphant in the face of adversity and helped my brothers claim their legacy and inheritance.
I was written out of the will in 2010. None of what I was doing would provide me any benefit.
But that’s not how it went.
It was all too much. Overwhelming. I was trying to work a more than full time job – and failing – helping to raise two kids and navigate the world in the midst of a global pandemic. I couldn’t be a stay at home Dad, part time principal, dependable employee and full time investigator. I could barely keep my own life together, let alone deconstruct my father’s.
I tried but, in the end, I failed.
I resigned from my father’s trust somewhere in late October of 2020. I wanted my brothers to have competent and available help. I was flailing at my job and couldn’t drop everything at a moment’s notice to help them.
- No, I don’t know what credit card is used to pay the phone bill.
- I’m not sure when the last time I paid the internet bill.
- I can’t talk. I’ve got 3 hours of zoom meetings that I have to run.
I lost my job around the same time that I gave up on trying to fix my father’s life. After more than a year of personal and professional, ulcer inducing, drinking to numbness stress. I was free.
I slept better that night than I had in years.
I woke up the next morning to the sun peaking in the window, birds singing and no alarm clock blaring.
My father was dead, his responsibilities no longer my problem. I had lost my job in the midst of a global pandemic.
I hadn’t been this happy in a long time.
I’ve probably skipped a lot of critical things between this chapter and the last but, as I think you can clearly see, I had a lot going on.
I hope that this is the last I’ll ever write about my father. I opened that wound as wide as I’m willing to ever let it go and, I think, I’m ready for it to scab over and scar.
Scars are permanent and never go away; but they’re also a sign of healing.
I’ve got a new, better job.
My kids are doing so much better than I could have ever expected.
My brothers? Well they’re doing good. We’re all doing pretty good.
But I’m done deconstructing. I want to make something new and I can’t do that by refusing to let go.
I’m done dwelling.
Goodbye dad.
