Deconstructing My Father – Part Three
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.
Unpredictable Side Effects
“Dad, why are you working from home?”
Morning cartoon time must be over if my son is upstairs talking to me instead of cramming his face full of breakfast cereal and animated explosions.
“Well buddy, remember the other day when I had to take my Dad to the doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“Well he’s in the hospital and I have a lot to do after work so I’m working from home so I don’t have to spend so much time in the car.”
He begins shuffling uncomfortably. Shifting his weight back and forth.
“Are you scared he’s going to die?”
The unabashed bluntness of children is sometimes a blessing and other times a curse. Kids cut to the quick of a matter without guile or tact.
“I don’t know man,” how the hell do you explain this to a ten year old, “he’s sick and the doctors don’t know why. So they’re going to run some tests and do the best they can to take care of him.”
He gave me a big hug and then ran downstairs to get ready to leave for school. I joined a conference call.
My son has met my father on three separate occasions. In total. In ten years.
- The day he was born. It’s extremely unlikely that he remembers this encounter.
- His first birthday. There’s a picture in the hallway of my house. Me, holding my son, surrounded by my two brothers and my father. It’s a really sweet picture. It was taken less than six months before I took custody of both of my brothers from my father.
- At one of Patrick’s football games.
Patrick played high school football. In an attempt to be the supportive, pseudo-parents that we are; my wife and I would take our kids to any home game that we could. The kids felt like their uncle was a celebrity and Patrick got to use his niece and nephew as cheerleader bait.
Imagine being a 16 or 17 year old boy and able to parade around your 3 year old niece – who thinks the cheerleaders are the equivalent of Disney Princesses – immediately after you’ve shown them all your physical prowess. We were there to support him. In every way possible.
He loved it.
The kids loved it.
Patrick was the first of the three of his sons to be interested in a subject that my father understood. I was a theater nerd and a counterculture attention whore. Ryan was a scholastic nerd and briefly toyed with the idea of the Air Force academy. But Patrick..Patrick was everything my father expected a son to be. Football player, JROTC cadet … those were worlds that my father understood and endorsed.
He attended as many of Patrick’s games that he could. Perched, like a parental gargoyle in the stands. Never one to cheer, or clap; but a presence.
Our wraith of a father.
Somehow, at one game, it came to my son’s attention that his grandpa was sitting in the stands. Having only ever met my wife’s parents his view of what a “grandpa” is was skewed towards the extremely positive.
He bounded up the bleacher stairs and planted himself, eagerly, at the side of my father. Excited to be in the presence of yet another grandparent.
My father looked down at my five year old son, scowled, and then went back to stoically watching the game; ignoring the innocent, and obviously enamored, boy sitting next to him.
Eventually, dejected, my son wandered back to join the functional family unit.
That was the last time my father got anywhere near my son. My son loves my wife’s parents. They are archetypical amazing grandparents. He knows stories about his Grandma DeeJay (my stepmother). But my children know next to NOTHING about my parents.
It’s hard to tell two kids, with good and present parents, that Daddy doesn’t talk to either of his parents because they’re not good people.
“I just wanted to check in and let you know that your son has been extra emotional yesterday and today… I’ve helped him work through [it], but we have definitely had a lot of tears. I wanted to give you a heads up in case he says anything and check to see if there are any extra stressors going on at home that might be carrying over into class.”
My son’s fifth grade teacher sent this to me. He’s ten and deep in the throes of tweendom. Some days it’s legos and action figures, other days he’s got his headphones on, under his bed, reading. He wears his heart on his sleeve; but tears at school aren’t something that has happened in a couple of years.
My wife talked to him after school. Just to check up and see what was going on.
He was worried about my dad.
In his heart he knows what grandparents (and parents) are supposed to be. Despite the fact that he probably can’t remember ever meeting my father. Despite the fact that my father has never been anything other than a brief subject of conversation. My son was distraught, internally, about the state of his grandfather’s health – or maybe about the effect this would have on his father.
In those brief moments my son cared more about my father than my father has ever cared about him.
I don’t deserve the type of people my children are.
