Do I Have To?

Tuesday was a “national” day of celebration, but not all were in celebratory mode. While our nation and other nations were partying and engorging themselves on corned beef, potatoes, cabbage and an over abundance of beer, one person was grieving and going down a rabbit hole of sadness, over the death of a parent.

The grief, on this day was not because it was the anniversary of the parent’s death, on that particular date, but because the parent’s birthday was on that date, when he was living. That deep sadness and mourning, was the descriptor for the day, there was no silver lining or anything to be enjoyed. It came, and built into a massive downward spiral of grieving and guilt, as it does, every holiday that does not include him. It has been two years, and it doesn’t seem to be improving or getting easier.

You might be thinking I had a bad day, on the anniversary of my dad’s birthday, when he was alive, but it wasn’t me. I don’t hold onto things like that. My sentimentality is for the living. My dad is gone, and celebrating every, ‘when he was here’ or ‘today is so many years since’, is not something I do. I don’t tend to keep things and allow them to ruin something for the living. So, for me it was just another day.

I don’t drink, so alcohol was not a cause for depressive thoughts. I did make the corned beef and cabbage meal, because I love it, but I made it yesterday. I forgot to take out the brisket for the actual corned beef holiday. Cows’ cries were heard around the globe that day, by the way. That didn’t ruin my day either. I often forget or miss “special” days. Days are all like any other.

I, quite frankly, don’t get why, we have to have a holiday for every stinking thing, a month for anything, and a constant reminder of one day in history over another. The history is enough.

True story. My husband and I forget our anniversary just about every year, since we have been married. Why? Because its just a date. We do something special when we do remember it. Sometimes.

In reality, we just don’t think that there is one unique day to do something special, commemorating anything.

If you live content and with the understanding that life is short, you appreciate everything and make each day count. It doesn’t mean we don’t have normal, dull days, where we just bum around or that we sometimes take something for granted. We absolutely do. It just means, that we don’t feel pressured to make a big deal of these kinds of things. For me, my dad’s birthday was just a day. Not so, for my sister.

She grieved and mourned and made herself miserable, all day. She called me later in the day and asked why I hadn’t called her all day, but I knew the depths of the pit she was putting herself through, was not going to be improved by my call. I was not about to give her a reason to sit there and feel worse, and I was not about to do down the hole with her, even if she thought I should have.

She thought and thinks, I should be in perpetual lament, but especially, on any key dates. I can’t go there. It is not me, for more reasons than, that I dislike being down or in pain of the heart, for any reason. I have had enough of that my entire life, and I won’t live the rest of it dragging that weight with me. That makes my sister angry. She calls me cold. So be it. I can’t change her perception and she won’t hear why I don’t over-feel like she does.

My dad. I don’t grieve over him. My mom either. Both are gone.

My mom, (not biological, not even legally), was not a warm person. Not to me anyway. She was warmer, with my sister, but even that had limits. She gave love in financial transaction form. She loved you ‘as long as, you asked for nothing’. She loved you only ‘when you didn’t need or want anything more than a conversation’. Her love and attention were always in ‘as long as’ or ‘if’ terms. At least that was my experience. Even in death, she showed me she was not ‘mother’ and did not consider us on the level of her two, biological children. I was not a consideration.

As for not grieving my dad, I’ll explain why.

When my father was dying, I flew out to see him, as he approached his departing. I thought it was going to be a miserable, gut wrenching visit. What actually happened was different than what I expected.

I saw him, weak and barely tethered to the here and now, and I felt sorrow for him. It was so sad, no doubt about that. I helped as much as I could, I spent time with him, got him all his favorite foods, even though he was no longer eating much at all, and I gave him my forgiveness, so he could go in peace, with respect to me. I didn’t want him to go on to the next life, thinking I did not forgive him. I did forgive him and had, a long time before his decline in health.

The thing that surprised me was that I did not feel like I was going to fall apart. That was not what fully surprised me. I was calm and I was fine. What surprised me was that the reminiscing, as one does at the end of life, your own or someone else’s, left me empty. I felt void, confused that I could not come up with one good memory about my dad and life with my dad. I had so many bad ones, and even today, I only have very brief and limited remembrance of any good times with him.

My father, was not a nice man. I never said those words out loud, in my entire life. It took me many years, to stop protecting his honor and to come to terms with what I had, in my father. I can’t miss him. I don’t.

When he was alive, he made life miserable. He was abusive, physically( not sexually), emotionally and mentally, to the extreme. He invoked fear, not love. As a child I always said I loved him and I came to his defense, from anyone that would say a bad word about him, but I haven’t for years. I don’t speak of this with family, other than, my husband and son, because no one understands it. I definitely don’t talk about it with my sister, because, she somehow shut out all the bad, and holds on to her guilt, by remembering life with dad, like a fantasy story, where there were no monsters, just beauty and wonder.

There were monsters. There was little beauty. Life was a constant fear of what was around the corner. My dad was the dragon in my story.

He breathed fire and burned everything in his path, that didn’t please him. I don’t remember nice. I remember awful.

I know there were nice and happy moments, I do. This thing is, that the bad outweighed the good, for me, by a landslide.

I was the eldest and I paid for that, though I had no horse in the race, that awarded me, that prize. At my biological mother’s abandonment of us, when I was a two, I was instantly made an adult in terms of chores and taking care of my sister and the home. I cooked, cleaned, watched out for, all of it. I did that in conjunction with getting good grades in school. That was not so bad. I mean not having a childhood was miserable, yes, but it was the having to deal with adult things, serious things as a child, that I should not have had to even think about, until I was on my own, that ruined childhood, first.

Any good memories are all clouded by bad. He took us to Disney, and that should be a great memory, but I only remember his introduction to his girlfriend and her tagging along. The issue was not with that really. It was that my sister and I had been gone for over six months. We had not seen our only parent that long. He had shipped us to New York to meet our bio mom, after saying we would never meet her, until we were of age to make that choice. He sent us there with a one way ticket, that I didn’t recognize as a sign, that he didn’t intend to bring us back too quickly, if at all. He had apparently had time to meet and begin seriously dating, when he said he was doing everything he could to bring us home. Meeting the stranger and having to act like I felt like her child, did not work. We were begging to come home. He put us off for six months, and we were forced to stay with our grandparents in a one bedroom hoarder’s paradise apartment. I fault him for that memory.

I have brief recollections of having fun by the lake, we lived on, visiting elder neighbors, who were so sweet and gave us milk and cookies, but all of these memories are overshadowed by the beatings I’d get, because I did’t hear his whistling for us to come home, or from going to far from the house, or spilling polish on a bed sheet. Even the adult memories are marred with misery.

Dad could not take the dog leash or belt to me by then, but that didn’t stop him. He was verbally abusive. I can hear him calling us whores, bitches for, god knows what. I don’t know what the yelling was about anymore, but I recall every name he called me.

If he wasn’t making me miserable and keeping me down, he made sure to ruin the day somehow. By the time I was married and was making a home for my own family, far away from him, he knew, he could not physically hurt me. He still invoked fear, extreme fear. I was always afraid to answer the phone. I knew he would pick a fight, It was his hobby. He would then start his verbal tirades and put downs. And still I thought I loved him.

I made sure he was flown out, for the birth of my only son. I flew him out each time, I flew his sister from Spain, for a visit. I knew he could not afford it, and that he loved her and had not seen her in over thirty years, so I did it.

When we first found her, I flew him to Spain for a month to be with her. A week into the visit, he wanted to come back stateside. Apparently he was losing control over his live-in girlfriend and had to attend to that. Fine. It was arranged.

On both occasions when he came, for a visit with me and his sister, his trip was shortened, because he would pick such ugly fights with one of us. His degradation was not just at me, but at her too. She would be on vacation, in my home and she would be brought to tears.

The final time he came to my home, I had flown him in again to see my aunt while she stayed here a month. He began early that morning. He got mad that I asked him to stop smoking in the guest room, and had asked him to smoke outside.

My aunt, also a smoker, managed to comply with my wished, the entire time, and never once lit up inside my home. When she agreed, that if that was my request, he should honor it, he went insane with anger. He didn’t direct it at me, but at his sister. She had taken sides with me, against him. He insulted her, called her names I will not speak. He went on and on for what seemed like hours. She was crying the whole time. She is a gentile woman, and was not ever talked to like that, and here was the man that should love her, berating her and stomping on her spirit.

I told him to stop right then, but he kept on. He had his fuel for rage and liked it. It was power for him. But he didn’t count on one thing.

At some point, my husband asked him to stop and settle down. And that is when my dad went off on him and threw my son into the mix. The same tactics he used on me, and my aunt, were now directed at my husband and son.

I have never seen my husband angry. Ever. That day, when my husband, said in a loud voice, “enough”, I felt that in my bones. For him to get to that point, was serious. But he was right. This was it. No more. He had been here for three days, the usual timeframe for him to find a point for a fight.

Anyway, when I saw and heard and felt my husband’s voice reverberate in my blood, I told my dad to pack his bags. He was leaving. I called the airline, paid the fee to change an unchangeable ticket, and called him an uber. I didn’t want to be in his presence one moment longer. I did not want my aunt, my guest, in my house, spoken to like I had allowed him to speak to me, my entire life. I was not about to allow him to speak to my husband or child like that either. He poked a bear. And he got what he never expected.

I said that day, that he would never be permitted to come here again, and he never did.

There were times that my sister asked why I couldn’t fly him out, or invite him out, and I would have to remind her that I made a decision and I would not go back on it.

I think that was the day, my hearts connection to my father was severed completely. It was attached by a thread for many many years, but that tether, had been stretched and worn, to the breaking point. My love for my dad died that day.

I realized that loving him was not possible. I realized that I had not loved him for years, but that I was fulfilling a responsibility as a child to love their parent. This thing with my dad, was not love. He did not know what love is.

It’s a man allowing her to bring her dad over and over into his home, knowing how it always ended, and never saying a word. It’s that man using his hard earned money to have her buy the airline tickets, knowing what happened every time he did. It’s a young child, my son, appeasing me, by calling his grandfather every week, so I wouldn’t have to get a lecture. It’s him putting up with the crassness of his grandfather, even though he had met him twice in his life.

My dad did not love. He controlled, he manipulated, he twisted truth and outright lied, he forgot any kindness to him the second after it was given and cashed in.

I left my dad that week, that I went to see him, confused as to why I didn’t feel sick about not having any feelings of deep sadness. I didn’t cry for his eventual passing. I didn’t cry when he passed. I cried. Plenty. But my crying was for the pain I saw my sister growing through. I was profoundly sad for her suffering and guilt.

She had the same experience with dad, I had, but her mind shifts into guilt each time. She feel guilt for every bad interaction with anyone. She will suffer over and over again, so she doesn’t disappoint, make someone else unhappy, of make an enemy. I am just to cut from that cloth. She doesn’t understand or approve of my reactions or feelings about much.

I can’t feel anything anymore, for my dad. I loved him, and never got that back. I felt hated and manipulated. I don’t love that. How could I? I regret, that whatever caused him to become what he was, changed him from what might have been a wonderful man.

I don’t know how long it was or has been since I stopped loving my dad, but I do know, it has been a very long time. Maybe I never did. Maybe I said or felt I had to out of fear, or expectations. It doesn’t matter anymore, really.

I made peace with all of it many years ago and I forgave him. I got my own peace in that. I gave him absolution from any guilt or worry he might have had in his last days. He might have had remorse. He often looked out into space like he was rethinking through every year of his life. Maybe he was angry, maybe regretful, I will never know.

For two years now, I wait for the call I know I’ll get from my sister, every ‘special’ day. The one where she expects, her grief to be mine as well. I don’t seek her out. I just can’t put myself through what I don’t feel. I won’t fight with her, as to how or why I don’t feel, as she does. I love her too much to make her more sad, or to keep her in her misery and mourning. I won’t add to that.

She asks me why I don’t show any emotions for dad, why I don’t feel like she does. I say nothing more than, that I process differently than she does. I can’t go through what she puts herself through. I can’t grieve, mourn or guilt myself for dad or mom, even. Do I have to?

Maybe I am wrong on my approach. I don’t think I am. I am at peace and I’m content. I hold no grudge and I have let go.

#life #thishappedtome #grief #relationships #writers #writing