Dad’s 110th

Had he lived, my father would be 110 years old today. He didn’t have much of a life. Not what you’d call a “good life.” Not from my point of view anyway.

But Dad was survivor. I inherited that from him. From both parents, if I’m honest.

Dad was a severely abused child. Physically and emotionally. The worst tormenter in his young life was his mother. By all accounts, she was a selfish and heartless woman. She was known to be unsatisfied with her lot in life. I doubt that is the reason why she abused her children. If she were alive today, I am sure she would be diagnosed with some degree of sociopathy.

Dad blamed his mother for most of his emotional ills and difficult, fragmented life path. Dad also blamed his father because he didn’t step up to intervene in her assaults.

Possibly the worst story I heard was that of the kerosene barrel. Back in the days of the early twentieth century, kerosene was a necessary household staple. It kept kerosene lamps alight. It fueled kerosene heaters for necessary warmth in the piercing mid-winter cold of provincial East Coast Canada.

Dad was a curious child. A trait he carried forward into late adulthood. His interests seemed boundless. That curiosity led him to the woodshed one evening where the kerosene barrel was kept. Ominously, he had brought a box of matches with him.

When he lit a match, the uncovered kerosene barrel flared up and burned all of my father’s face. At the tender age of only 7 or 8 years old, my father would have been nose-to-nose with the barrel. He screamed piteously and his mother came running out of the house from the kitchen, just inside.

In rapid succession, she saw the kerosene barrel after the flareup extinguished itself, the matches and my father. In a rage, she slapped her hand across my father’s red and peeling face. The details of what happened after are mostly left to speculation.

Dad recalled that the skin of his face hung down on the sides. The damage was so extensive, he was never able to grow a beard. Hearing the story later as a young adult, I was horrified and stupefied.

A normal mother and normal parents might have bundled up their injured child and rushed him to a hospital. That did not happen. In the classic response of an abused child, my father exonerated my grandmother: “She stayed up all night putting egg whites on my face.”

It took years of healing myself to understand the enigma that my father was. He was a handsome, well-built, strapping man. Yet until the day he died on December 24, 2005, a large part of him remained that fearful and abused child.

Dad described himself as suffering from an “inferiority complex.” I would describe it now as post-traumatic stress disorder. He never really recovered.

Bear in mind this horror story is only the tip of an emotionally abusive iceberg. I can only imagine the small and consistent episodes of abuse and general lack of love in that household that my father and his two older brothers endured.

I admired Dad because he never stopped searching for a cure to his inner anguish and turmoil. He took several Dale Carnegie courses. Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” had a prominent place on the bookshelf beside Dad’s law books. Dad won awards for public speaking at these meetings.

He attended “Men’s Retreats” put on – I assume – by some church group. Catholic, no doubt, as that was the predominant religion and power broker in the province of Newfoundland at the time.

Dad tried and repeatedly failed to quit booze for good. He got all the way up to one year of sobriety once. But on his 92nd birthday – just two months before his death – he was drunk as a lord and emotionally effusive as he would always be when loaded. I had begun to not care. His deficits created many of my own and I was in the middle of sorting through them and trying to heal.

It would be fair to say my Dad was an atypical father. He didn’t seem to have the protective instincts of other fathers I encountered among my friendship group. Support from him was erratic and situation specific. He was feeling good about life and himself, I was often the beneficiary. When I really needed something and asked for it, I would be denied if he didn’t feel generous.

Dad knew he was afflicted. He used to say: “I am doing my inadequate best.” High marks for self-awareness.

Of course, Dad would not have lived to 110. I am not sure I would have wished him to. HIs passing for me was tinged with equal measures of grief and relief. He left an emotional morass and three badly damaged daughters in his wake.

I don’t know if I will be be able to leave a cleaner slate when I die. I certainly followed in his footsteps in many ways. The difference is that I was able to seek and find relief and healing from my abuse. To be fair, I grew into a time where that was more acceptable and easier to access in society.

Still today, in particular, I think of him and the influence he had on me and my life. I’d like to tell him I survived him. I might phrase that differently if I were face-to-face with him. He was my Dad and I loved him. I would say he loved me and my sisters in his way.

I would also say, that just like him, in the realms of parenting and marriage, I am doing my inadequate best. I have worked my whole life to break the ties of intergenerational trauma. I hope my children and grandchildren will eventually benefit from that. Time will tell.

RIP Dad. I hardly knew you but I send my love to you today. Wherever you are.