Tag: Dad

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.

Dad

Dad once tried to help me visualize how he’d started out in life. “Most guys start out up here,” he pointed at an invisible line high in the air. “I started down here.” His other hand was way, way down very near the table we were sitting at to have lunch.

There’s no question Dad had it rough as a child. His mother – my grandmother – was a monster from all reports. I never knew the woman. She died when I was four and a half months old. But her legacy and impact pervaded my father’s psyche until the day he died. By her emotional bequest to my Dad, she deeply affected mine. Such is the way of inter-generational trauma.

I heard no stories of motherly love and comfort about my father’s mother. Only horror stories. When Dad was about eight years old, he was playing with matches in the back shed near a kerosene barrel. The kerosene ignited. Dad’s whole face was instantly burned. His mother heard his screams and came running into the shed. When she saw what happened, she slapped his face. His skin came away in her hand.

That story was all the insight you needed into his desperately unhappy childhood. He would later explain that in the aftermath of her slap to his savaged face: “She stayed up all night and put egg whites on it.” Like many abused children, Dad remained loyal to his mother until the day he died. By loyal, I mean attached psychologically. He kept her picture by his bed. That is a space usually reserved for precious loved ones.

I have often thought of Dad’s analogy about the different altitudes at which we start out in life. In my head, I picture life’s journey as ascending a mountain. At the top of the mountain, there is a desirable destination – maybe heaven – that people work their whole lives to get to. On top of that mountain, there is a lush green and vast plateau where life is safe and easy, and enjoyable.

To get there, many people seem to take a fairly easy path on a seemingly pre-ordained trajectory. For them, this is the course of their lives. They take a meandering route up the side of the mountain, attending to necessary daily tasks and enjoying life’s pleasantries. They may struggle now and then along the way, but they get help. There is plenty to eat and drink. These pilgrims are kind to one another. Reaching that destination is their expected reward for a path well-walked and a life well-lived.

But there is another side to this mountain. There is no well-mapped path to follow. They face a rocky cliff face. The way is not marked. The route to the top is full of obstacles and danger. Provisions are scarce. Kindness even less so. Their eventual arrival at that vast plain has come at a considerable cost.

This is a route many abused children are forced to take. They climb uncertainly from one rock to the next in life praying the rock they pick will hold.

I have heard the incredulity of other people who were raised by “good enough” parents. They honestly cannot relate to abuse scenarios they cannot ever even imagine happening. They are lucky.

Dad’s difficulties were compounded by the era in which he was born. There were no psychiatrists or psychologists anywhere near him. There were few paths to healing. Self-care was a luxury that was subsumed by life’s difficult demands. In many cases, therapy was scoffed at. Or viewed with deep suspicions.

Dad tried. I remember the endless Dale Carnegie meetings he would attend. He attended men’s weekend spiritual retreats. He tried AA to beat his alcohol addiction. Made it all the way to one year of sobriety once. It didn’t stick. He was drunk as a lord on his 92nd birthday – two months before he died.

My healing journey started while Dad was still on the planet. The healing modalities that are available now were only starting to take hold in society. I told Dad of my interest in exploring the psychological consequences of childhood on our adult lives. He grew quiet on the phone for a minute, and closed the call by saying: “Maybe you can help other peopleby talking about it.” I sure hope so, Dad. RIP