Today is the seventh anniversary of my father's death from Alzheimer's at the age of eighty-one. I was not with him when he died. I did not attend his funeral. I did not find out about his death until three years later when a maternal aunt who finally had my phone number had the courage to call me. She didn't break the news at first and then I simply mentioned my father, that I hadn't seen him in over ten years. Did she know anything? Then the news came out. My aunt, herself quite aged (she will be ninety-one this year if she is still with us), became very uncomfortable and likely wanted to make her exit before I had a chance to ask her why no one had told me before. We have not spoken since.
What is left of my family, we have mutually disowned each other and for good reason. I know where my father died (a small town not far from here). I do not know where he is buried or if his ashes were simply scattered by the four winds.
He was in his early seventies the last time I saw him, living in a seniors' building in another small town not far from where he died. We were trying to be friends, to do something to mend, to heal the relationship that long ago was shredded and destroyed. I remember well our last real conversation. He told me that the reason he did not help me financially with getting dental treatment when I was homeless and suffering from murderous toothaches. I had been living with him part time, three years previously, commuting back and forth from Vancouver where I still had a little work despite being homeless. He told me his real reason for doing nothing to help me. He was providing my brother, his precious favourite son, with money to finance his cocaine habit. I said nothing. We were seated at a bench by the ocean watching the sunlight on the water. The silence that enfolded us also told me that this would be the last time we would ever see each other again.
In early December I phoned him to ask about seeing him at Christmas. He seemed confused and said that he wouldn't be seeing me, but my brother and his granddaughter instead. It was clear that I would be neither welcome nor invited. He had done many things in the past to hurt me. I nearly drowned myself while staying with him, so impacted was I by the emotional and verbal abuse as well as the memory of other abuses and insults that my body still carried. I shut down and decided not to call him for a while. Eight months later in July I began seeing a psychiatrist who used talk therapy for four years to treat me for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. My father, with the rest of my family, had abused me in many ways: emotionally, verbally, physically and sexually, throughout my childhood. It had left its mark, its lasting impact. It was time to put paid to this.
I also realized that if I was to recover that it would be better to see no one in my family during those four years. I did try to call my father a couple of times but found myself regressing to emotions and behaviour that were common to me when I was unwell: intense fear, an instinctive submission, a scary passivity that not only accepted abusive treatment but invited further. My psychiatrist and I were both in agreement that I had better not contact either my father or my brother (my mother had already been dead for many years).
I did well in therapy and after four years I tried to contact my father, from whom I had heard nothing. I had no success. I researched online and went through directory assistance. Nothing. I had a business card for my brother from several years ago, but I still did not feel safe about seeing my former abuser so I left it alone and only hoped that someone in the family would call me and tell me what was happening. Several relatives did have my contact information. Nothing again.
I realize now that when I legally changed my full name in 1995 as a way of distancing myself not from them so much but from the abuse that my family would likely not take well to it, that since they didn't like me anyway that they would all likely disown me. This turned out to be only too true. When I stayed with him part time (in the late nineties) my father, when drunk, would also mention something very similar. We are no longer father and son, he would say, but we can still be friends. Not surprisingly, he refused to call me by my new name and I took care to not insist though maybe I should have.
I must say that when I finally learned of his death that the emotions were strong and very mixed. For a few years, when he was sober, we were actually friends and seemed to enjoy each other's company. His mother died in her nineties and he returned to the bottle and our relationship suffered grievously.
Today I remembered when I was seventeen and staying with my father and his girlfriend and her son (the cuckoo in the nest) for a few very miserable months. I showed him some portraits from my sketchbook, all very well rendered. None of my subjects were smiling. He had been drinking, as always, the only way he knew how to unwind after work. He simply snarled that I had no business drawing such miserable looking people when there is so much sadness in the world already and walked away. I never showed him my art again. And I became noticeably absent from the house.
I cannot say that I miss him. I am sad at times for the father I never had but I am happy now and free from regrets. I am rather glad that he's gone now though I no longer bear him ill will. I am free from him and from all my family. No regrets at all. Rest in peace, Dad, because even in my own imperfect way I loved you and I love you still.
Robert Greenlaw, 1928-2009
No comments:
Post a Comment