Missing the missing
My dad and I were not close. I loved him and he loved me, but we weren’t close. I wish we had been. He was somewhat present when I was growing up, but we were 4 kids, he was running a business, he participated in the Lion's Club and Elk's Club, he liked to bowl and golf, and he had a situation at home that made it easy for him to want to stay away. A less-than-civil divorce when I was 14 didn't help matters. Could I have reasonably expected that after the divorce our relationship would have improved? No.
After some initial anger, I accepted that we just didn't have that relationship like some of my friends had with their dads.
I little tinge of regret came back to me seeing my younger stepbrother at dad’s funeral. He was born from a subsequent marriage, which also ended in divorce but much more amicably. He grew up close to our dad, who gave him more attention than he ever gave me, at least by my reckoning. I’m happy that my stepbrother had that.
My stepbrother would be missing dad more than me. Being at the funeral service was more visceral for him and more abstract for me. I didn't have to go back to dad’s house and see dad's last cigarette in the ashtray. My stepbrother did.
Some math. My dad died at almost 90 years old. The first and last 30 years of my dad’s life trumped the middle 30 if you ask me, and I suppose in a way that was good because he seemed to achieve some degree of happiness in those two non-consecutive 30 years spans. The first 30 years: young, handsome and happy-go-lucky. The last 30 years: successful third marriage and family life. Unfortunately, I appeared in my dad’s life in that second 30-year span that wasn’t so happy – again, my opinion. The second 30-year span had lots of chaos and a bitter (upgraded the adjective thinking about it) divorce. After the acrimonious (new adjective) divorce, our relationship never went beyond an already limited one. So yeah, I loved my dad and miss him but had been missing him for some time.
A bright spot: in the last few years, we started to get a little closer as adults, with less focus on the past. Unfortunately, that getting closer got cut short with a call one morning on my last birthday with news of his death.
Despite the period of my dad’s life I appeared in, it nevertheless felt awkward that I wasn’t consulted in writing or contributing or reviewing the obituary or for any funeral arrangements. I know that the last 30 years of my dad’s life were important, but to write my siblings and me (of the same mother) off seemed to be an oversight. Perusing the photo boards posted at the service, out of 250+ photos I saw four of me and zero of my partner of 35 years. The lack of photo representation emphasized what I guess I already knew: my relationship with dad was tenuous. But what does it matter now, it’s just a photo board my partner - voice of reason - reminds me one day months after the service.
Our house
My partner and I lived in our house in Seattle, ironically, for about 30 years. We fell in love with the house at first sight. We lovingly remodeled it and had many good times in the house. You could say we had a strong relationship with the house. We had skin in the game with it. It was our first home that we owned. We grew up in the house so to speak.
Selling it was bittersweet. It was sadder that my dad’s passing in a way because there was more “relationship” lost in selling. And the loss was fresh, rawer.
But really, the selling of a house affected me more than my own father’s passing? I struggled to slap myself out of this feeling, but I couldn’t.
Unfortunately, my dad never came to visit my house, my life in Seattle. Yes, it was 3,000 miles away but so was my sister’s house and he visited her, and she didn’t even bother to come to the funeral. Harrumph!
The last 30-years, my dad and I lived separate lives.
Deaths in houses
There was a death in our house in 1967. The newspaper article said the owner went into a room and gunshots were heard by his wife who discovered him dead. So many questions. Should we include it in the history of the house that we created for the buyers or let them discover that themselves? What room did that exactly happen in, not that we ever experienced any bad juju in any room of the house. Did his wife ever sleep in that room again if it occurred in the bedroom? Was their marriage good?
One place where the marriage wasn’t good was in the house I grew up in. That house in the unpleasant (stop!) divorce went to my mother as did the kids. You could say my parents’ marriage metaphorically died in that house and we lived in the carcass of the marriage for many years. It takes two to tango, but a carcass is a carcass.
I remember many things about the house I grew up in. Three in particular: the wood-paneled Pledge® scented hallway, the day the house got assembled (it arrived in pieces I’m not kidding!), and the night my dad left. He left with a bunch of clothes in his arms. He asked for my help carrying stuff to the car. His car was parked in front of the house, the spot usually reserved for visitors. Clothes thrown in back, he peeled off in his car never to come back. It was 1978.
Another memory of that childhood house: I never saw my dad happily saunter down that wood-paneled hallway to the bedroom; my parents never slept together as far as I remember. They were seldom affectionate and loving. How awful for them. How awful for us kids. I hope that wasn’t bad juju for the next owners.
What little information I could get about my dad’s death, I learned he died at home, in his sleep with the TV on. He died just 2 miles away from the house he left in 1978. For all intents and purposes, it could have been 3,000 miles away.
Closures
When he passed, my involvement was nothing more than showing up and being present as best as I could at the funeral service. It was awkward to be at the funeral, but I wanted to be there. I needed the closure. The whole affair made me wonder who I’d be with toward the end of my life. What stories will be told, and which stories will be omitted after I'm gone? Who will be left off of my photo boards?
A story that reared its head at the funeral was something of a origin story for my dad in those last 30 years. It was an unpleasant event that took place sometime around the divorce that involved my dad, some family members, and an unwarranted pummeling. I wasn’t there. I only heard the story recounted by my dad, multiple times and in tears. It was a formative if not an extremely unnerving event for him. Many in the last third of his life knew of this event, or some version of it. Still, it was tacky and unwarranted when the spouse of a stepsister I didn’t know greeted me with the question “Why did it happen?” referring to the story. If she needed some form of closure, I could offer none.
The probate hearing for dad’s estate was on the same day we sold our house. Closures! We were on pins and needles most of the day waiting to hear news about the house. We did not worry about or attend the probate hearing.
In the final days of closing our house and saying goodbye, we had – what seemed like at the time – a flood of visitors who wanted to stop by and spend time with us. I was less than a gracious host. I kept wondering why is it now that everyone wants to come over? I just wanted to mope around the house the last weeks and days of our ownership saying goodbye in my own way, not serving people and cleaning up after parties. Then it occurred to me that these friends being there at the end (really a send-off of the house) were the right people to be there to help close out the house’s story.
Photo justice
As we got closer to selling our house, I ran around taking pictures and videos of everything I could. I wanted to capture the house, so I’d never forget it. Yet in the back of my mind, I knew it was a fool’s errand to try to remember something too well. It’s okay if the house like my dad are hazy recollections. Better for nostalgia to fill in and soften the reality.
My dad had a set of (photographic) slides mostly from the first 30 years of his life – happy times. Those slides were of his time in the army based in Germany and his travels around Europe. Scratched up and dirty slides of dad in front of the “Little Mermaid” in Copenhagen, dad on skis in some Italian alpine resort, dad on the Amalfi Coast, dad in Paris, dad in front of 10 Downing Street. Ironically, these are all places I would eventually visit in my travels.
The night my dad left with with his clothes in arms, those slides were not part of his exit. He longed for those slides for years and would ask about them repeatedly. Maybe he wanted some proof of his happiness in those first 30 years?
My answer each time he asked me was “I don’t know anything about them.” And I really didn’t. Then one day 20 odd years after the divorce, the slides magically were shown to me in a sort of oh-by-the-way look at this. Were the slides kept out of malice or simply misplaced?
I sincerely hope my dad didn’t think I was a useless apparatchik, just following orders. I really didn’t know about those slides and was appalled to find out about their existence. I could appreciate the importance of those photos for him as photos are also important to me. To make some attempt at amends, I personally returned the slides and digital versions of them. A small gesture for closure.
Flutes and whistles
“Fortune presents gifts
Not according to the book
When you expect whistles it's flutes
When you expect flutes it's whistles”
The song’s text comes from a poem “Da bienes Fortuna” by Spanish Poet, Luis de Gongora (1561 – 1627). The poem explores the theme of fortune and how she bestows gifts unpredictably.
We must comply with fortune’s gifts. This is one way to think about the relationship with my dad. It was what it was. The relationship we never had was partly my fault, partly his fault, and partly (okay largely) external actors. Some of these external actors decided to put a monkey wrench in the relationship machinery for reasons I will never begin to understand nor want to at this point. Fortune wasn’t feeling generous.
Despite the wrench in the machinery, what I do know about dad, I feel like we have a lot in common. And that makes me sad to not have understood that sooner and at a deeper level. The times I spent with my dad, I found him to be a decent person, not malicious and willing to help others. That’s all good in my book, fortune be damned.
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