{"id":1128,"date":"2009-01-04T19:08:29","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T00:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2014-08-15T20:56:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-16T00:56:16","slug":"tomorrow-is-our-fathers-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/tomorrow-is-our-fathers-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Our father’s birthday – finally, today I love you very much"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is our father’s birthday. I didn’t always get along with daddy, especially growing up.\u00a0 None of us did. \u00a0 The typical teenage syndrome when you think you hate your father. He was always very strict and controlling and, we thought, unreasonable. He had a 6th grade education, worked construction and I know now that he did a long hard job and came home to kids who smart mouthed him and that couldn’t have been easy.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

My mom got home from work about 9:30pm so he had us from 5:00pm on.\u00a0 Being a parent at all is such a gigantic job, and I never wanted to do it.\u00a0 I’ve always been far too selfish.\u00a0 I couldn’t even keep the same job\/boyfriend\/husband for more than 3 years at a time, I never wanted to subject myself to an 18 year commitment of any type.\u00a0 So I understand now how difficult it must have been for my father raising us ungrateful wretches, but of course then<\/em> I didn’t see that.\u00a0 That was back when I knew everything \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

My dad was what they’d now call bi-polar and used to drink.\u00a0 He could be psychologically abusive and he believed in corporal punishment.\u00a0 He was a deeply troubled man and I only realized that years later.\u00a0 Long story short, when I was 14, Daddy – we called him Bob – and my brother Jerry had a falling out and Jerry got “banished”.\u00a0 I did not know this and was told that Jerry had gone to Vietnam, and then later that he had died in Vietnam.\u00a0 Yep, I told you our dad was unbalanced.\u00a0 I did not know until 37 years later, in 2003, that Jerry was alive until he emailed to ask, “Hi, do you remember me?” Needless to say, I was floored.<\/p>\n

So today is Daddy’s birthday.\u00a0 As I was growing up, his birthday generally evoked negative feelings since I’d be obligated to buy him a card.\u00a0 None of them ever said what I wanted them to.\u00a0 They were all too personal and intimate.\u00a0 In a workshop once with a group, I had everyone create a card for their mother and father and say in the card exactly what it was they wanted to say and be really understood.\u00a0 I remember my first one was a Father\u2019s Day card.\u00a0 It was after much healing and forgiveness had taken place within me, and it said:<\/p>\n

“You were unfair when I was a child, yet through my childlike eyes I judged you for it and saw not that you, too, were merely a victim and in your ignorance knew no other way to treat me.\u00a0 Now that we\u2019re both older and wiser, we don\u2019t have those problems, or at least the confrontations no longer take place.\u00a0 Perhaps you are cowed at my own empowerment, or maybe I\u2019m just a more formidable foe now.\u00a0 A man who mistreats his children is not to be hated, rather we should extend compassion for his lack of control.<\/p>\n

So now we silently sit together five times a year, the Hallmark card placed like a holy icon between us, hoping to heal the past without mentioning it.\u00a0 I accept your unspoken apology as I see how frail you\u2019ve become.\u00a0 Not so much in body, but in spirit.\u00a0 Beaten down from your own abuses coming back to haunt you, I needn\u2019t add to the burden, nor can I voice my forgiveness.\u00a0 You understand.\u00a0 We understand each other now and that\u2019s enough.\u00a0 And today, finally, I love you very much.”<\/p>\n

My father mellowed after my youngest brother, Bobby, committed suicide in 1976 at the age of 22.\u00a0 At that time I also thought my brother Jerry had died.\u00a0 Two years later, Daddy scared off my mom with his drinking; she divorced him and moved to Tampa.\u00a0 I felt that left no one to love him, so I began keeping in touch and visiting more.\u00a0 He had stopped drinking, but now took massive amounts of Tylenol with codeine due to a back injury that left him partially disabled.\u00a0 Pain controlled his life.\u00a0 The drinking and drugs had taken its toll \"\"<\/a>on his judgment and he could see no way out.\u00a0 In 1987, he shot himself.\u00a0 He died on Father’s Day.<\/p>\n

Happy birthday, Daddy.
\nFree and happy at last.<\/p>\n

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