{"id":37229,"date":"2014-06-15T20:08:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T00:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=37229"},"modified":"2024-06-16T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2024-06-16T22:35:45","slug":"my-dad-died-on-fathers-day-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/my-dad-died-on-fathers-day-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"My dad died on Father’s Day 1987"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Daddy & Sabby, one of our pet ocelots<\/center><\/p><\/div>\n

My dad died on Father\u2019s Day 1987. This is only a sad story if we believe there is only one life and this is it. I KNOW IT IS NOT. This is not a sad story to me. This is a success story of someone who made a hard decision and chose his own way out, in his own time. Today marks 37 years since my dad committed suicide age 62. He could be psychologically abusive. He smacked us at times. He was what they now call bi-polar. He used to drink Canadian Club. As teens, none of us got along with him, the typical syndrome when you think you hate your father.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

He was strict and controlling. He had a 6th grade education, worked construction. I know now that he did a long hard job and came home to kids who smart mouthed him. That couldn\u2019t have been easy. He mellowed after my youngest brother, Bobby, committed suicide in 1976 at the age of 22. <\/span><\/strong>
\nDaddy took massive amounts — up to 80+ a day at the end (that’s like 3 an hour, he seldom slept) — of Tylenol 4 with codeine due to a back injury that left him partially disabled. Pain controlled his life. Years of drinking and Rx had taken its toll on his judgment and he could see no way out. In 1987, he shot himself, as my brother did 11 years earlier.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My father was a troubled soul,<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a shell shocked (PTSD) veteran, alcoholic, addicted to painkillers from an injury. After he shot himself, he was in a coma for almost 2 weeks before he dropped his body. The night nurse would tell me that he was “marching” in his sleep. Even in sleep he was working out his stuff. I left dad\u2019s bedside at Baptist Hospital in Miami where I\u2019d signed for him to be taken off life support and it was a cathartic 3 hours drive home north along highway AIA, the ocean drive. Mom held a lot of guilt that dad kept so many secrets and estranged his family, yet her choice was to stay or leave. She stayed as long as she could.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When loved ones are passing, know that our consciousness links up with theirs and we are able to send them love and comfort and have the final conversations we could never have in waking life. Know that nothing unsaid ever needs to remain unresolved.<\/a><\/span><\/strong>
\nHe died on Father\u2019s Day. Free at last, Daddy.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

How to forgive and find closure if the other is unwilling, absent or dead<\/a>
\nThe End of Death As We Know It<\/a>
\nIf you could see where I have gone<\/a>
\nRevisiting the childhood father energy <\/a><\/p>\n

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