It was a Spring Sunday morning this September and I was at the Linksfield Clinic visiting my father. He had been in hospital for weeks and was in a coma - 80 years old, dying of cancer and regret. We had a lousy relationship. He had a lousy relationship with most people, but he was my father, and watching him die was torturous. I couldn't bear to leave the hospital. I would sit there for hours, drinking takeaway cappuchinos from the hospital coffee shop, playing him Nat King Cole songs off my phone and holding his frail paw of a hand.
Every few hours, a nurse would come and take his blood pressure and prick his finger to check his sugars. It seemed vulgar and superfluous and I was so grateful that they kept doing it. As if the dark red blood they squeezed from his index finger meant that he was still alive. That there was still a chance that things could be different.
He wrestled with the coma, glossy and gaunt, like a ghoul, desperate to be released from Life; too unresolved for Life to let him go. That morning, my mom, long since divorced from my father, and her friend, a spiritual woman named Marilyn, stood with me at his bedside. We held hands and prayed and begged him to let go; begged the god we were not certain we believed in to have mercy and to let him try again in another incarnation.
Half an hour later, he stopped breathing.
He had come and gone, just like that. No more blood pressure cuffs or chances or drops of blood or possibilities. In our 35.9 years together, he never once told me he loved me. He never told me he was proud. He never told me I was pretty or clever. And now he never would.
Bam. We had missed it.
My Dad has been gone for two and half months and I haven’t missed him. Or maybe I’ve been missing him my whole life so this doesn’t feel much different. Today I went through dusty boxes of his things. He kept a file labelled ‘Family’ in Times New Roman font, full of family photos, organised with pastel alphabetical dividers. He had a wad of my photographs under ‘J’ and seeing that dissolved me.
Maybe he loved me. It never felt like it. I loved him. Maybe he didn't feel that either. Maybe he was as bad at being loved as he was at doing the loving.
When the torrent of sadness subsided that Sunday morning, I decided to reconfigure the way I fill my life.
2013 will look different because of my father. I will stop seeking him in everything else and try to start filling myself up. I will stop trying so bloody hard to be worthy and start working harder on being worthwhile.
Maybe then it will all make sense to me. John Mayer seems to have this father daughter thing figured, at least lyrically, and he's a knob.
my dearest Jo . its okay . he was only who he was and what he could handle. he did love you and somewhere in all of this confusion you know this . he was just a person trying to make sense of this mess called life . dont be too hard on your memories. love him back with no inhibition , no confusion . love him for the person you are and will become . love him because that it what makes sense . change your expectations of of what
ReplyDeleteyou need and what he could give . change it because you can change your story.love him hard and love him strong because that is what we want of our children .
Jo I can relate so much to your story... And it's a loong story. I will stop trying so hard to be worthy ...that statement is so profound..those of us, who suffer this ungodly affliction, spend our lives never feeling worthwhile. A self fulfilling prophecy that can consume and destroy everything that could turn out to be good. Why take the chance if we already know that we don't deserve it? It's just too hard to explain to those humans who have never experienced how hard you try to be loved when a father's love is conditional. I often wished with all my heart that he would take me in his arms and tell me I was special.. I was his princess..I stopped wishing at eighteen.. He was never going to be what he should be. I will never be whole, but I am three dimensional..thank G-d. I have real empathy and through this struggle I will be a better parent. Amen
ReplyDeleteJo, I cannot begin to tell you how your post so profoundly resonated with me. Thank you for being so brutally honest and open with us. Thank you. I just want to give you a huge cyber-hug!
ReplyDeleteAnd the post by Anonymous (9:03) is just so so true.
I don't want to distract from the import of your post, but just add another dimension in terms of the sad consequence of "this ungoldy affliction". (so well put, Anonymous).
I fell totally and utterly in love with a Beautiful Woman with such an affliction (and a father similar to yours, Jo). And she loved me so too. It was 3 years glorious love frequently interrupted by stunned confusion and break ups filled with mutual longing.
It took me ages to realise that, because she felt so unworthy of my love, that she had to randomly test me in the most cruel and unexpected manner. During make-ups she would admit how she "loved to set me up for failure".
She would in a premeditated fashion do the most hurtful things knowing full well that I would head for the hills so that she could say : "You see! He doesn't really love me and I am so unlovable." But I did. And she wasn't.
I could go on and on with examples. We made up so many times with me (and her) hoping it would never happen again. But it did.
So...... what I trying to say to people who feel so unworthy, do whatever it takes to rid themselves of this understandable but so destructive an affliction. It destroys you and it destroys your relationships too.
Life is Beautiful. You are Beautiful.