Today, among other (stupid) things, marks the fifth anniversary of my father’s death.
As in previous years, I chose to commemorate the occasion by forgetting about it until well into the afternoon and greeting the remembrance with a bemused ache. This is my default mode of response to most everything in the world, and I guess it works as well as any other. Look at me, feeling a thing. How funny that is.
This year, though, the ache was a little more protracted. A little deeper. I suppose I was mad at myself for forgetting, again. Then I just got mad that I could forget. There isn’t really much to remember, to be honest. A lot of times in things like this there’s the part where the writer begins extolling his father’s virtues, all the happy memories they shared. But the guy left when I was six. I saw him only a handful of times after that, never for longer than a week. Even so, I suppose I do have memories.
I remember bar rooms and bait shops, for instance.. Eating clams he had dug with his bare hands. Gifts of starfish and stories of scuba diving for specimens to sell to museums. Running up the steps to buy frozen candy bars at the marina. Always hurting my teeth biting in.
I remember the little boat he owned, too. The Justin Time. How he let it fall into disrepair, and wound up selling the scraps. For bus fare.
I remember years of hating his guts and cursing his name and still picking up and playing along on the phone. “Hey, bud.” “Hey, old timer.” He never, not once, used my name.
I remember the joke Mike told early on in our friendship, trying to see how far we could get under each other’s skin—“Well, if not loving your son was a crime—oh wait, your dad’s in jail.” How it was then that I knew I’d found a brother.
I don’t remember him being drunk, though I don’t see why I would. I was six. If I do, it’s only glimpses in retrospect, at angles. The way he’d fall asleep during the first quarter of football games. The cardboard he used to patch the hole he put in the wall.
I suppose I do remember one time. He showed up to school when I was receiving a merit award for honesty. Stinking. And I wasn’t honest enough to let him know I could tell.
But I also remember watching him at work, when he worked. How happy it made me when he let me sit behind the bar. He only let me mix Shirley Temples. But a dozen drunks suddenly found a taste for them, for a while.
I remember the way he taught me manners, and kindness. How you couldn’t judge a man by the condition of his shoes. Because everyone’s are dirty on the soles. Putting my fingers in the electrical socket and him telling me he’d allow cursing just this once.
I especially remember the cigarettes he smoked. The way they’d fill the room. How he would tear the plastic off and teach me to keep it aloft with my breathing. Kool Menthols. I have smoked every brand under the sun and never touched them once. I won’t.
Mostly, though, I remember getting the call to come home. How much I didn’t want to go. Putting it off and sleeping in and not getting to the hospital til the very moment they administered the morphine blast that would end his life.
The thirty seconds he looked me in the eye.
I tried to hate him after that, but I couldn’t. Not really. That’s what’s supposed to happen, I guess. You spend your adolescence hating your parents for what they aren’t. Then you learn how hard it is to be a person and begin loving them for what they are.
Except I don’t know who he is. I never did. Everything I think is hearsay, or half-remembered. I’ve had to fill in the blanks for myself. The weekend he died, my cousin was trying to comfort me. She told me how proud he was of me, and how smart. How much he loved to read. And it broke my heart. Because I love to read. And I had no idea if he even could. It was amazing to me. That my father could read.
Every day of my life has been a struggle because he left. I do not feel that I fit, anywhere. Even when I am surrounded by love.
But I am okay. I am happy. I like the person I have become. I think he would have, too. And I am too old, and too wise, to hate him anymore. I didn’t have his life. I didn’t have to make the choices he made.
But I really wish he had taken the time to tell me about them. Because I would have had his back. Always.
When I was seven, he told me we had to stop saying “I love you” to one another. That I was getting too old for it. Instead, from that day on, we just said “Guess what?” The answer was implied, but unspoken. Always unspoken. Even then, I found this weird. But I went along with it. I assumed he was a man, and knew more about what masculinity was. Lord knows I’ve found many weirder things out about men, having been raised entirely by women. Until the day he died, I thought he just didn’t believe it was something men should say to each other.
Now I think he was just ashamed.
So, five years have passed, Dad. I have hated you and forgiven you and tried to talk to you in my times of need. I think of you every time I look at the moon. Every day of my life is spent trying not to become you, and giving the people around me the affection and support you could never give to me. I like that. Sometimes I think I was even better off without you. Your leaving gave me the knowledge that I can do whatever this world asks of me. Because I had to. I would not trade that for anything else. Not even you.
But right now, it is five years on, and I am feeling warmer than I have any right to expect, and even if you were here, all I would really want to say to you now is one thing—Guess what, Dad?
I love you.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
