My father recently died. And although there is great sorrow and shock the truth is it doesn’t feel much different without him here. Maybe it’s because we lived so far away from each other for such a long time and rarely called one another. Or maybe it’s because my dad wasn’t a very warm man. We’ve always had an awkward relationship with many differences neither of us knew how to bridge. Much later we found a way to connect more deeply through our love of animals and the passing of my cat, and regularly called each other, but this only came much later.

He grew up in a cold home and had a tough life, and some of these early turbulent years indelibly shaped the man he would later become. I remember an awful story from my dad’s childhood that sums up the way of his early life and for me explains some of the reasons he was absent from my life even when he was around. It happened the last December he saw his father. The only man I knew as my grandfather was really my dad’s step-father. His real father was a drunk and one day just before Christmas my dad and his younger brother went looking for him. He wasn’t hard to find, he was at the same bar having another drink. Those were the days when children were allowed into bars and my dad and his brother Bobby sat on a stool next to their father who had just left their mother the year before.

He talked to my dad and Bobby about how wonderful this Christmas would be, they’d all be together as a family and celebrate the season. I’m sure like every addict trying to get another fix my dad’s father was a great salesman. John talked his two sons out of their bus fare home for one more drink. I imagine the brothers walked the long way home in the Chicago cold buoyed by the thought of their father coming home for even one day. In my mind it is a cold and dark night with snowbanks lining the streets, but in all probability it was the middle of the afternoon. Either way it was a long and frigid walk to a home that wasn’t much warmer. Of course there was no family Christmas celebration, they never saw him again. Their father died drunk and alone on the railroad tracks the following year.

This is the story that breaks my heart over and over again. I can’t imagine having a father like that, or a difficult childhood filled with uncertainty. Thankfully I don’t have to, I grew up with a very responsible man who planned for life’s unexpected twists. A man who gave me and my brother everything we could ever need to forge our own lives. I’ve come to terms with the fact he couldn’t show his love for me in the manner I longed for, and with myself for not understanding what he was offering. The fact is we are all doing the best we can with what we have. Our parents are human, imperfect, flawed, and driven by their own demons. In the end it is up to each of us to be brave enough to create the life we want with what we’re given. That is all any of us can hope for.

Thank you dad for all you did, for all you wanted to do, and for all you couldn’t do.

You gave me everything I needed.

kb