My Dad

     He was always happy to see me, even if I wasn’t happy to see him.  For most of my life he would visit once per year at Christmas time.  He had usually traveled somewhere exotic and would be armed with photo books.  I wasn’t always interested in his travels, but sometimes I was. The man went everywhere.  He gave the best hugs.

    He burned bridges here in Minnesota a few years after the bitter divorce when I was in 3rd grade and fled angry former allies and creditors by taking a job that moved him around the country.  I remember he went to Kentucky first, then Texas, then Florida.  He eventually settled in Florida and remarried to a woman who had 3 kids from a previous marriage.  I was in 5th grade when he walked out of my life.

    I spent too many years thinking that it was normal; that it was okay for a dad to do that. It has affected me to this day and colors every relationship I have, even still.  You can chalk most of my bitterness and cynicism toward the world as remnants of raging abandonment issues.

    I used to tell people that I was lucky because my dad lived right by Disney World.  I never felt lucky.  In 5th grade I wondered what I could have done wrong to make him do that.

    The first time I was on an airplane I was in 9th grade and I flew to Texas alone to see him.  He lived in Lubbock.  We didn’t have much to talk about but Dad was an okay person to share silence with.  We went on a few road trips to Carlsbad Caverns and a place called Cloudcroft, Colorado.  During my time there, he pointed out Calvin and Hobbes to me.  The strip about a boy and his possibly imaginary tiger quickly became my favorite.  At the end of that trip, he asked me if I would continue to follow it at home.  I explained Mom didn’t get the weekly newspaper, just the Sunday one for the ads.

    When it was time to leave, to fly back to Minnesota, I heard him talk to the attendant at the gateway and mentioned that I might be upset when I left.  He walked me onto the plane and I burst into deep, thundering sobs and clung to him before he left.  I didn’t know it then, but that was the only time in my life that he and I would spend an extended time alone together.

    From that day forward, he clipped out the Calvin and Hobbes strips and mailed them to me, once per week through its entire run well past High School.

    Over the years, I went to Florida a total of 3 times.  Once when he lived in West Palm Beach, and twice after he got married and lived in Tampa.  But other than those trips it was his once-yearly Christmas visits.  He was always generous with gifts at Christmas and always mailed a check for my birthday.

    But other than that, I grew up and moved on.  He was someone who showed up in my life once per year.  One of the times, I was getting ready to go to a formal banquet for my job.  For the first time, I was attempting an actual tie, rather than a clip-on.  I had no idea how to tie it.  I asked Dad for help and he said something vague about how it would have to be on him for him to be able to do it.  A cab driver ended up doing it for me.

Toward the end, about the last 10 years or so, his mental faculties started to decline and his visits became a chore.  He was really hard to spend any time around, let alone have him as a houseguest.  The last time I saw him, we went to a Mexican restaurant and he told us how he was in the military and saw the scores of planes that they were preparing during the Cuban Missile Crisis, just in case. 

Dad was full of stories like that, but there was never a deep connection with him.  He had Aspergers and wasn’t capable of a real human connection with anyone.  So there was no real reason to be mad at him, right?  Because none of it was his fault, it was just mental illness.  I found that out about 5 years ago.

We reconnected again, briefly, in January of 2021 around the time of the insurrection.  His politics had flipped very far to the left because of Trump, and we agreed on everything for once.  We had some long talks.  I was alone, then, and I honestly think I was just scared of what was happening around me and wanted my Dad to make me feel better.

I’m sure I told him I loved him the last time I talked to him.  I can never know for sure.  He died on Tuesday.

Grief is a bitch because it’s sneaky, like a living thing with a bad attitude.  It hits you when you least expect it.  For me, it was yesterday when I heard “The End of the Innocence” by Don Henley.

   

Remember when the days were long

And rolled beneath a deep blue sky

Didn’t have a care in the world

With Mommy and Daddy standing by

But “happily ever after” fails

And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers dwell on small details

Since daddy had to fly

    I cried an ocean of tears at a stoplight, yesterday.  I was hit by wave after wave of bittersweet, vivid childhood nostalgia.  I could taste the Kool-Aid and Bologna sandwiches and all those sugary cereals.  I could see the cartoons and feel my skinny legs in footie pajamas.  I remembered the Bonneville with the moon roof and could feel the grease paint on my face from my Kooky Spook costume one Halloween.  I remembered “Star Wars” t-shirts and trying to learn the “Thriller” moves with friends.  I remembered the antique car wallpaper on my bedroom walls and  my favorite stuffed toys Frisky and Large Frisky.  And my very own handmade Sesame Street blanket that I always wrapped up in when I watched “Scooby” after school.

    I also remembered the fights.  I remembered hiding under a table in our hotel room at Disney World because mom and dad were fighting again.  I could taste the sickly sweet terror that a child feels when their parents fight that viciously in front of them, like your entire existence is crumbling around you and you are helpless to stop it.

I remembered my mom running off with me in a sobbing rage one freezing rainy night and telling me to say goodbye to my sister because Mom and I were leaving forever.  I remembered the time I fell through the ice and another time I “went missing” with my friend Roberta and everyone being convinced we had drowned in Fish Lake.

I smelled those summers from childhood, the ones that smelled like fresh dirt, grass stains and sweat.  And popsicles.  And pudding pops.

    He couldn’t talk at the end, but he could hear.  For the first time in his life, he had to shut up and listen to me.  My stepsister held the phone to his ear and I told him that I loved him and I would miss him, that I’m sorry we weren't closer.  I told him he was a good dad.  And goodbye.  I didn’t feel the need to be angry, I just wanted him to have some peace after being sick for so long.  At that moment, none of that mattered anymore.

    In the end, he never really knew me.  He missed out, and I can’t forgive him for that.  I think I can let it go, though, and try not to take any of it personally.  Or at least, less personally.  It’s all still a work in progress, but the finality of death has ended my relationship with one of the most frustrating, heartbreaking people I have ever known.

    But we will always have Calvin, Dad.  We will always have Calvin.