Its been almost 4 years since my dad passed away. And I've never had any shortage of complex thoughts about my relationship with him over the years. But I thought it might be cathartic to put down some words about him that aren't a eulogy, which is the last time I wrote about him in 2017.
It's weird to talk about how I felt about my dad growing up because A. It was so long ago that the memories barely have cohesion and B. My interpretation of the events I remember has been changed much by both the information I have gained since my childhood, and the experiences in my life that change the way I understand my childhood experiences.
In many ways, it feels like I had two dads, Those two dads are differentiated by my perception of him as a child versus as an adult, but also by the stark changes that happened to him in the transition from my childhood to my adulthood.
I recall some vague stories about my father striking my other siblings in punishment but nothing clearly seen. I don't recall my father ever hitting me, but in many ways, he never needed to. If anyone could be described as the 'runt' of the family, it as me. In both physicality and in temperament, I was very small as a child. I was also very afraid a lot of the time for a lot of reasons. And of certain people. But no one more than Dad. He didn't need to hit me because his tone was often enough to make me hide from his presence and sniffle. I often wonder if wetting the bed until I was 9 was an awful circle in which the threat of hearing "God Dammit Billy" was somehow the catalyst for the terror that resulted in the peeing the bed in the first place. At the same time, he was a loving father, who did a lot to bring joy to his children. But that was the rub. When we were happy, he was a good father, but when we were sad or unruly, he often became Bad dad.
For a long time I devoted significant time to trying to reconcile how someone could be both Good dad and Bad dad. It wasnt until I was in my mid 20's until I had a real understanding of what was going on. I didn't have a Good dad or a Bad dad. I had an Incomplete dad.
Toxic masculinity is a term that comes up a lot recently, and understanding what it is and how it is passed along was a big step in understanding and reconciling my father's behavior during my childhood
I never met my paternal grandfather. And for that I am incredibly grateful, because I think my life and the lives of everyone in my family would have been worse, had he lived to be an influence on us. I often try to think of my dad's parental shortcomings as incidental, and produced by what came before. And what came before was William Thrasher. Where my dad had unintentional bias, Thrasher was racist. Where my dad was trying to give discipline, Thrasher was violently abusive. He was an abusive, alcoholic racist and I can't even imagine what produced that. And in the abuses and behavior he displayed towards my father and his siblings, he passed on a crippling inability to process emotion in a healthy way, replacing it with abusive coping mechanisms. When I think of my father yelling at me for pissing the bed or getting angry that I started crying, I don't feel the shame anymore, or anger at him. I feel so deeply sad for him.
Because his father never told him it was ok to cry, or held him so he could. His father never made him feel safe or protected him, or gave him the things that a child needs from their fathers, to grow into a healthy person. I am eternally grateful that there were other influences that shaped my Dad. My grandfathers periodic absence in his life may have inadvertently curbed the damage. I feel sad for my father, but also a little proud because he was so much better than what came before him.
That's the Dad I had as a child. A man who was never given the tools to interface with children in a healthy way.
I am very glad to say that those shortcomings were largely overcome as I grew and my dad aged, but it came at a cost, one that eventually took his life.
I don't know exactly when the Crohns diagnosis came, but it was around 1995 or 96 that I remember seeing some of the consequences. Dad was more often in pain, and had his first intestinal surgery. I remember him showing me the stomach staples. My mother also became permanently ill around time, developing a rare brain disorder that inhibited her larynx and surrounding muscles, causing breathing to be very difficult. She was permanently bedridden for several years until medication and therapy helped her regain ability. A lot of things happened in a very short time, but ultimately, my dad had an affair, due in part to my mother being bedridden, my parents divorced, and a cataclysmic split happened in the family. Looking back now, it doesn't seem that surprising. Even someone who wasn't emotionally unprepared would have had trouble with that.
I wont chronicle in too much detail what happened after that, suffice to say that my father married his affair, and that failed, and he ended up in a position of being weekend Dad, and trying to cope with being the cause of an irreparably shattered family.
I can't say with certainty when it happened, but around 1999 or 2000 he started to become the Dad I knew as an adult. He was developing the tools of emotional well-being on his own, and to this day I am in awe that he was able to do it.
Unfortunately, what I wasnt aware of was that his health was still turning downhill. His approach towards his Crohns was to mitigate the pain as much as he could, but he never took any serious action to curb its progression. He still smoked, and periodically drank, which exacerbated the condition.
But for a little while it was good. I often define one of the most stable periods of my childhood as the year my sister and I spent living with him. I had stopped wetting the bed, and he no longer appeared to me as a symbol of fear. When I didn't do well in school or was sad, he was stern, but understanding. And that was the progression he continued on for many years. The biggest hit for him was a custody shift that took my sister and I away and sent us to live with our mother, which I still regret agreeing to. Because I never understood then just how much it hurt him. But he did grow from it and entered into his 3rd and only successful marriage, which he would stay in until his death.
As a teenager and adult I was able to continue having a positive relationship with him. When I visited, we would often talk about what had happened in years past. He admitted to, and, for me, earned forgiveness, for what had happened.
As an adult I made a trip down to see him and my stepmother regularly. His health, both physically and mentally was deteriorating. The Crohns had claimed several feet of is bowels and the best that he could manage was to reduce the pain just a little. He was perpetually in a state of regret for everything that had come before. His life lessons were some of the hardest earned I had ever seen, and in many ways that price was too high.
In 2017, a lifetime of regrets, a body racked by intense, constant pain, and, what me and some of my siblings suspect was an unsafe transition of depression medication, caused his death by suicide at 60.
I've spent so many years compiling these thoughts in my head and seeing them through the lenses of the various people I've been.
I love who my Dad was, with all his flaws and mistakes, and he is a reminder that it's never too late to learn how to be better.
If you are a Father or in any similar position, please learn the lessons that he had to suffer for, and maybe we can have a world that doesn't make people suffer like he did
When your children are sad, give them comfort. When they are angry, give them patience and understanding. I cannot overstate how important it is to have a father who is a safe harbor, a calm and often smiling beacon that helps you cope with an overwhelming world so that you can feel safe going out into it.
These aren't just the ways we can help our children; these are emotional tools we are giving them that will spread and be passed down exponentially. And that's what Dad would've wanted. A better world for his children.
