October 15, 2013 –
My father died today. I’m not sure how long he knew he was sick. He only started telling the family about a year ago. He was vague on a lot of the details. I’m not sure if he didn’t understand what was happening or if he just chose to keep everything to himself. He had had trouble breathing. Nobody was surprised when it was discovered that there was a tumour growing between his ribs and his lungs. Cancer is to be expected when you chain-smoke 3 packs of plain, unfiltered cigarettes for most of your life. Sadly, early detection would not have changed the outcome – it was inoperable. I’m not sure if he instinctively knew his clock was winding down.
When I learned that my father was dying, I tried to focus on the positive memories that I had of him – the good times and the father/daughter moments. Sadly I couldn’t think of many.
I never really knew my father. That’s a phrase that people normally use when they’re adopted or raised by a single mother. I had the benefit of growing up with two parents and 5 brothers and sisters. I grew up in an era when children were seen and not heard. My father worked nights and we only saw him on weekends. He was the disciplinarian. My mother, like her mother before her, kept the house in order and us kids in line – sometimes by using the infamous line, “Your father will hear about this.” My mother didn’t say those words too often and she always knew when to pull them out of her repertoire of discipline. And when she did, you knew that it would not end well for you. Weekends were usually saved for dishing out punishment for any bad behaviour that had occurred while my father was at work.
You had to have a household of order and discipline when you had 6 kids. I don’t think there’s any way around it. There was a schedule for chores and, if you can imagine, even a schedule for when we used the washroom in the morning. I think that’s why, to this day, I do not spend any great length of time in the washroom. There were also my father’s rules. We used to joke that we were going to record the rules onto a cassette tape (that’s how old I am). That way he could save his breath, just say a number, and we would play the tape and hear whatever rule we had broken or were close to breaking. You would think that these rules would be indelibly etched into my brain because they affected me so profoundly. But I can’t remember a single one.
Behind the rules was the underlying fear of repercussion for disobeying them. I remember him removing his belt to my older siblings and sometimes using it on them. I don’t recall ever being spanked or being on the receiving end of a weekend disciplinary talk from him. I like to think it was because I was basically a good kid. I did what I was told, stayed out of trouble, and got good grades in school. The truth is that fear forced me to live under my father’s radar.
It was in my early twenties when I finally had the courage to have a heart-to-heart with my father about how he had ruled with fear. I had hoped there would be some sort of apology for not realizing the effect his rules had had on me. Instead, he looked at me, smiled and said, “I was preparing you for real life. If you could survive living with me you could survive anything. I never followed through on any of those threats.” Hearing those words should have been liberating – like receiving a commuted life sentence. But, to me, they were just words. They couldn’t change the past. I couldn’t go back and do things differently; secure in the knowledge that there was no punishment for not following his rules. It also didn’t change how I conducted my life going forward.
Over time, I did realize that he and my mom did the best they could do. There weren’t any parenting resources available when I was a child. But I also think that he never would have listened anyway. After all, nobody told him what to do. My parents did what they thought was best. The rules were a way of setting boundaries – cross the line and you will be punished. We all grew up as individuals with our own personalities and sense of self.
I looked back on how he interacted with me versus my other siblings; how he became friends with them when they became adults. I never had that kind of relationship with him. I was always the outsider – never privy to what was happening in his life. Even when he separated from my mother, I was the last to find out. My other sisters used to meet up with him for drinks. They met his girlfriend. I remember asking my sisters why he never confided in me the way he confided in them. They offered up excuses on his behalf. It was because I was married and he didn’t want to interfere in my life. It was because I looked too much like my mother and he couldn’t bear to tell me anything because it was like confessing his infidelities to her. I never had the courage to ask him directly because I didn’t want to hear what I knew in my heart to be true – he never really loved me like he loved them. For a while, I was jealous because they were getting to know a side of my father that I would never know. For the longest time, I felt cheated out of a relationship. As the years passed, I grew more distant from him.
The last time I saw and spoke to my father was 18 months ago. I had flown out to Calgary to be with my mother. She was in the hospital with an undiagnosed illness. I spent 10 days there and didn’t really say too much to him. My last serious discussion with him ended in an argument. The details are unimportant except to say that I did not agree with him and, as a free-thinking adult over the age of 50, I felt I could voice my opinion to another free thinking adult. He let me know that was not the case. That single moment provided all of the clarity I needed and, in the end, became my final memory of him. It was at that moment that I saw that my father had not changed. He had not mellowed with age and become a more tolerant or compassionate person. He still believed he had the right to control and expected me to follow his rules.
I wasn’t there when my father died. I didn’t rush to his bedside when my mother and brother said his health was deteriorating. Some would say that would have been the right thing to do – after all he was my father. But I could not find it in my heart to pretend. Perhaps that is why we were never close – he could never pretend something that wasn’t there either.
Diary of a DOW 