Life and Death

Dear M,

I don’t know what to do, so I am writing you. I sent your father an email for Father’s Day telling him how much you looked up to him and how much it made you happy when you made him proud. Your mother wrote me back a week later basically telling me in a “nice-ish” way (for her, at least) to not contact your father again because it is too hard for him and she also told me that your official cause of death was concluded to be a “heart attack caused by hypertension brought on by alcohol abuse” and she hopes that brings me some closure. Something still felt off with that, but I knew it was very plausible, especially with your history of high blood pressure.

Last weekend, my sister and I were at a store and ran into your uncle. As you know, he is just an open (very talkative) book and he told us that you died from an overdose of pills. When I managed to ask if it was on purpose, he said, “oh yeah, there was a note and everything….” I swear, it was the closest I ever came to passing out. I could not get out of that store fast enough. My sister was so upset, too.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

My head has been spinning ever since. Without question, the most difficult aspect of your death is not knowing the details. Since day one, all I have wondered is when you died, how you died, how long you were alone, did you know what was happening, did you suffer? Those questions have plagued me. Not knowing how you died has made it very hard to move on or to properly grieve you. There is just no closure, especially without a service or obituary or anything to memorialize you.

But this? This is a whole new thing. You dying of a heart attack (or any other medical reason from years of alcohol abuse) is VERY different than you choosing to take your own life. And that means it is possible your mother has been lying to me for five months. I know you are rolling your eyes and thinking about how much she sucks, but can she really be THAT awful? I need to know the truth.

And a note? A NOTE??????? I feel like if I am in that note, I have a right to know that. I know that we were not together, but I took care of you for the almost decade we were together and then some. Even after I ended our romantic relationship, I was still the one who was taking you to the doctor and helping you when your family was in another state. I know, without a glimmer of doubt, that I was the closest person to you EVER in your life and yet I am the one who is being kept in the dark about your death.

Everyone keeps telling me that HOW you died does not change anything…that you are still gone. I understand that, I truly do. But, things have changed in my mind and I cannot just accept not knowing the truth. I just don’t know how to get it.

Still hurts…

The majority of the time I say to other people (and to myself) that my father’s emails and voicemails don’t bother me.  In a lot of ways, they have just become the norm and I am sort of used to them.  Every once in a while, though, one stands out that is particularly hurtful.  I feel like my mom, sister and I just give him free passes because we know he is drunk.  Today he sent and email copied to all of us where he singled me out and called me a “loser” and he also left me a voicemail calling me a “scumbag”.  I obviously know these things aren’t true- I am a totally respectable member of society, a teacher, a homeowner, etc. but it still is mind-boggling to me that my own father can say these things about his daughter totally unprovoked.  My sister and I have always used humor to deal with my dad and the way he treats us.  She recently began seeing a therapist (I have gone for years, so I am super proud of her for starting to go!) and the woman said to my sister, “you talk about the things your father has done like it was only in your childhood, like he is deceased…this is still active abuse.”  That really made me think.  I do consider what my father did to us growing up as abuse, no doubt about it, but I guess since I don’t live with him and rarely see him in person, I didn’t really consider it to be current as well.  But it totally is.  His emails and voicemails are verbally and emotionally abusive and total harassment as well.  People always ask my sister and me why we don’t just block his number and his emails (I have a totally separate email address just for him so they don’t go into my regular email inbox) and neither of us have a good answer for that question.  I don’t know why I don’t just block him…I should.  He deserves it.  I honestly don’t even know if he would notice, because no one ever responds to his emails.  It is like the same way I can’t answer why my mom never left him…I kind of write it off as her being a “battered wife” and I guess in a lot of ways I am a “battered daughter”.

‘Til death do us part

I recently read an article online and came across a quote that struck me.  It was written by a recovering alcoholic who stated, “All of us stop drinking at some point. It’s just that for some people, that point is death.”

I kept going back and reading those two sentences over and over.  It is such a simple statement, but it is really powerful and concise.  I never really thought about alcoholism in that way.  My father has never attempted to stop drinking and I have accepted the fact that he will most likely die an alcoholic (he may even be drunk when he dies).  My father’s alcoholism will not end until his life does.

Today, my dad wrote one of his obnoxious, embarrassing emails and copied various people on it- my sister and my mother, my aunt and uncle (his own brother from whom he is pretty much estranged), my other aunt (my mom’s sister who is an alcoholic herself), my cousin and about seven friends of our family (two couples and a few guys who have loyally remained friends with my parents from when they were first married).  Even though I am accustomed to the lunacy of his emails and can usually ignore them completely, sometimes I have to look at it from the perspective of one of these unsuspecting recipients.  They must literally think he is insane.  It is hard not to feel that it is a reflection on our family (or that at the very least there are several people who probably open his email and can’t help but pity us).  Most of what he writes is utter nonsense and this email was very tame compared to the majority that he sends, but it still makes me feel weird.  The other day when my sister and I were with my mom we were talking about hobbies and one of us mentioned that it was unfortunate that my dad doesn’t have any interests to keep himself busy.  My mom quickly replied, “he does have a hobby- writing his emails.”  It’s darkly funny and ironic…my paternal grandfather used to write in a journal every day when he was alive.  He had an easy chair in the corner of their living room, right next to a small bookshelf filled with little leather bound journals.  His journals seemed sacred when I was growing up and during my visits to their house, I was never tempted to read one of them.  After he died, my grandmother packed them all up in a big box and put them in the attic.  Many years later when she passed away, my sister was helping to clean out their house and found them.  She brought one to me as a keepsake (she and I are both VERY sentimental, especially regarding our grandparents).  I was shocked to discover that his journals were not filled with philosophical ideas and deep reflections, but rather the minutiae of everyday life.  He noted the weather, how he was feeling, what he did that day (“went to the dump”), etc.  If my sister and I were visiting, he would write about how much we had grown and about what we did at the beach that day.  I have to admit I was almost disappointed when I read it, because I was hoping for…more.  Now that I know he was an alcoholic, too, I wonder if this was his pre-technological way of doing exactly what my father does.  My dad treats his emails as a daily journal, although instead of keeping his inner most thoughts private, he copies various people on them.

When my dad does die, I wonder who will care.  I mean, I know people will care, but will they really care?  He has burned so many bridges with so many people.  During his brief two year sabbatical from drinking, he changed in so many positive ways.  If he had passed away during that time, it would have seemed more tragic…like he had so much to live for…that my sister and I had lost our dear father.  Now, he just seems pathetic.  His death will be a big deal for my mother, sister and me, but will be a tragic blip on most other people’s radars.  They will feel sorry for us, they will feel sad for losing the man they remember- the brother he was growing up, the friend he was in his 20s.  But when people think about him, he will always be thought of first and foremost as an alcoholic- a sad label that defined him for the past 25 years.

 

“Just like me”

One thing that my father often says to me is that I am “just like him”.  He will often slip it into emails or phone conversations.  We will be talking about my sister being financially irresponsible and he will say something like “you have always saved money…you’re just like me”.  I usually just roll my eyes when he says it.  I think for him, he knows he has not been the world’s greatest father (huge understatement!) and he likes to think that I inherited some of his better habits and traits.  I can acknowledge that some aspects of my personality definitely did come from him- I like to learn how to fix things myself, I am financially conservative, I like to plan ahead and I tend to be obsessive about certain things. In other words, when he says this, I take it with a grain of salt. I understand when he says it that it is coming from a place of pride (and probably redemption) that he instilled some good traits in me.

What I hate, however, is when OTHER people say this to me.  My boyfriend has a tendency to start criticism with, “You’re like your father…” or my sister will say,”You sound like dad”.  This bothers me because when they are saying it, it is clearly an insult.  I don’t want to be like my father.  In fact, I can’t really think of many things that would be more offensive than being compared to him because he is widely disliked by mostly everyone who knows him.  I don’t know if it bothers me more because it hurts my feelings (it is an easy low blow for them to use against me) or because deep down I know that the comparison is sometimes true.

The more things change,

the more they stay the same.

My suspicions were right…my dad is drinking again.  It was a nice two years while it lasted.  I am so disappointed and even though I should have been prepared for this, I am still a little surprised.  I have had so many conflicting emotions about it.  I saw my therapist and through talking about it, she made me realize that I am really angry.  You might be saying “no, duh” (or maybe not lol), but it was a revelation to me.  You see, I get upset.  Being sad or upset is a more comfortable emotion for me.  I don’t really do angry.  Growing up, angry was not really something that was accepted and unfortunately, that carried over into my marriage.  I was never the one who was angry- that role was reserved for my father and for my ex-husband.  Through a good amount of therapy, I learned how to get in touch with my anger.  My current boyfriend would tell you that I have gotten much better at expressing anger, I’m sure.  But that says more about our relationship than anything else. Because I can am able to really be myself with him, I do not get anxious about being angry at him.  That’s also why the one person I was always able to get really mad at and fight with is my sister.

So…back to my dad.  I am really mad.  I am mad that he never apologized for anything that he did.  He never paid any consequences for his actions.  And yet, my sister and mom and I gave him a second chance when he stopped drinking. He did not earn it.  He did not deserve it.  We just gave it to him.  We made it so easy for him.  We were all so desperate for a “normal” family and were so happy and relieved to have him be sober that we just were grateful that he wasn’t drinking.  He should have spent the rest of his life making it up to us.  He should have begged for our forgiveness for what he put us through.  But, we never asked for that.  We just acted like 25 years of abuse and insanity never happened.  But that wasn’t enough, I guess.

He has started writing his nasty emails again.  That’s why I started this blog to begin with.  I joked that now I will have more to write about, but sadly, that is true.  As I have weighed the pros and cons and deliberated whether to confront him in person, my sister snapped and wrote him an email detailing ALL of the horrible things he has done to her and to my mother and me.  His response was that he thinks she is lying and that he doesn’t remember any of it.  He said that if it is true, he is sorry, but that it was a dark time in his life and he has been emotionally hurt, too.  I have mixed feelings about his response.  It definitely doesn’t feel like an apology and he was pretty dismissive about all the things she told him.  It was like “I don’t believe these things happened, but if you think they did, then I am sorry”.  Not even close to good enough. I’m also angry that he acts like he is the victim.  That “dark time” lasted two decades and spanned throughout my childhood.  He created that “dark time” himself when he chose alcohol over his family.

So now after two years of really nice, relaxing Thanksgivings, I am back to being anxious about what is going to happen on Thursday.  Will he come to my house for dinner? Will there be a scene? Will he insult me in front of my boyfriend? Will he stay home? Will he be horrible to my mom when she gets home? Will he hurt himself?  I honestly and truly did appreciate every minute of him being sober and I will never take those two years for granted.  But now that he’s drinking again, it is really bringing back a lot of feelings and memories and I find myself regressing a little bit.  But, as sad as that is to experience, I am trying to protect my heart by just staying mad.