A Letter to My Dad

Dear Dad,

It has been almost forty years since you stepped out of my life in the most cliché-ridden manner possible. Not just a bad heart that attacked you; not just on the day that you were to be released from hospital; not just when all the signs were good for you and your health. It was the day itself that stays with me.

Seriously? December 23rd? I guess that you really wanted to avoid the holidays that year, right?

Sorry, bad joke. They seem to be the only kinds I have when I think about you. We had even purchased a gift for you (Christmas gift? Welcome back gift?). They were headphones that you would have approved of, I think. And what bothers me even more than this is the fact that I was not even at home when we learned the news. It was relayed to me at my godparents’ home (Mom had gone to the hospital to pick you up). I was told in the crush of my godmother’s hug and tears on my neck. She kept saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” Now that I think of it, no one ever actually said that you were dead. I inferred it rather quickly as I walked downstairs and found myself in the basement with two rather indifferent relatives. I told them you were gone and they did not know what to say in the moment (to be fair, they were watching Scooby-Doo, so I completely understand now). We all ended up drinking Coca-Cola and watching “A Christmas Carol” while that same home filled up with other relatives. My mom assured me that I was not alone. And I believed her. Not so sure I believe her now; not even sure I believed her then. Why would I?

I was ten years old.

*

Again, cliché met cliché. It made me anti-social and hard to handle for much of my childhood and adolescence. I could not look at the behavior around me and think that I was a part of that life (family, school, friends, work, etc.) I always looked at people from a distance. This made it almost impossible for me to get truly involved with other people, and it just got worse as I got older. High school was the usual teen nightmare of humiliations and confusion. University brought some freedoms and a reprieve, as did working overseas, but returning back to my home made me think that I had dropped myself right back into the same pain and nonsense I had imagined I escaped from. But no, here I am, right back in it.

And it is right back to you. You beat me. You told me that I was useless. You said that I was weaker than relatives I had never met. You humiliated me. You forced me to hide what I was for fear of other people doing to me what you did. And after all of these years, you still exist as a bad shadow in my head…

…Bad shadow. You like that one? I guess one thing that you could not take from me was my use and love of language. I have been praised for my writing and had my work published, shared and printed in journals, magazines, newspapers, and online. That is why I continue to contribute to at least three separate pages on the Internet and write to my mother. And you. This is actually part two of my correspondence with you. I saw a therapist at school (McGill University – impressed?) who encouraged me to write to you. I did, in a white notebook that I still own and store next to some journals – another habit that grew with your passing. The only mistake I made with it was writing to you in a public place. In a café, my hands were shaking as I filled up the pages with my anger. I do not have the same reaction to my scribbling tonight. I think this is because I have some positive things to say about you.

*

There was comedy. I am still baffled by you and how you approached the things that made us laugh together. We watched The Carol Burnett Show, Cheech and Chong movies (!) and even Dave Allen. It was the latter that really stands out for me. His program, Dave Allen at Large, was one that I would run home from school to watch with you. And I wonder why I enjoyed those moments with you. His jokes were about alcohol, sex, relations between men and women, death and – most often in his routine – religion. Mr. Allen’s take on the Catholic Church, God and religious faith, were remarkable for their time. They were remarkable in a household where I once caught you watching The 700 Club and had the first real critique of you:

“Dad, you cannot be serious.”

I was still a little kid. I do not know where that voice came from, but maybe there was some part of me that wondered how anyone could hear Mr. Allen’s monologues, or watch one of his skits, and still find himself moved by the nonsense put forward by Pat Robertson and his followers. He was on the screen actually praying on his knees, hand up to channel something with a partner. At least you were not on your knees. At least you heard me.

“Big talk from a kid who can’t properly comb his hair.”

And that was it. That was all you could say.

And we still kept on watching the comedy together.

Truly baffling.

So, what did I learn from you?

Well, I learned that I wanted to be in your presence, no matter how awkward or low I felt because of what you said or did. And that meant watching comedy and sharing a laugh when I could. My younger self is still recovering from the constant shuffling from joy to fear and my older self is processing a lot of anxiety that I thought remained buried in my thoughts.

*

I also learned that you were a reader, despite all the odds you faced in your life. We had few books in our collection and I enjoyed what I could: the ancient atlas, the split dictionary (divided along the L section) and various political tracts.

Ah, those tracts… Being a child who read Mao’s Little Red Book before reading any Shakespeare probably altered my mind in ways that I will never be able to measure. You had a political interest in how systems work. But there was something else that disturbed me about your curiosity.

You had a well-read biography…of Adolf Hitler. I would not have made much of this – a black West Indian Nazi-lover does not really make a lot of sense – but when I was working in the garage, I found one of your wrenches and noticed something scratched into the handle: a small swastika. I never mentioned this to anyone in my family and may never discuss it beyond this piece. What could I say about having a father interested in the Nazis and their beliefs? What could I say after seeing such a thing (no one else has noticed it yet)?

I learned that you could also be generous. You bought me my first bike. I still remember you taking me to the park and telling me to ride around to get the hang of it. This sounds like a typical rite of passage, except that you had me riding around in the parking lot. It was in one of the municipal parks and I remember that the surface of that lot was rutted, full of dried dirt and mud. This was not the best place for me to learn about stability and balance on a bike. I still do not understand why we did not use any of the paths separate from this section of the park. Those paths, as I learned much later, were paved, smooth, and often clear of pedestrians in the summer. And you were, once again, always disappointed when I fell over, which was too often for you.

I never learned to ride with you there. It was when I returned to the neighborhood that I finally found the people who could help me: my friends. Positive reinforcement really does matter. And it is a real shame that you never learned this.

I began this trying to understand you and what I went through as a child. I tried to be sympathetic to what I knew of your own childhood and the difficulties of being raised poor by an abusive mother who drank heavily (something that deserves its own article). I tried to forgive you for many, many years.

But what is the point?

The last lesson here is that there is no lesson here. Plenty of people have dealt with terrible parents and painful memories and just moved on…and that is what I intend to do. There is no reason for me to continue writing anything else about you and this is going to be the last article I ever write about you. And it is my way of keeping my mind and thoughts clear.

That is all, Dad.

Your son,

KD

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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