Thoughts on my father (long)
Sick Puppy
Registrant
I talked to my uncle this afternoon about my father and he told me some things I hadn't known before. They weren't anything that I didn't already suspect, but it just cemented the idea that my father was very much like my own self...
For five years I have wondered if things could have been different. I have cursed myself for not being in his apartment that morning when he decided to give up. I have hated myself for ignoring him, isolating him, abandoning him, although I didn't realize I had been doing that until it was too late.
He always had this aura of sadness. I don't ever remember him without it. He wasn't even twenty yet when I was born, but as soon as I knew him, he was old inside, tired, worn out. I don't know much about his past. His father was in Vietnam and when he returned he was distant. My father grew up alone, I guess. He had a mother and a brother but I know he was alone.
Steve says that Ken (my father) told him that he'd been raped when he was 14. I guess he gave up after that. The man I knew had some spark left in him but I watched it fizzle out.
I remember being a child and waiting for him to come home from work. I would sit in the living room and wait until I heard him at the door and then go greet him. He would pick me up and hug me. It was a little tiny fragment of a perfect family.
Some days he didn't come home after work. I was sad on those days but I can't blame him for not wanting to face the hell that was our home. On the days he did come home we would sit in the living room and listen to his records. I loved those times more than anything in the world. Ken would prop his feet on the coffee table (really just a crate) and smoke cigarettes. He was always tired after work. He was so tired I could almost taste it in the air, like a desperation. Pale concrete dust was ground into all his work clothes, and sometimes I felt it was ground into his skin as well. But I remember that no matter how tired he was he would get up and we would turn up the music loud and dance.
Well, not dancing, really. I hadn't the slightest idea how to dance, and he wasn't really the dancing type, but we would jump around until the neighbors shouted at us or my mom came out of somewhere and hit us with things. I didn't mind much. I still treasure those days more than anything I've ever owned.
I remember driving with my father in the summer on open country roads, the windows down, my sister in the front seat and me leaning in from the back, all of us singing along to the tapes my father brought. The radio was busted and never played; we had to use tapes. Our favorite tape was Don McLean. My sister liked "Vincent" and I liked "American Pie."
My father was the only one who ever loved me as I grew up. I loved him back, immensely, powerfully, so much so that I could never speak a word of it because I didn't know what words to use. I hope he knew I loved him. I never said it aloud.
As I grew older I faded away into darkness and gray worlds. I faded away from my father. He was getting gray, too, inside, but his body was still young. I didn't notice. He still got drunk at night and cried, like he always had on the little couch in our old apartment, like I'd always heard him do when I lay awake at night and waited for the monsters to consume me.
When I was almost a man I got engaged. I was not in love. I wanted to be part of something; I wanted to make my father proud; I thought that if I willed it hard enough, I could love her. I remember my father's face when I told him. I thought it was happiness. Now I see that it only made him feel more alone. Not once had I ever known him to sleep in a bed with another human being.
The ropes that tethered him to the steep slope of the world had been fraying since he came into life, and I knew that all along in some part of my being. Maybe I refused to admit it. On the morning of March 4, 1998 they broke altogether and he put a gun to his head and fired.
I was not there. I only came in later, an actor bursting through the door halfway into a scene. It was like a movie. I called the police and wandered around town in a daze.
I never told him that I loved him.
I'm not sure if I showed him, either.
I have old photos of him. I don't have one where there's no beer in his hand. He was sad. I wish I'd seen it.
I don't know who the baby in these pictures is. I don't think it's me... I can't imagine I was ever that fat. I wasn't fed regularly. It might be my sister... but we were too poor to eat like that. Maybe it's a friends. I never did know his friends.
For five years I have wondered if things could have been different. I have cursed myself for not being in his apartment that morning when he decided to give up. I have hated myself for ignoring him, isolating him, abandoning him, although I didn't realize I had been doing that until it was too late.
He always had this aura of sadness. I don't ever remember him without it. He wasn't even twenty yet when I was born, but as soon as I knew him, he was old inside, tired, worn out. I don't know much about his past. His father was in Vietnam and when he returned he was distant. My father grew up alone, I guess. He had a mother and a brother but I know he was alone.
Steve says that Ken (my father) told him that he'd been raped when he was 14. I guess he gave up after that. The man I knew had some spark left in him but I watched it fizzle out.
I remember being a child and waiting for him to come home from work. I would sit in the living room and wait until I heard him at the door and then go greet him. He would pick me up and hug me. It was a little tiny fragment of a perfect family.
Some days he didn't come home after work. I was sad on those days but I can't blame him for not wanting to face the hell that was our home. On the days he did come home we would sit in the living room and listen to his records. I loved those times more than anything in the world. Ken would prop his feet on the coffee table (really just a crate) and smoke cigarettes. He was always tired after work. He was so tired I could almost taste it in the air, like a desperation. Pale concrete dust was ground into all his work clothes, and sometimes I felt it was ground into his skin as well. But I remember that no matter how tired he was he would get up and we would turn up the music loud and dance.
Well, not dancing, really. I hadn't the slightest idea how to dance, and he wasn't really the dancing type, but we would jump around until the neighbors shouted at us or my mom came out of somewhere and hit us with things. I didn't mind much. I still treasure those days more than anything I've ever owned.
I remember driving with my father in the summer on open country roads, the windows down, my sister in the front seat and me leaning in from the back, all of us singing along to the tapes my father brought. The radio was busted and never played; we had to use tapes. Our favorite tape was Don McLean. My sister liked "Vincent" and I liked "American Pie."
My father was the only one who ever loved me as I grew up. I loved him back, immensely, powerfully, so much so that I could never speak a word of it because I didn't know what words to use. I hope he knew I loved him. I never said it aloud.
As I grew older I faded away into darkness and gray worlds. I faded away from my father. He was getting gray, too, inside, but his body was still young. I didn't notice. He still got drunk at night and cried, like he always had on the little couch in our old apartment, like I'd always heard him do when I lay awake at night and waited for the monsters to consume me.
When I was almost a man I got engaged. I was not in love. I wanted to be part of something; I wanted to make my father proud; I thought that if I willed it hard enough, I could love her. I remember my father's face when I told him. I thought it was happiness. Now I see that it only made him feel more alone. Not once had I ever known him to sleep in a bed with another human being.
The ropes that tethered him to the steep slope of the world had been fraying since he came into life, and I knew that all along in some part of my being. Maybe I refused to admit it. On the morning of March 4, 1998 they broke altogether and he put a gun to his head and fired.
I was not there. I only came in later, an actor bursting through the door halfway into a scene. It was like a movie. I called the police and wandered around town in a daze.
I never told him that I loved him.
I'm not sure if I showed him, either.
I have old photos of him. I don't have one where there's no beer in his hand. He was sad. I wish I'd seen it.
I don't know who the baby in these pictures is. I don't think it's me... I can't imagine I was ever that fat. I wasn't fed regularly. It might be my sister... but we were too poor to eat like that. Maybe it's a friends. I never did know his friends.
