Dear Dad
A letter felt right, because it’s a form that you used so well and effectively in your time here. Okay, I did used to hate some of those letters you sent to me when I was in the Navy, always lecturing me about my grandiosity and seemingly trying to pooh-pooh my grand dreams and ambitions that I’d shared with you through letters. You were such a pain in the ass, then.
I later realized you were just trying to help. You could see, from early on, how susceptible I was to the lures of alcoholism and addiction, even as early as when I was 9, which was when Mom found the miracle of recovery from both.
You guys had me pegged as the one most likely to be just like Mom, and I was. Though I didn’t start drinking until I was 15, and doing drugs until I was 16, you always seemed to be holding your breath with me, just waiting for my downfall to begin. Then, once it did, nothing I did was ever worth a damn in your eyes, because you already knew where it all was going.
In that regard, and up to that point, you were a pretty sucky father to me. I know, in your own way, you had decided that you weren’t going to tolerate me until I was serious about doing something about all that, and it may even be likely that your approach helped me to reach that point sooner than I otherwise might have.
If it worked, it was only because, what you thought of me meant so much to me. For the longest time, I only wanted your approval. No matter how hard I tried, or what I achieved, it never seemed to be good enough for you. Do you know how deeply frustrating that was for me?
When I made it through Nuclear Power School, when they said I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, and I defied the odds and not only made it, but I sat at the top of the class for my first four months there — you just sat back, knowingly waiting for it all to fall apart. You just couldn’t find it in you to give me a damn break, and share in my success. Again, kind of a hardassed approach, but when it did all fall apart, as you had expected it to all along, at least you were there to help me pick up the pieces of my shattered life.
I get it now, and have no regrets. I actually think it took a lot of balls to do what you did. I could never be that cold, and withholding. Not after you later taught me how to be warm and loving, after I learned, and even began to accept, that side of me that I mostly got from you.
I don’t know how you did it, but I’m thinking, it helped to lead me out of that hell that addiction was, for me. I could have stayed there so much longer, if I’d had a Dad who fed my denial, who accepted me as I was, addiction and all. If I had, I probably wouldn’t be here today, where I am, thirty-seven and a half years clean and sober.
For, as cold and calculated as you were when I was still in it, you were just as warm and accepting and open the whole time I struggled to get out of it. That gave me a good start to the long road back, to sanity and a sustainable life. Without your support, I really don’t know if I could have made it.
I was just so damn broken when I started down that road. I had blown up my navy career, but good. I had burned every bridge I had crossed, and left nothing but scorched earth in my wake. There was no going back to the life I had led. I could only move forward into a whole new life, beginning all over again, at the age of 22.
Christ, many people are only just getting started at that age, and I’d already had a lifetime of pain and sorrow and years of addiction, and was starting down a strange new road that had no maps.
Yours and Mom’s experience was with the alcoholism part of it. None of us knew much about the manic depression, or the impact of dope smoking on an alcoholic. I did as suggested, and went to the AA meetings. They helped, once I got over my suicidal depression, and with the help of the V.A., which I found on my own, got treated for it.
However, at the same time I found the miracle of lithium, for helping me want to live again, I also found the magic of smoking pot, which seemed to balance out the lithium, and lend a depth to my world that I couldn’t feel on the lithium. It didn’t take long, only a couple years, for that to stop working. After those couple years of stability, everything began to spin out of control, again.
That’s when I gave it all up, the pot, the lithium, the whole nine, and decided if I was going to live, I was going to live without anything altering my moods or my mind. I wanted to be able to feel the life that I lived, no more chemicals to alter my moods, no more drugs, I was already a couple years off the booze.
That began one of the roughest periods I would know. I knew you were still behind me, but you had no idea what to do with me. I felt like you’d felt a betrayal, once you discovered I’d still been getting high those couple of years, and were back to not trusting me. Indeed, those next four years I was trying so hard, and living life with such a level of intensity, and really, insanity, it was not a sustainable way to live. But, I was hard-headed and stubborn, bound and determined to make it work, and I gave it my best shot. After four long years, once again, it all fell apart. I’d wound up living and working down in Maryland, but I blew that life up, got myself fired from that job, my sixteenth job in four years, and felt like I was right back to square one.
You and Mom were touring Europe at the time, on an Elder Hostel trip, visiting all the great cathedrals, and lighting a candle and dedicating a prayer in each one, for your lost son, as that was your last hope for me. You got back just as I was done blowing my world in Maryland up, and as if in answer to your prayers, I was led back home, in the strangest of ways.
There I was on your doorstep, and you opened your arms and your heart, and welcomed me home. I was 29, and in complete defeat. Little did I know that I was in the perfect place to be most teachable, and was soon to find recovery, and, finally, a map for the path to the good life. As always, you were there, and you blessed me on my way. You helped me get my things from Maryland, and I think it wasn’t until that trip, that I fully appreciated your strength of character, and your truth of spirit. From that point on, I did look to you for guidance, and you gave it, in a most loving way.
And the letters. God, could you write ‘em! There was that card you sent, in ’87, making amends for something you remembered doing to me when I was a kid that I’d long since forgotten, something that haunted you every morning when making your coffee.
I just shrugged it off at the time, thinking, “I hope you get over that shit — I don’t even remember it, myself.” Then, again, in 1991, you sent me another, more detailed letter about the same incident. It apparently was still haunting you in the mornings. “Jeez, Dad, get over it, already!”
This time, you were much more explicit — you said things like, “If I saw a movie of that man doing to his son what I did to you, I would say that man was despicable. But, I know I was not despicable. But I had a son that most fathers would give their left arm to have. Pete was industrious, would have already been out to deliver all his papers, never having to be woken up to do that job. Pete always took care of himself. You never needed money — you always earned your own. And, when I hit you, and bawled you out, for something you didn’t even deserve, you never retaliated, never struck back, just went on about the business of getting ready for school, and helping your Dad find the parts to the coffee pot.
“You know, I loved that boy, that Pete, but I just could never find it in me to tell him, to show him, that I truly did. I see you now, with your own little boy, and I thank my loving higher power that the father’s sins were not passed down to the son. You are a fine father, and I love you more than ever. I am so proud of you, Pete.”
This one just melted any lingering animosity I might have still harbored towards you, my father, and healed so much within me — this simple, silly letter that you took the time to write and send to me, changed everything for me. It healed that little boy inside, who never felt loved, who always felt like it was him against the world, like the problems of the family were his fault. You changed that for me, forever.
Who would have known what lay ahead in the next chapter of our relationship? Who would have seen a deep friendship, built on mutual trust and a shared spiritual belief, blossoming between us, all beginning with a phone call the day after you’d buried your best friend? Nobody saw that one coming, but that was the strange twist life had in store for us. We became the best of friends. We shared things with each other that we shared with no one else. We became confidantes. You passed things along to me that I cherish to this day.
I stood beside you as you received hundreds of visitors to your baby sister’s memorial service, you, already racked with cancer in your bones, standing up, smiling and greeting each one, graciously hearing their stories, then driving together across the state of Pennsylvania to do it again with friends and family, there.
I held you as you lay dieing, and you honored our friendship to the very end. You gave me so much. You taught me how to live. You even taught me how to die. As you were on your way, you said that you would always be there, you’d always be around, and you were, and you have been.
When I had the tumor, the schwannoma, and there was nothing to do about it but wait and watch, hoping it would not grow any larger, causing any more damage than it already had, I visited you at Arlington, and your sister at Georgetown Medical, walking in her garden, thinking of you both, just finding the most peace that I could find, right there. During those times, peace was a valued commodity.
There wasn’t much of it to be found, as I struggled with the vertigo, attacks every ten days at first, then monthly, like clockwork, and the knowledge that I had a ticking time bomb in my head, ready to explode at any moment, any morning knowing I could wake up to find my face disfigured, my mind invaded by this intruder. MRI’s every six month, the first, then the followup, and then another, waiting and watching this invader to my brain.
All that last summer, I made many trips to Jeannie’s garden, usually on Friday nights, to walk with you, and talk with you, and your little sister. You always said you would be there, and I took you at your word. I could talk to you like no one else. I talked. I walked. I talked some more.
And then, that followup visit to Dr. Hoa last September. It was right around what would have been your 98th birthday. The good Doc put that MRI up on the screen, and looked at me, and said, “There is no tumor”. That sucker was just gone. Disappeared. Vanished into thin air. I didn’t know what to make of it. What just happened?
So, just to make sure I knew what happened, two things happened that made it clear. Driving home, up the George Washington Parkway, Georgetown right across the river, I thought of Jeannie, your sister, my aunt, and I just bawled my eyes out all the way up that hill. Tears of healing, tears of relief, and then, I knew — she’d had a hand in that tumor going away.
Then, that same night, you showed up in my dream, asking, “Is there anything else you need from me?” Yeah — I get it, Dad.
And, yes. There is something I need. Please continue to be there. To be here. I need your healing presence in my life, every day. Please don’t go anywhere. Thanks — and, happy father’s day, Dad.
