Thoughts of my father are too huge and too complicated to address in one writing. There is the man that I thought of as God when I was little, who could do no wrong and like God, sometimes not directly available for comment. There is the absentee father that spent more time at the office or on the golf course, than with his family. There is the idol that just seemed to make life brighter and happier with his mere presence. And then there was a man that I didn’t understand and didn’t get to know until it was almost too late.
Maybe children aren’t meant to understand the ‘human’ in the adults in their lives. As children, you’re too centered on yourself, too engrossed in the “id” to be able to see outside of your own needs. What is sad is that we carry that child over into adulthood when the relationship is with a parent. We’re still the child and unable to really ‘see’ the other person; to give the benefit of the doubt or the benefit of understanding or empathy.
That was the way it was with my Dad. He was too remote, too important, too God like for me to understand that he was a man with insecurities, accomplishments and doubts as any other man would and does have. But by the time I was an adult he wasn’t remote, or distant or difficult to talk to. He would have liked nothing more than to connect with his children and have them understand him.
It’s true that when I was a child, he was remote – physically. He wasn’t there. He left for ‘the office’ before we woke up and returned after we were asleep. In today’s world he’d be called ambitious and focused. In his world he was doing what men did – they worked. The ‘home’ was the responsibility of the women. It was my mother’s job to provide a stable home life, to cook and clean, to wipe tears and bandage cuts and scrapes. They did their roles well.
Maybe the biggest challenge is that the world was changing around them. With the 70s, Father’s were now expected to nurture and comfort, to be physically present in their children’s lives. To be part of the messy, confusing, noisy world that is ‘the home’. My father enjoyed the kudos of climbing the corporate ladder, the time with the guys at the golf club, of living the ‘dream’. And my mother wanted the ‘old fashioned’ life, to be a stay at home mother with her children and ultimately her grand children. She didn’t know how to engage her husband in family life any more than he knew how to include her in his corporate world. They led separate lives.
The sad thing is that the roles they led, ensured that neither really achieved either of their wants and desires. The remote, ambitious father created remote ambitious children. What was the lyrics of the Harry Chapin song - ‘Cats in the cradle”; “when you comin home, Son, I dont know when, But we'll get together then, Dad”.
That was the story of our lives. I moved away from the country, started my own career with 14 hour days. Tried to live up to the image I had of my father, but not getting to know him or moving past the God like, absentee father, idol of my youth.
My father died seven years ago, just after his 70th birthday, when I was 45. Just as I was finally ‘old enough’ to start seeing the man, he was gone. In 1992, my father was diagnosed with Hepatitis Three, an incurable blood disorder. And that raises all sorts of other questions – how can this larger than life, this God, this idol have an incurable disease? One that doctors suggest he contracted through a blood transfusion when he was sixteen.
When I heard about the diagnosis, my world changed. Thirty four at the time and living in Sydney, Australia, I moved back to Canada. My life hadn’t been going quite as planned. I was already questioning my decision to live overseas. The news gave me the initiative to make a change. I chose to return to Canada and be there for my family and myself.
Over the next ten years I took the opportunity to spend some quality time with my parents. I still lived over 3,000 kms away on the other side of the country, but now I had the opportunity to vacation with them. We explored Ontario, took time in the Rockies, we even took an RV holiday through the Maritimes and spent ten years of Christmases together. Finally the man was emerging from behind the image. Funny, I found a lot of myself in him – my insecurities, my need to gain acceptance and accolades from the work environment, my joy in challenging myself physically as well as mentally, my slightly warped sense of humor and even my searching intellect that needs constant stimulation. I also found differences, I found a man with incredible determination, immense physical strength (up until 6 months before his death, he still climbed the mountain behind his home daily, he single handedly built a retaining wall that would have crushed a younger man and finished the new home my parents had bought after retirement that my mother still lives in) and outstanding resolve. He seemed so young and alive; maybe we could beat this thing after all.
There is one consolation with cancer (in the end it’s liver cancer that kills). It gives you the time to talk about anything and everything. To say the things you want to say, to the people you love. We talked a lot over those years, but particularly in the last five months. I took the time to be with him. We talked. And I grew up. I went from being the child, to being a friend. I watched the disease steal his strength, but through it all he retained his character. We laughed and we cried. We joked and lamented the unfairness of it. We had time to be and because of that, I have nothing but fond memories of the man I called Dad.
