By Bob Chrisman
May 2, 2009 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of my father’s death. He died physically that day, but he had died to most everyone a long time before that. In March 1969 he punched the time clock as he left work. He felt a numbness speed through his left side. He stumbled to a doorway to brace himself and waited for coworkers to find him.
They brought him home because he told them to take him there, not to the hospital. They carried him from the car, up the three sets of stairs and into the front room where they sat him on the sofa. My mother called an ambulance. “I’m going with your father. You drive up later.”
My world crumbled that day when God answered my prayers and struck my father down. I hated him for a variety of unclear reasons. He didn’t love me. He wanted nothing to do with me. He wasn’t good to my mother. Despite all these vague, but strong reasons, the guilt built inside me. I asked myself repeatedly, “What have I done?”
The doctors ran tests. They diagnosed a relatively small stroke and couldn’t understand why his physical condition didn’t improve. He had retained his mental faculties.
They transferred him to the university hospital in Columbia. My mother took the bus every weekend to visit him…a four-hour ride each way. He improved a little. I saw him one time there. He took his walker and accompanied me down the hall when I left.
When he came home months later, the ambulance people carried him up the stairs to the house and placed him in a wheelchair in the front room. His entire life centered on the front room and his bedroom. In three years he lost his mind.
He didn’t know me anymore. His son flew an airplane for a living. One day he said, “My son doesn’t come visit. I think you’d like him.” Even though I hated him, I wish he had remembered me. It hurt that he created another son who he admired.
He thought my mother was his mother. His repressed anger at her burst out. She told me the first time it happened. He screamed at her. “You keep me a prisoner in this bed.”
She bowed her head. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I threw back his covers. ‘If you can walk, then get up and walk.’ I stood where he couldn’t see me and watched as he struggled to sit up. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even roll over.” She started to cry.
“I couldn’t bear it so I covered him up. He had that scared look that people get when they realize how bad things really are. I couldn’t look at him. I ran to the back porch and cried my eyes out.”
For several months, he visited the circus in his mind. I would sit on his bed and he would ask, “May I have some cotton candy and peanuts?” He would ramble on and on about the men on the trapeze and the elephant.
Next he moved to his paranoid phase. My mother (who he still thought was his mother) had joined a conspiracy against him. “Get the gun. Shoot her. Get the gun while she’s out of the room.”
“Daddy, we don’t have any guns in the house. Never did.”
“Yes, it’s in the second drawer. Now, go get it.”
I looked in the drawer. I carried the drawer to his bed and dumped its contents. “See, there isn’t any gun. We never had a gun.”
“The bitch hid it. They know I won’t stand for her abuse.”
I put the drawer away and left the room. I never told my mother about that incident.
People forgot him. He became a fixture to me like a piece of furniture that held painful memories. I avoided him, didn’t talk to him for almost 10 years. Why bother?
The afternoon of May 2, 1984 he died. By the time I made it home, my mother had removed all signs of his illness…15 years boxed up and carried to the basement. The hospital bed disappeared. The commode vanished. I felt like I had entered a twilight zone. “Where is all the stuff?” I asked.
“Your uncle helped me take it all to the basement. Your father’s dead. No use in keeping those things around.”
People who attended the visitation the night before the funeral acted surprised. Some of them had known my mother for years. “We thought she was a widow. We didn’t know that your father was still alive.” In many ways she had become a widow in March of 1969.
We laid him to rest at the cemetery in Gower on a gray, cloudy day. The minister conducted a short, graveside service. I waited for someone to lower the casket into the vault. No one appeared. The mourners left for their cars.
The most profound sadness filled me. Once again he had been abandoned by the people who said they loved him. I hadn’t loved him for years, but I couldn’t leave him all alone. I wanted to stay with his coffin until they lowered it and covered it with dirt.
My mother yelled, “Get in the car. The ladies of the church have a lunch waiting for us.”
I looked at the box that held the body of the man who had been my father. The sadness kept me from leaving.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?” My mother pulled on my arm.
“I don’t want to leave him here by himself. Can’t we wait until they lower the coffin into the grave? He must be lonely.” I could barely speak for the tears.
“Don’t be silly. He isn’t here.” She pulled me to the car.
My last memory is this: his gray metal coffin rests on a shiny chrome frame, the canopy of the viewing tent flaps wildly in the wind, clouds move across the gray sky and shadows run over the green grass and tombstones. I wish I could say his death ended our troubled relationship, but it didn’t. More of the story remained to be told. I must recall it now to bear witness for my father.
R.I.P, Gower, Missouri, January 2009, photo © 2009 by Bob Chrisman. All rights reserved.
About Bob: Bob Chrisman is a Kansas City, Missouri writer who frequently writes memoir about his mother, her three sisters, and their influence on his life. This is his first piece about his father, Part I of a series of three. Bob’s other red Ravine posts include Aunt Annie’s Scalloped Oysters, Hands, Growing Older, Goat Ranch, Stephenie Bit Me, Too, The Law Of Threes, and In Memoriam.
I must say that seeing this piece in print gives it a greater impact than I expected. When I read it the first time, I almost didn’t think it was mine. Of course, I knew better, but I had some distance from it until the end.
Thanks, yb & QM for the opportunity to look at my relationship with my dad. I have learned a lot about it and expect to learn more about it and about myself too.
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I can understand the impact of separation being perhaps even greater when the relationship has been troubled than when it has been smooth. The contrasts in this piece are evident. The wishing that the man be struck down and the wishing he not be left by himself. Between those two points are his vulnerabilty and fear and your pain in recognizing his vulnerability.
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“What have I done?”
For one thing, you’ve looked squarely at pain. And named it. Very brave, Bob.
“The bitch hid it.” She hid more than the “gun,” didn’t she? “We didn’t know that your father was still alive.”
“He became a fixture like a piece of furniture.” I love this metaphor. You don’t need to add “that held painful painful memories,” Bob. Trust me. We get it.
“15 years boxed up.” “The commode vanished.”
Simple sentences. Predicates. Verbs. Continue to err on the side on simplicity, Bob. Those are the lines that pack such wallop.
I can’t stop thinking about the commode. So symbolic.
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Jerseysista brings to light a real strength of this retrospective series, Bob — recognizing your father’s vulnerability in the midst of your own. Again, so brave.
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Bob,
I enjoyed reading this piece, and look forward to the next two installments.
You’ve dared to broach the ugly truth of dealing with a parent who doesn’t love us, the one we don’t feel safe around. It’s a relief to read this, really, as someone names that which normally isn’t spoken of. For those of us who have an emotionally distant/abusive/reckless parent, it is a lonely path. It seems everyone else had great parents who were looking out for their best interests.
Reading this, I’m less alone. Thanks.
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Jerseysista, thank you for your kind words. In the next two installments I think you will see how great the impact of the separation was. That’s one of several reasons that I have never written a lot about my relationship with my father. Thanks, again for stopping by. I appreciate your interest.
Flann, as always thanks for you kind words and support. I added the piece about “that held painful memories” because I wanted the image of how he held me for years in the ignored memories of our relationship. But, I do see your point.
Teri, what you said about “I’m less alone” really means a lot. We have talked about writing connecting us to other people through similar experiences and how we need to tell our stories, even if they are like other people’s because of the power of knowing that we are not alone in what happened to us. Thanks.
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I, too, appreciated Teri’s, “I’m less alone” comment. I felt less alone reading your post and then even less alone after reading her comment.
I was very curious about this piece because I’ve only ever heard your writing about your mother. So I know that you had to go deep. Part of me what’s to be certain that you’ve tied a rope around your waist so you don’t fall too deep too fast into a very dark place. Know that in my heart, I’ve got the other end of the rope, and I’m hanging on and can’t wait to read the next installments.
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Thanks, Flann. The descent into this writing began in February when yb asked a very simple question, “Why don’t you write about your father?” I had an answer for her (I always have an answer), but it struck me as not true. She encouraged me to explore the reasons why because she sensed a lot of energy behind it.
The exploration hasn’t been easy at times. I get sick to my stomach and sleepy. My head hurts. I give up and go to bed. What has come to me as a result of this writing is a look at the dark places of my life and in myself. It isn’t pretty.
yb & QM gave me the option of not posting this piece or using a fake name out of concern for me. I appreciate their kindness, but I felt that to not post the piece and not use my real name would diminish the impact of it. I exist and I experienced these things. Kind of like asking people to “see me.” “This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine.” I won’t pull too hard on the rope. I’ve fallen pretty deep already. Thank you.
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Bob, thanks for your honesty and your good writing. That little light of yours shines light on so many other lives, including mine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
The truth will set you free, so keep on telling it.
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Ditto, Bob. Keep telling it.
This piece about your father also says so much about your mother. That she cared for him for those 15 years and then the moment he was gone, erased his presence in the house. I have to wonder about the sacrifices she made to be his caretaker, and not just that but to watch him die inside and then live with the sickness that overtook him.
And so it is enlightening to have come to know something of her through your previous pieces, then to learn about her relationship to him during his illness through this piece.
I admire your courage for choosing to publish this under your name. You take ownership for it, which also implies a commitment to continue the excavation.
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Bob, I also wanted to mention that I just read a book on the return leg of my overseas trip; it was Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon. Not sure if you’re familiar with Sebold’s book The Lovely Bones, but if not, I encourage you and others to read both.
But the reason that The Almost Moon came up for me as I read your piece is because it is about a woman’s painful relationship to her parents, and in particular, her mother. It’s a fictional piece, and one of the things that struck me about it was how much empathy I as a reader had for the protagonist (middle-aged daughter) on account of her own childhood. She did so many things that were on the surface unforgiveable, yet I forgave her.
And it reminded me how parenthood is a chain. To understand oneself, you have to understand your parents and childhood, and to understand them, you have to understand their childhood. Even though this was a fictional account and not even closely resembling your own story except insofar as it had to do with a complicated relationship to parents, this universal aspect of parenting did resonate with your account.
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yb, I read “The Lovely Bones” when it was first published. I would recommend the book also to anyone who has not read it. Although the subject is troubling, the way the author told the story made for a great read. I will look in “The Almost Moon.”
Sometimes a personal story is better told as fiction because of the emotion involved writing about one’s own life. I had three pieces of “fiction” read by my writing critique group and it was much easier to hear their suggestions when they gave them.
My mother and father’s relationship was a complicated and complex one which you may get more information on in the next two pieces. I don’t know yet.
In the end, they were who they were no worse than most parents and better than a great many. They were not perfect as I am not perfect.
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Bob, it takes courage to publish the rawer memoir material in a way that is respectful to the people in your family who are involved and to you. I appreciate that you took the risk of publishing under your own name. It reminds me that I am most moved by memoir that takes risks.
I wrote a post this year about Patricia Hampl’s participation in the book Home Ground and added a few quotes from her about writing memoir in the comments on that post. In one of her comments, she says that she could not have written The Florist’s Daughter while her parents were alive. [See this Comment on Home Ground — Back In The Saddle (LINK)] She said part of the reason for that was that she needed the story to be “finished” before she wrote about it.
One question I had for you was whether that was true for you in terms of the memoir writing you’ve done about your mother and father. Did it help that their living stories are complete and you are now writing from your own memories?
One other question. One thing I’ve noted about myself is that it makes me nervous for my family that I will reveal too much or reveal something that might hurt them. But when I actually read something to them or ask them about publishing certain things I find risky, they many times aren’t bothered at all by the same items I thought were risky. Has that happened to you at all in publishing your memoir pieces?
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ybonesy, I’m excited to read The Almost Moon now that I’ve heard you talk about it since returning home from Vietnam. I loved The Lovely Bones when I read it, could not put it down. The way she tackled the complex issues of family and abuse made the issues accessible to many different kinds of people. That’s what you want to happen in a book. I’m adding The Almost Moon to my list.
One other thing, The Lovely Bones is being made into a movie that’s coming out in December starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci. Here’s a link to the trailer:
The Lovely Bones trailer starring Susan Sarandon, directed by Peter Jackson (LINK)
Of course, I always recommend reading the book first. But that’s just me.
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This is a wonderfully honest piece of writing, Bob. I know how difficult it is to write about family. I’ve written a few things about my parents but the real stories will not come until they are gone, if I outlive them.
The simplicity of the sentences add strength to this piece. I think you have a lot more to write about your parents and your childhood and how it molded you are now.
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What tough questions to answer. It helps that my mother is dead because she wouldn’t enjoy me telling stories about her. I don’t think. My father being dead for 25 years had no effect on me writing about him. The memories carry lots of pain for me and, while 25 years have diminished that pain, I’m still surprised by the impact it has on me even now.
I wouldn’t want to hurt members of my immediate family or extended family with my stories. Still, if I tell what I know to be the truth, it might hurt them because they have different memories of my mom and dad. I take that risk whenever I publish a piece about my mother or her sisters and now with the first piece about my father.
I have received some off-line reactions to this piece that I never expected from friends. Their reactions help me to see what I wrote in a different way.
Remember what Steve Almond said to us when we interviewed him? He said something about intent and how important it is that the intention is not to hurt your subject. The writer can’t know how the reader will react.
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Corina, you raise a good issue about writing family stories. I wish I had written the difficult stories when they happened. I did as far as my last 10 years with my mother is concerned. It has been fascinating to re-read those notebooks to see how my understanding of those incidents changes over time. All this to say, write the real stories now and keep them somewhere separate so you can look back after your parents are gone.
As my paternal grandmother said when my father had his stroke, “It isn’t right that a mother should outlive her children.” She didn’t. I hope that you outlive your parents, like it should be.
Thanks for your compliments.
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Bob, I do remember when Steve Almond said that about intention. I believe, too, that intention has a lot to do with how our writing is perceived. As a reader, you can always read whether an author is intentionally setting out to hurt people, or simply telling his or her own truth.
Do you want to say anymore about the “different way” you are able to perceive from other’s comments about your piece? It’s one of the things I love about reading what others have to say about a piece of writing. The way I view it gets turned topsy-turvy.
I had one other curious question. I hope it’s not too strange. When your dad had the stroke, he asked his coworkers to take him home and not rush him to the hospital. It made me curious about why he requested that (?). It seems like if that happened today at a place of employment, people would immediately call 911 or rush someone to the hospital. I wondered if you knew any more about why your dad went home, then had your mother call the ambulance.
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Bob, thanks for sharing this story. Itonly scratches the surface of your father’s personality and your relationship., and obvious, there is much more to be said.
I found it interesting how you and your mother reacted and interacted with your father in a totally different manner. You say that you “hated him,” but showed much more compassion.
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Great piece of writing, Bob!
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Matissta, thanks for stopping by. The relationship among the three of us can’t be covered in one piece or three pieces. I hope that the complexity of our interactions comes out in the next two pieces. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
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QM, I can only guess at to why he wanted to come home and not go to the hospital. The expense of a hospital visit probably bothered him. I don’t think we had medical insurance. I don’t remember any.
Maybe he thought the whole thing would pass and he would regain the feeling in the left side of his body. (He and my mother were both left-handed.) My family was not a family of doctor goers.
There was no 911 in 1969 in St. Joseph. And, my dad didn’t want my mother to call the ambulance, but she insisted. She almost always won.
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Bob, I commend you for having the fortitude to have written into words about the strained relationship between you & your father. As I read this piece, I thought about how painful it might have been for you. Yet, what I am finding as I write the pieces of my life, is that I can finally let go of the painful. I am always surprised that I feel that way. Not sure why that is. I guess it brings a sort of closure to the painful feelings I have been afraid to share with others. I think what breathepeace says is true. “The truth will set you free, so keep on telling it.”
I’m looking forward to the other installments. I’ve enjoyed your posts in the past. You have a special gift. Honest writing at it’s best. D
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Bob, as I’ve gone about my day today, catching up after being gone for two weeks, I find this piece weighing on my mind. I guess I’m trying to understand what it might have been like to see a father, relatively young, undergo such a mental and physical transformation. I have pictured you visiting your parents and what it must have felt like to know that your father didn’t know you, didn’t know what was happening that day, and whatever came out of his mouth was the dementia talking, not your father.
I can only imagine that it would have been worse than his having died when he had the stroke. Is that a bad thing to say? I hope not. It’s just that losing him–yet not losing him–the way you did and over the extended period of time that you did, that seems so painful. Plus, had the stroke ended his life when it happened, your memories of him would have ended at a point when he was healthy and lucid.
Maybe that would not have made a big difference in your relationship. This piece hooks me in and makes me want to know how that relationship was prior to the stroke. I think that is one of the strengths of the piece.
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Oh, I also want to warn that Sebold’s The Almost Moon got some very critical reviews, from The New York Times, for example. You know, her memoir was about her experience being raped, and The Lovely Bones was about a girl who tells the story from the grave about her experience being violently abused. So Sebold’s stories are not for folks who like a cheery romance-type story.
I was pulled in to The Almost Moon from the beginning, but then again, it was nighttime on the plane, and my options were to sleep, watch Monsters Inc., or read. But I think it was more than that for me. I just felt a deep empathy for the protagonist. And I was drawn to the theme of parenting as a chain. You either break it or you continue it. And I don’t mean only if you become a parent yourself. In living one’s life, period.
So I hope those who look up the book based on my recommendation find it to be worthwhile. But just wanted to warn about the bad reviews.
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alittlediddy, I agree with you that writing about painful feelings does give a sort of closure to them. I don’t have to hold them inside any longer. There they are spread out on the page in front of me. The hard part is knowing that my words are inadequate to describe everything that happened. No one was the bad person in this familial relationship.
My concern is about the painful things that “may” have happened, but that will (hopefully) come out in the next two installments.
yb, you’ll learn more as the pieces come to you. You are correct that it was worse that he lived after the stroke and, no, that isn’t a bad thing to say. It is the feeling that I had at the time and, today, from a different perspective still hold as a truth.
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yb, as my sister told me when we discussed the fact that neither or us had children, “The dysfunction stops here.” Parenting is a theme and sometimes you can’t break the chain that was set in motion several generations ago UNLESS to recognize the pattern and work very hard to correct it.
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Bob,
i was very moved by your piece and i do look forward to the next installment. When people die, i think about the missed opportunity. Your dad didn’t have an opportunity to right things, nor you with him. i imagine the angst of non-resolution.
Last month i was asked if i was close to my dad, and i found it impossible to reply. i didn’t know how to measure it. How he defined being a good dad and how i define it are definately different things.
My dad lived in a very different generation and died before he could enjoy all that he worked for. i am sure that he is not the only man in his generation that did this. I find that very sad.
Finding resolution is part of the grief process. I applaud you for your journey. and know that you are not alone on that path.
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Parenting is a theme… So true, Bob. I think part of the reason that today’s parents have such a hard time is that we’re in between the extremes of Depression-era scarcity and the current state of consumerism/overabundance. And I don’t mean that only in financial terms, but also emotional ones as well. So in addition to dealing with any patterns imprinted, we’re also dealing with the external environment changing multi-fold.
But that’s true of any adult today, parent or not, right? Perhaps having kids just makes it more front and center, since we deal with it moment by moment and in such a tangible way.
I wanted to ask, I know your mother had her sisters but did she also have a close network of friends? You mentioned that some people at your father’s service were surprised to learn that he had even been alive all those years. Were there closer friends who knew what was going on and supported her? I wouldn’t be surprised if she shouldered the burden without the support of friends, as that was a hallmark of her generation. And maybe of her geography. Going it alone. Not asking for help. Curious if this was the case, because via your writing she also struck me as someone who was fairly close to her sisters.
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reccos62, thanks for the comments. So many men of that generation worked until they died. They left many of us without a chance to talk with them about our lives together. I learned from my experience with my mother that I could talk about things that bothered me in my relationship with her, but not necessarily resolve them. The talking was enough for me. I wish I had had the opportunity to talk with my father. It didn’t happen.
yb, my mother had a network of friends, but her sisters were her primary support system. From what I remember, my parents never socialized much outside of the family and the church. My father was a loner.
My mother never asked for help unless she had tried to do it herself and couldn’t. If she asked someone (including her sisters) for help and they couldn’t or wouldn’t, she never asked them again for anything.
An example: when I went away to college, my dad was bedridden and my mother couldn’t leave him. She didn’t drive anyway. She asked one of her sisters who apparently said she and her husband could not take me to college about 2 1/2 hours away. She never asked that sister for anything and they lived like that for 20 years at least. She never told that sister why she refused to accept rides or help from her. She only told me one day when I told her that my aunt had mentioned how her feelings had been hurt by one of my mother’s refusals. She ended our conversation with “I will never ask her for anything again as long as I live.” She lived a long time.
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I shed many tears over this one. For all three of you and what never was… for things that others take for granted. It’s a strange feeling to realize that hatred and love can balance on a very fine line when it comes to a difficult parent. Especially when they are finally gone. You have a good heart Bob. It shows.
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I was totally absorbed in your story. Thank you for sharing it with me and others. It takes real courage and you’ve got it. Your writing always pulls me in – the mark of great writing.
I loved the Lovely Bones but not Almost Moon. That’s just me though
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anuvuestudio, thanks for commenting. I believe that most love relationships balance on the fine line between love and hatred. We see it all the time in the world around us.
When the person we love/hate dies without any attempt at resolution, we are left with this confusion of emotions. That’s what the next pieces will cover (I hope).
Neola, thanks for the “great writing” compliment.
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Bob, I am always moved by what you write about both your parents. This piece, included. I also found myself thinking about it last night after I read it and again this morning. Your writing is clean, clean, and tight. The way you say things, without excess emotion, delivers a big impact.
As you know my mother had a massive stroke at age 69. The doctor in the ER said he wasn’t sure we should hope for her survival or not. She recovered enough to spend the next 4.5 years in a nursing home, becoming more child-like all the time. It would have been easier on all of us if the stroke had killed her. When she died, I didn’t cry or even feel sad. I had grieved her in small doses for nearly 5 years and had come to both resent her needs (as they bit into my busy life) and to feel guilty about that resentment. And sad because, really, there was so little I could do to help her.
By the time her stroke occurred, I was 44 and had done a lot of therapy in order to forgive her for her drinking throughout my childhood, her spells of depression, her intermittently exquisite parenting that could collapse at any moment. We ‘d had some warm times, she and I, as she maintained her sobriety for the final 20 years of her life. However….there was still so much unsaid, undone.
It is, I think, way harder to navigate the loss – whether swift or gradual – of a parent whose love you’ve never had or never trusted. I think now, in writing about your dad, with all the pain, confusion, and sadness, you are showing in a unique way the depth of your connection with him. In a strange way, honoring both him and yourself by telling your truth about what happened.
Kudos, Bob
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Jude, the sentence, “When she died, I didn’t cry or even feel sad.” That’s pretty much how I have felt since my mother died. I wait for the grief and sadness to hit. Like you, I had 5 years to grieve her passing in bits and pieces.
With my dad, I have a little over 15 years to mourn his rapid deterioration, but slow death. The difference is that we had not talked about anything that occurred between us. At least with my mother, I had attempted to address my issues with her. The attempt, whether or not successful, was the important part.
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My mother never asked for help unless she had tried to do it herself and couldn’t. If she asked someone (including her sisters) for help and they couldn’t or wouldn’t, she never asked them again for anything.
Bob, one would have thought that this might be a trait shared by all sisters. If that were the case, then surely the sister who didn’t provide the ride to college would have known that she was making a long-term choice in not answering the call for help. Maybe not, though.
The other thing that I wanted to comment on was about your mother not driving. I’ve known of several women of that generation who didn’t drive, although not many. My husband’s grandmother didn’t drive, but she would have been older than your mom. With your father bedridden for 15 years, who drove for your mother? Did that mainly fall to her children (you) and her sisters? Or did they not drive also?
Details such as these are the ones I find most fascinating as I learn about someone’s life.
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My mother never learned to drive. I remember what was probably the last attempt my father made to teach her to drive. My sister and I sat quietly in the back seat and watched the lesson go seriously awry as the car rolled backward down a steep hill and my mother couldn’t find the brake.
She walked everywhere, kinda like I do. No one drove my mother to do her grocery shopping or trips to the pharmacy. She either walked or took the bus. She would leave my dad for maybe an hour or so. If the trip took longer she would ask the woman up the street to stop by every 30 minutes or so to make sure he was okay.
She walked the 20 blocks to the grocery store pulling my little red wagon. She accepted rides from people who offered. My sister and I would take her places if she asked or if we were in town to visit.
Did her sisters drive? Two of them did, her oldest and her youngest. The other sister (the one born right after my mother) may have driven at one time, but her health prevented her from driving at some point.
A short mother story about a time after my father died: When my mother had her hysterectomy she decided not to tell my sister and I that she would be in the hospital for a couple of days. “I didn’t want to worry you.” Her youngest sister insisted that Mom call us and tell us, but never called us herself. That’s the way they were.
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Bob, that’s amazing how the conflict played out between your mother and her sisters. It reminds me of generational differences, too. Our generation has had the advantages of therapy becoming normalized, and the encouragement to directly talk to others about conflict and either resolve it or move on (not that this always happens). We live in such a different time in terms of the options available for communication with others. It does sound like your mother was quite isolated.
I wanted to tell you that I woke up thinking about your piece this morning. I thought about it a lot yesterday, too. I think part of it is the timing. I found out last weekend that my step-dad is getting remarried in the Fall and it brought up so many feelings from my childhood about his last marriage and how it seemed to create a big gap between us, in part due to the attitude of his second wife. There was a large chunk of time in my 20s and 30s when I didn’t communicate much with him or that part of my life in the South. Over the last 10-15 years, I have made a big effort to reconnect on my trips South and it has been rewarding and healing. But when my step-dad called to tell me he was getting married again all kinds of old childhood fear resurfaced about feeling abandoned again.
The difference this time was that when I called him back to congratulate him on his upcoming wedding, I was able to tell him directly that I still wanted to be able to see him and spend time with him alone, just the two of us, along with spending time with them together. I also reiterated things I had already told him about my feelings about our relationship while he was married to his last wife. It was a big step for me to be able to be direct with him so that we didn’t repeat the same patterns. And his response was positive. Your piece reminds me that life is short and we never really know how long we are going to have with our parents. It’s important to try to be as honest as possible. And to try to ask for what we need. But it’s so hard to do.
I wanted to ask you, when you took that 10 years away from your father when you chose not to talk to him, do you have any regrets about that? Or wish you had handled it differently? The reason I ask is that when I think about the last scene in your piece, where you are standing at the grave and wanting to stay with your father, it feels so gut wrenching and like a need for some closure with him. Whereas your mother (who has spent 15 years caretaking your father) has in many ways already said her good-byes, grieved, and moved on. The compassion she showed was by taking care of him all those years; whereas, you were more tender at the end.
I wanted to say again, that I really appreciate that you took the risk of sharing this piece on red Ravine. And I look forward to the future installments to see where the story leads.
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QM, I had regrets about those years I treated him as though he didn’t exist, but, at the same time, I couldn’t have talked to him because of my anger and hatred. Also, after the first three years confined to the wheelchair, he lost his mind…perhaps a way of dealing with his paralysis. He had also become bedridden by that time.
I can’t have regrets about things that couldn’t have happened anyway. Much of life is dealing with what we did to make sure it doesn’t happen again in another relationship. Rarely can we repair the damage that we or someone else did. Like you with your stepdad, you expressed your needs to him to prevent a repeat of the past. That’s about all we can do.
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When I first read that your mom pulled a wagon 20 blocks for groceries, it seemed really sad. But at second glance, maybe it wasn’t sad at all. She got exercise, got to see her neighborhood, and lived in her world. Maybe there was a lot of pleasure in that routine.
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Teri, hard to tell what she thought about the walk. She walked most places…always had. Some of her walking was a form of matyrdom, but that’s only my opinion from the outside knowing what she put herself through when she didn’t need to do everything on her own.
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Ahhh, yes. The mentality that it is a great dishonor to ask for help, a big sign of weakness. The opposite extreme of being lazy and dependent on everyone (I’ve met lots of people like this, too) isn’t any easier to take.
Balance.
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Here in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the traditions that farming families of all backgrounds (many Spanish roots, but lots of immigrants from Italy and France, too) used to work as a community to help one another clean out their ditches to prepare for the irrigation season. These ditches are a bear–they fill over winter with weeds, silt, leaves, tree branches.
But of course, more recent times have replaced this tradition. Now families don’t know one another, and they tend to their ditches alone.
This is what I think of when I read about the mentality about asking for help. I wonder if asking for help is becoming a thing of the past.
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Bob, I find it comforting that your post resonates with so many of us. I’ve been thinking about it since I 1st read it. As the years go by, I am finding myself wanting to live each day as if it were my last. Not an easy thing to do, though I am trying harder & harder. I have a few relationships with close relatives that I need to resolve.
I have to find a way to handle the situations more delicately & stop thinking about my own feelings. In fact, I need to resolve it soon, as the daily hurt is too much to burden.
I find it amazing that your mother walked 20 blocks to shop. But, my Dad’s mother never drove either & she also never voted. Her life was devoted to her family & church. I miss her dearly. My grandfather died 10 years prior to her stroke that caused the family to understand that she was in need of round the clock nursing care. I know it was a tough decision for the children, but a wonderful Mennonite nursing home was chosen & she was cared for in a very humane way. She remained in a vegetative state for nearly 2 years before she passed.
My Dad & I had always been the closest family members to her, though all of her children lived within a 3 miles of her home. We visited often & took her fresh flowers every Sunday before the stroke. However, our visits to the nursing home were few & far between. It wasn’t her anymore. It was too difficult. After her death, my Dad & I shared our feelings of guilt for not visiting her as often as we should have. I felt a remarkable sense of relief when she died. Guilt of feeling that way weighed heavily on me for years. My Dad takes fresh flowers to her gravesite often, whatever is blooming.
I’ve had a great relationship with my parents. There are no past regrets. I am so appreciative for that.
But, I still have a few relationships to work on. I’ve reconnected with 3 friends this past summer, & am trying very hard to live today as if there were no tomorrow. D
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Teri, my mother would be the first one to help someone or offer help, but she couldn’t ask other people for help. She never wanted people to pity her. That was another big thing with her.
yb, sorry to here that the tradition of cleaning out the acequias has vanished with everyone cleaning out their own. In my old neighborhood, people helped one another as long as the “old-timers” dominated the ‘hood. When they moved or died, everyone kept to themselves. I don’t know exactly what happened to make most people retreat into their own little worlds.
alittlediddy, I know what you mean about living each moment as if it were the last. That attitude puts lots of things in perspective.
I visited my mother in the nursing home every weekend for the time she was there, even after she no longer recognized me. It was difficult to see her become one of them. Still, I never wanted her to have a lucid moment and wonder why no one came to visit her so I went every weekend. She never had a lucid moment for most of the last year.
I did not realize how much relief I felt after she died until the next weekend that I did not take off for the drive to the nursing home. Then it hit me. “I don’t ever have to take that trip again.”
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I’ve been meaning all day to share this post that Corina wrote on her blog, Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, about your piece, Bob. She wanted to share your essay with her readers.
Thanks, Corina!!
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yb, I visited Corina’s blog. Her comments were very kind.
Thanks, Corina.
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Bob,
I’m very late in responding here. Your story is so painful and honest and true. I know there is so much more to come. The four hours your mom spent on the bus made me cry and reminded me of the dogged devotion we humans have for the family we are caretaking for, the long arduous journey your mother made just to visit your father.
It called to mind the story you shared with us in Taos about the dedicated visit (trek) you undertook each Sunday to see your mother. The choice to go and to care despite all of the conflicted feelings and memories runs deep.
L
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Bob, examining the pain makes it somehow more bearable. Thank you. I have been putting off writing about Susan’s cancer for two months. It’s not fair, but it’s life. And isn’t this what we do: examine life?
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[…] and their influence on his life. This is Part II of a series of three about his father. Part I, My Father’s Witness, was published on red Ravine in August. Bob’s other red Ravine posts include Aunt Annie’s […]
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Bob,
I love the pace and the rhythm of you writing. You exercise your demons in your work and have the courage to look them in the eye, no matter how painful.
In this story, you shined the spotlight on the complicated relationship between adult children and their parents, and how our hearts and our heads are often in conflict. I admire your ability to do that. I look forward to reading the next two parts of this trilogy.
Linda Joyce
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[…] took up residence among the tombstones, we didn’t attend to as many of the graves. After my father’s stroke in 1969, which left him bedridden, and my sister’s departure to teach a distance away, we […]
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