What Children Need from Dad

My father-in-law, dead now almost 20 years, used to pride himself on being "a good provider." Ironically, this was usually said in a defensive way, as if he suspected that he wasn't. "Whatever else, at least I'm a good provider." By this, he meant that he earned a good income and his family had many nice things. He was a broken man who did not feel love and did not extend it to others. The nice things were a poor substitute.

My own dad was emotionally remote in a different way. Family overwhelmed him, and he spent long hours in the basement or his study, coming out to preside over family dinners and occasionally taking one of us hostage to serve as his helper. He was a brilliant and talented man, but he was also a mystery.

My Dad in 1943 or 1944, working his way through school as a nanny

Dad died six months ago, and I inherited most of his household, including the family photo albums, boxes of ephemera, letters written to my mother during World War II, and a big binder of his published writings from the 1930s onward. If family overwhelmed my dad emotionally, his legacy has equally overwhelmed me. It is almost too much to comprehend.

Almost. He left a treasure trove behind, and I am rediscovering him through it, one scrap at a time. Dad was a writer, and when he turned 70, he put together a huge binder of his published writings, Tappings on the Keys. Someone (he? my mom? someone hired for the task?) carefully typed out every word, a chore that boggles the mind.

Dad started writing for the school paper in junior high and wrote for his high school and college papers. When I was a teen, he had a column in our town's weekly newspaper for a couple of years. He also did free lance writing, and worked in advertising and marketing for several different companies, writing for internal publications.

After the war, he wrote advertising copy for GE at the same time and place that Kurt Vonnegut was more famously employed, the Schenectady plant that served as the inspiration for Vonnegut's 1955 story "Deer in the Works." Dad never met Vonnegut, who worked in public relations.  I used to fantasize that, had he not had so many mouths to feed so quickly, he might have made a living at writing. But his gift was in Op Ed, not in fiction.

Years ago, I saw a bibliography that cited a piece he wrote for Parents' Magazine in 1953, "What Children Need from Dad." It was a shock to come across my dad's name in that context, but when my local library didn't have an archived copy, I didn't look further. So I was glad to find it in the binder.

Many of his essays and editorials are followed by his (then) present-day thoughts, but this piece stands alone. I found it odd, presenting love for a child as a "troublesome" and difficult thing to find time for, a competition for scarce resources. He admonishes fathers to stop making excuses and man up, as painful as that will be.

I'd like to know whether he believed that. He brushed our hair and sang to us and encouraged our creative efforts. Our photo albums record trips and adventures with Dad. Among the things he saved was an early Mother's Day present he helped my older sister and brother make. I want to believe he was aiming for his audience (and for the extra bucks he made writing the piece), setting himself above those "other guys." But he was also a harsh critic of himself, so maybe he was writing out of guilt at having brushed us off once too many times.

This is the first Father's Day I haven't been searching for a card to capture my feelings without drowning them in sentiment. Dad is gone, but in some ways, he is more present than ever.

From there to here to where

Another of my posts following the death of my dad. It's a different kind of passage, a sail through some rough seas.  I'm trying to recover the person he was to me before his final years as I transverse the passage from child to orphan.  I hope some of these words resonate with fellow travelers on this journey.

I did not intend the visit to be my last. Dad went downhill fast, but I had no indication he would die that day.  My son had given me a report from his visit the day before, and our best guess was a couple of weeks. Speech was difficult for my dad, and I could no longer understand him on the phone.  I knew that the only way to have two-way communication was to do it in person.

I sat with him while he went from responsiveness to a coma over the course of the day. After the first hour or so, he floated in and out of consciousness, eyes staring vacantly, lying perfectly still.  I think his systems were just shutting themselves down, and voluntary movement was gone.  So, mercifully, was his ability to feel pain, since he was unable to swallow even a sip of water.

And so I sat with him, holding his hand, able to stare at him without rudeness.  Pili, his caretaker, told me how much she loved him, even though she'd only worked for him a few days.  He reminded her of her own grandfather, once fiercely independent but now felled by a broken hip.  Helping my father helped soothe her distress at not being able to take her turn by her grandfather's bedside.  I told her what a force of nature Dad was before this final combination of illnesses and old age took him down. We swapped some family stories over the deathbed, two strangers coming to terms with loss and providing an odd comfort to each other. We talked of dying at home, and dying in the hospital, and how to let go.

How to let go of him and how to let him go.  Pili said he had promised not to die on "her watch." She said he knew she was a softie and she worried about him.

The portraits, shot in a hasty photo inventory in 2008.

He lay underneath his portrait and my mother's, the place he had slept all the years of my life.  They joked they had hung the portraits over the bed to settle any questions about whose side of the bed was whose.  They are beautiful pastel portraits of a beautiful couple in their late teens or early twenties. Since I first learned to crawl up onto that bed to bounce, in eight different bedrooms, my parents slept under those portraits.  They'd overseen heart-to-heart conversations, joyful girls-only slumber parties with my mom, the "nest" my daughter made at the foot of Grandma's bed, a few very difficult conversations, a couple of surprise presents, mother-daughter reviews of Mom's jewelry, some memorable breakfasts-in-bed.

And now he was dying in this bed, almost unrecognizable to the youthful self above him. I studied his face, looking at the curves and the angles, the spotted skin stretched tight over his head, the skin loose on his hands from rapid weight loss. I remembered my visiting his father, my grandfather, in his last days, an incomprehensible sight for a five-year-old child. I recalled more vividly being with my father-in-law as he lay dying in a cold emergency room bed, wondering what kind of comfort I could give.

I was not there when he died.  Pili sent me away, saying he would not leave until I left him.  Not on my watch, either, I guess. I did not leave because Pili told me to, but I did leave, and he died shortly after.

In my family, we have always talked about dying, never passing on. We never talked about heaven, and Dad told me after Mom's death that neither of them had faith that heaven existed.  Dad used to say he wanted to be hit by a truck (and sometimes he drove as if he wanted it sooner rather than later...).  He did not fear death, but for a long time he feared dying.  He had pamphlets from the Hemlock Society, yellowed with age, in his "when I die" folder. He feared the loss of control, the loss of choice.

For a long time, he feared losing his independence, losing his intellect.  He posted a DNR in his house, in his car, in the minds of his children. He was terrified of being in a vegetative state, but he was also terrified of being in assisted living. In the end, he was ready to go. He had lost his short-term memory almost entirely and he was easily confused.  He relied on his impressive long-term memory to dazzle and distract, and he managed to fool a lot of people that way.

I don't know how the dying goes, I don't know where the dying go.  In many ways, Dad was lost to me long before he died.  I am doing my best to find him again.

The Right Place at the Right Time

My dad died recently, so I've been thinking a lot about love and loss, and especially about my parents.  When my dad was alive, we used to tease him, saying, "THAT'S going into the skit at your funeral!"

I did not attend the memorial service, but if I had, this is what I might have said.

My father was a demanding man, driven to perfection (and generally coming pretty close).  He was hard on himself, and he could be hard on us as well.  He was the first of his generation to be born in the US, and he believed that brains and hard work would guarantee success.  We were born with the brains, and he created incentives to ensure the hard work.  I remember earning stickers for staying dry at night (which perhaps was not as early a memory as I might like to think) and quarters for good grades, an incentive program for his children that mirrored the ones he created for Fortune 500 companies.

I stayed in school for a long time, eventually earning a Ph.D.  As I neared the end of my graduate program, I bogged down, and Dad sent me an inspirational graphic.  He drew a thermometer of the sort that fund-raising campaigns favor, with Ph.D. as the final goal.  Along the way were marked progress points like “Entered Kindergarten” “Moved to Chagrin for seventh grade,” and “accepted to college.”  The thermometer was filled very nearly to the top, a reminder that I had nearly reached my goal. 

I graduated a few months later, and my parents came to my graduation.  A couple of years later, doing some career development exercises, Dad wrote that he considered my earning that Ph.D. as one of the top ten achievements of his life.  He was proud of what I had accomplished, and he also took pride in setting an expectation for success, creating the conditions necessary for achievement, and supporting me psychologically, emotionally, and financially every step of the way.

The last time I talked to my dad, we talked about my son Jefferson’s upcoming graduation from his nurse anesthesia program.  He sighed.  “Boy, I wish I could be there,” and we both knew that he wouldn’t.

My children were lucky to live only an hour from their grandparents throughout their school years, and Grandma Janie and Grandpa Tak attended every concert, school play, and graduation--just as they had attended all of mine.  But Dad was too frail to make this trip. He died a week after that conversation.

Today is Jefferson’s graduation.  He’s graduating from the #1 nurse anesthesia program in the country. It’s been a long slog:  six years and his second master’s degree in nursing.  Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to offer the same kind of support to him that my dad offered to me.  Today, his success is his own, but I share in the joy it brings.

Team Jefferson, with scrub caps in VCU black and gold

Addie is not too sure about this.

Horribly out-of-focus pic of Jeff's newest scrub cap.  

When my first child was born, Dad said to me, “If I am lucky, I will live to see this child graduate from high school.”  Patrick is 35 now, and my parents attended his graduations from high school, undergraduate school, and his Ph.D. program. He would have enjoyed Jefferson’s graduation, and I know he would not have wanted me to miss it.