(my dad & niece, 2004)
About a year ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog named The Dead Dad Club. I lost my father to leukemia in 2006, and the friend in question had lost her father to cancer a year earlier. She is the quirky sort of girl who knew that I wouldn’t be offended by her suggestion that I was a member of this sad, lonely “club” with the irreverent name.
There are certain feelings, moments, emotions that one has when they’ve lost a parent that folks with living parents just don’t get – especially, I think, when you’ve lost them too early. Both my friend and I were in our twenties, and my father was only 57 when he died.
So when I read Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, I totally empathized with her description of the expansive void she felt when she lost her father (also to cancer). A bit of background, this book is Lamott’s account of her bumpy path to spirituality and faith, and it was quite good. As one fellow librarian said, “She wears her faith well, as opposed to wielding it like a club.” In other words, hardcore fundamentalists probably won’t find much here that they like. This is the kind of book that I think the members of my church (an open-and-affirming, liberal, United Church of Christ) would embrace.
At any rate, here’s a quote from one of the pages I dogeared:
“It’s so different having a living father who loves you, even someone complex and imperfect. After your father dies, defeat becomes pretty defeating. When he’s still alive, there are setbacks and heartbreak, but you’re still the apple of someone’s eye.”
This statement resonated so deeply with me. My father was “complex and imperfect.” On one hand, he was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. On the other, he was not a family man at all. He left us when I was five, and my relationship with him was strained until I started to get a little older. More of a friend than a father figure (and more of a drinking buddy than a disciplinarian), it wasn’t until I was older that I began to truly appreciate him. When I had my heart trampled on by Mr. Basketball in high school, my dad put on some rock and roll and put things in perspective. He told me, “Piss on the world, because when the world gets its chance, it’ll piss on you.” A bit cynical perhaps (and not my modus operandi), but it stuck with me. When the world seemed out of sorts, a drink with my dad at his favorite pub always made me feel better. My father, who owned his own business and kept himself on a tight financial leash (he gave himself an allowance each week for MGD and Camel filterless cigarettes), enthusiastically paid for my summer in Spain because he felt strongly that it was important for me to see the world. My linguistic abilities came from him, too – he had been a Chinese linguist for the Air Force before I was born.
He was complex and imperfect, but he was my father. He was fiercely proud of me. And he was always there for me when I needed him. And now he’s gone. I don’t think people realize the kind of unique and unconditional love a parent gives you until that parent – and that love – is gone.
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August 8, 2008 at 5:37 pm
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