I Never Cried For My Father: He Died on Saturday, But Unlike a Motion Picture the Tears Never Came

With apologies to my friend playwright Robert Anderson, whose title inspired me for this piece, Sunday morning I got a call from my closest relative, cousin Arlene -- really my surrogate mother, who gave me the following news:

She'd heard from her son, who'd heard from his uncle that apparently my father had died the previous night. It wasn't surprising in that he was 94, and it wasn't surprising to have learned the news in this fourth-hand manner, as I haven't dealt with my immediate family at all in a very long time. Arlene and I assumed, though she wasn't sure, that it was probably my sister who started this bizarre chain of communication that eventually found its way to me.

I will spare you most of the whys and the wherefores, and you'll just have to trust me when I explain how about twenty years ago I decided enough was enough and never bothered to put up with what I perceived to be gross insensitivities displayed by my mother, father and sister to me at varying times in my life.

Up until that point in time I bent over backwards to maintain contact and initiate visits, which were rarely reciprocated. All this in spite of many slights shown over the years and lack of support for my career choice and personal sensibilities. At a certain moment I decided that the pendulum had finally gone as far as it could go to -- dare I say -- make it cost effective from an emotional state to continue setting myself up for further let downs. I determined that if there is a scale of sorts that balances the pros and cons of a relationship, when the pain of seeing my parents and talking with them outweighed the pain of not having a relationship at all, it was a reluctant choice that had to be made if for no other reason than to keep my sanity.

And for that reason I am grieving. Not with tears over my father's passing, but for the fact that there are no tears. I grieve that it is unrealistic to express sorrow about the loss of someone you haven't seen or heard from in twenty years. When I stopped calling my parents it was not over a fight. There was nothing official that caused this prolonged estrangement. I just got tired of playing the lap dog, who was always anxious for the petting that rarely came. Indeed when I ceased my involvement with them there was no statement of concern or pain from them. It's not as if I hung up on them when they called me incessantly to find out what was wrong. They never called or wrote at all. So, I finally got the message that should have been so clear from the start.

If this were a motion picture, various characters would say, "Get over it. They're your parents." And I will admit that my childhood was a far cry from Oliver Twist. I was fed, clothed and sheltered and given the basics of a lower middle class life. But when I needed encouragement to follow my dreams I was beaten down with humiliating interactions in which they used their friends, most of whom I admired, to "talk sense" to me and make me feel quite foolish. All this to deflect the discussion from turning to their disinterest in providing financial support so that I could go to UCLA, which I never asked them to provide. I later wrote a play about this, entitled, Family Bliss, which of course it wasn't.

So, if there were a movie or more realistically a soapy Lifetime television play, this inner struggle would all be dramatized, the scenes would be replayed and at the end of the story there would be some sort of heart wrenching encounter with my parents, tears abounding all around as we faded to black.

But my life isn't a movie and I wonder if movies sometimes, in their zeal for optimism and a happy ending, don't make it that much more painful for those of us who have to live with reality. Some people do have great families, as my cousin Arlene does with her children and her late husband Ed, but many families do not, in spite of The Donna Reed Show and Bill Cosby Show fictional types that get so much attention and influence us far too much. We give way too much stock to family titles, even as they might not be earned. We have no problem shedding friends or spouses, but God forbid we do so with siblings and the folks called Mom and Dad.

What if they don't deserve our emotional output? What if they aren't worthy in spite of their going through the motions of taking care of us when we are small? I guess what I'm saying is that the necessities of life do not by themselves entitle these family members to unconditional love for the decades that follow if there are significant issues that have caused us pain and there appears no realistic way to resolve them over the years.

You are all free to do what you wish. I offer simply that my life has been happier not being chained to people simply because of genetic ties.

And still I grieve over the fact that I was not blessed with a family who loved me enough so that I might have felt the natural urge to let the tears flow when I learned that my father had died.

Comments

[rachaelisacancer]

You are not alone and you made the right decision, though it may always be difficult to look back on.

If you need the tears they will find their way to you.

[Dots]

It's such a struggle. Giving up the expectation that family can/will be supportive is a big leap.
I've been reading about affection disorder which helps me with the greiving and to understand why I've had some difficulty with loving relationships as an adult.
Like you say, we need more than food and clean diapers as babies.
I so wish they would make "parenting" an essential part of public education.

[gonavy]

Thank you for this piece. I haven't seen or heard from my father in 12 years. I do not know if he is dead or alive. I would be surprised to find out if he was alive. I have grieved for the loss of the man I thought he was, the one I believed in as a young girl. It broke my heart when I saw him for who he really was.

[smoothdogie]

Thanks for writing this piece. After reading it and the various comments it seems amazing to me the number of folks who are somewhat in the same situation that I am. I quit speaking to my father about seven years ago. It was a tough decision....one that I struggled with for a long time. It finally came down to a question of whether I would continue to subject myself to the abuse that he dished out over my lifetime. When I was a child the abuse took the form of physical beatings. He called them whippings. They were beatings. Eventually children grow up and you can't hit them anymore so most abusive parents take to an emotional abuse. The main point here is that all victims of abuse have to look hard at themselves and decide if this relationship is really worth it. Is the pain that you must endure to have this relationship worth the good that you get out of it? For me the answer was clearly no. I sometimes wonder why it took me so long to figure it out. I have never missed him a bit. As he approaches the end of his life I have no desire to talk to him or to try to work it out. Its done and finished.

[Jude2004]

Good for you. This time of year--May and June--we're expected to praise parents whether they deserve it or not. Yours didn't deserve it, and you did the emotionally healthy thing. It's weird hearing that someone died, though, especially when it's in such a round-about way.

[desthmoneses]

Many parents have children out of sheer cultural expectation while never really wanting them, the American parent is a miserable failure on the world stage.

[DramaQueen101]

When my father passed away in 2003, i grieved not for his loss, but for the loss of the chance at reconciliation. He had walked out on my family several years before, and after a few years of reconciliation, he disowned me after finding out about my sexual orientation. The last five years of his life, there was no communication (at his request). When he was on his deathbed, my sister asked him if he wanted to talk to me. He told her "If he calls, hang up. If he shows up, slam the door."

Sometimes we can grieve over losses, but not the person. I don't know which is sadder.

[SamThornton]

Bet this happens more often than anyone would dream. Happened to me with my father when I was 14. Never saw him or talked to him again, thank God.

[Checquoline]

I did the same thing. I got tired of it and stopped speaking and never missed them. It is not our fault when someone else has issues. We can't save them only ourselves. The healthy ones get away.

[DavidHealy]

The movies and television favor comedy over tragedy, apparently for commercial reasons (unless there is some dark evil conspiracy lurking at the center of this culture). However, tragedy is live and well in the theater and it is the theater which would provide some solace for the pitfalls of family.

[LeeScho]

For my own emotional survival, I, too, separated myself from family members who were locked into their own pathologies (alcoholism, drugs, egocentricity, etc.), which I could not abide . I learned early that I could not save people from themselves, and that I would only compound the tragedy if I did not save myself and break the cycle of those familial pathologies. And so, at 17, I got a an after-school job fixing radios and televisions, lied about my age, and moved into my own studio apartment.

As a result, I was the first high school graduate in my family. And on the day of my graduation, no one from my family attended. I received the excellence award in English, I was editor of my high school yearbook, I was a member of the National Honor Society. But on the day of my graduation, no one from my family attended.

I made some really poor choices about personal relationships after that, looking for something to replace the absence of family in my life. In the end, I won some and lost some.

Others will have to tell me if and when some family member once close to me has married, had children or died, such being the distance now between that family member and myself. I would hope that appropriate emotions of joy or sadness would overtake me. I cannot promise you that they will.