I received some sad news yesterday that my father has been put in an intensive care aged facility as his condition is deteriorating rapidly. I don't know quite what this blog will achieve except that I must write him into my own existence and acknowledge him somehow.
Ours was such a difficult and complex relationship, so fraught....but he wouldn't say that. He was not a great father. He would say he was. But such self-obsession does not make for a great father. He had a violent temper which unfortunately I inherited. He would smack my brother and I on occasion with a leather belt. When I look back and study his numerology, his genetic pool, his astrology...the poor man just didn't stand a chance.
He did try, I know he did. But he was often very unkind to the women in his life. Annoyingly, he put me on a pedestal which I tried hard to fall off by writing him a harsh and truthful letter once. He incorrectly assumed someone had influenced me and dismissed it. In his mind I was an extension of him. I found this claustrophobic. He took out his frustrations on my brother, who I remember cowering in a corner being whipped by a towel. It wasn't the physical beating that engendered such fear, it was his tendency to erupt from nice to absolute demonic maniac in a split second.
He had the most amazing practical square hands which fortunately I inherited, along with an excellent sense of balance. Both he and I would walk on our hands at the beach. He could do things with those hands and crafted beautiful ropework with which he made his living for a great part of his working life. He was a perfectionist.
He had a wicked sense of humour and a wonderful quirky imagination. When we were on a roll, he and I would be in stitches laughing. We could talk for hours. We got on so well as adults and shared the same perverse view of the world (though he was slightly more paranoid). Maybe that's because he was a life path number 9 like me.
He was always so fit and strong, obsessive about his health. When he was diagnosed with a tumour on the side of his head, he researched natural remedies with his usual thoroughness and decided that B 19, (apricot kernels or basically cyanide) was the cure. But so great was his fear of doctors and dying that instead of taking the recommended dose he consumed a ridiculously large amount. Not long afterwards, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's. The cancer had gone but my own updated diagnosis was simple - he just poisoned himself.
I can't expess the sheer desperation I feel when I think about his life. The absolute futility and frustration I know he experienced. I remember the time I went to visit him once and he answered the door in tears. He was often depressed and lonely.
It is Christmas day and I need to phone him as I always do, except that once again I have to track him down in yet another nursing home to do it. I feel so sad that his life has come to this.
my dad
