Dad

Yesterday I made a trip back to the house where I grew up in order to check on my Dad because his friends and neighbors had not been able to contact him for a couple days. I found him dead in his bedroom.

I had a cordial, albeit detached relationship with my Dad. My Dad suffered from mental health problems and those problems have been the primary impact on our family for as long as I can remember.

He was a private, soft spoken, and generally kind person with a lot of impetuous demons. He was prone to addictive behavior like smoking, gambling, and alcohol. He was probably schizophrenic, but I don't know his formal diagnosis.

Not knowing exactly what was wrong was the most frustrating part of dealing with his illness. You never knew whether to hold him responsible for his actions or to feel sorry for him and help him because he was sick. It was exhausting for all of us. He never gave us much information about his illness - or anything else for that matter. He regularly saw therapists, but we had no insight. He was one of those people who you can never really get to know. The man lived in his own mind.

I would try to talk to him about his illness. One time he told me that it was like dreaming except he often didn't know the difference between what was real and what was a dream. He used to sit at the kitchen table and stare out the sliding glass door to the porch for hours smoking one cigarette after another. I would ask him if he thought there was anything abnormal about that and he would say no. I would tell him that he needed to do regular exercise and establish some sort of healthy routine, but he would insist that he suffered from a chemical imbalance that could only be fixed with drugs.

I'm sure that my need for structure, consistency, and general disdain for people not taking care of their business were influenced by all this.

By the time I was in high school things had gotten worse. He did some really bad things that would forever alienate us from him and eventually he had to be checked into a mental hospital a number of times.

Over the years my Dad sold furniture at most of the big furniture retailers in Atlanta. He worked erratically, slept a lot, and was a constant source of frustration for all of us, but especially my Mom. Somehow my Mom and Dad stayed together in an unhealthy marriage until all the kids were grown and out of the house, but eventually they divorced.

My Dad did okay on his own. There was still erratic behavior and we would get the call from time to time that he had been checked into some mental facility or that he needed to borrow money, but overall it could have been worse. When he did need to borrow money, his stories never really added up and he soon learned that I wouldn't give him anything - even when he cried. He would hit up friends and other family members. Eventually, he even alienated my brother who was always more accepting than the rest of us.

Most of us remained cordial to Dad, but after the divorce it was not possible to have both Mom and Dad at the same family functions. Mom had always been our only real parent, so Dad was out of luck. When my sister was married last month, Dad was not invited. We never talked to Dad directly about not being invited to family functions. He probably understood to some degree, but it still had to suck. I often wondered why he didn't just kill himself. He threatened a number of times, but never followed through.

Several years ago Dad started working at a halfway house for men. He really seemed to enjoy it. It gave him a sense of purpose that furniture sales or life in general never did. He was never comfortable around us. We weren't really his kind of people and he wasn't ours. He was always better around other troubled people.

My Mom raised us Catholic. We went to church every Sunday, but like most things we did, my Dad wasn't really involved. He was religious, but only after we were grown did he seek out formal religion - erratically. He would probably consider himself a Lutheran.

Religion was a tricky thing with him. He would shut himself in his room and read the Bible for long periods of time and it would really mess him up. When he lost his mind he would incoherently spout religious stuff. We were always leery when we would see that he was into reading the Bible or that he was going to church again. He meant well, but his mind couldn't handle it.

My Dad was well liked by people at work, neighbors, and other relatives. They would tell us stories about how he would go out of his way to help out, or offer kind words, or a kind gesture. It would really annoy my Mom. She would smile and under her breath you could hear her say,"Try living with him."

When I had kids, I made an effort to see my Dad more often than I would have otherwise - for my kids sake and for my Dad. We never shared any of the bad stuff about my Dad with my kids and my kids seemed to genuinely care for him. But the visits were always forced and strained for the adults.

The last time I saw my Dad was about a month ago. The boys have been playing roller hockey for years, but my Dad has never seen them play. We finally coordinated a day for him to come and see the boys play. My Dad came over to our house and after the initial hugs from the kids we settled at the kitchen table. As usual, Dad was very fidgety. Long term medication had given him Parkinson's like twitches on top of whatever else ailed him. He seemed kind of detached and then finally looked up and said that he thought he had forgotten to take his medication.

We continued to talk a little more and then he abruptly announced that he would have to go home and wouldn't be able to go to the hockey games. The kids were a little thrown off. I walked Dad to the door and Dad commented on what a great job I was doing and how the kids were really good kids. He has always been good at saying stuff like that. He was always saying how much he loved us. He would look at you and really act like he meant it. The rest of us rarely said it to each other. We would usually just nod back at him. To us, it was easy to say the words, but we cared more about actions and in that department he was lacking.

As Dad walked out the front door and down the steps he turned and asked, "Do you guys go to church?" I shook my head no and said "We don't really believe in that stuff." He smiled uncomfortably, turned, and walked to his car.

May you find peace, Dad.