To say that my relationship with my biological father was complicated would be a massive understatement. But in thinking about it, I realize that I do not know the history that caused my father to be as he was, but for very broad strokes supplied in passing remarks over the years by my grandmother. My mother rarely spoke of him, my grandmother was insistent in her refusal to discuss ‘ugly things’, so there remained no insight nor information.
What I do know is sparse.
My father was born November 4, 1945 but I do not know where. Nor do I know if my grandmother was married to my grandfather. I have scarce information about my grandmother, and nothing about her relationship with my grandfather other than that he flew in the Air Force in WWII and died of polio when my dad was a year old. I have old hand-colored photographs of both of them, but no information on when or where those photographs were taken. All the images of family (what few there were) were post-birth of my father and later. It always felt/seemed like a big, negative space in which a family mystery floated like some sharp-toothed Nessie.
I believe I heard someone once say that my grandfather’s family was from New York. I remember they had large, very political bloodlines. I remember hearing my mother and I (later, my sister) were ‘not accepted’ by my grandfather’s family, but I have no details and nothing more to go upon as all involved are now dead. I have a dim memory of a large woman with silver hair in a big, black dress who was angry and rude with us about something when we were visiting. Not a lot to go on. Several family names and all referenced as if “important” but whatever happened, my mother, myself, et al were clearly not recognized by my grandfather’s family.
I know my father was premature at birth and in neonatal care for some time. I know he was small and sickly as a child, which resulted in the nickname ‘peanut’, which he is said to have detested. I know he went to a private school but it went poorly, from there, public schools. I believe he was initially a shy and somewhat introverted child. I am told he liked animals and nature; he had a chihuahua as they were reputed to aid with asthma at the time (no idea why) named ‘Prince’. I have seen a few, early, scattered images of a kid with expressive face, smile, and prodigious ears that would do anyone in Buckingham Palace proud. Later ones show a closed face and hooded eyes. Still later, the over-bright mask I have come to recognize all too well in myself. Decades later, the trauma stare of the Vietnam veteran and what I would eventually come to find out was schizophrenia.
A few other details I know… he was a photographer and a very good one, for all the talent went largely unrecognized outside odd jobs doing school photos, and I believe a stint with a county coroner’s office. He married at least four times that I know of, likely more I do not. I have at least five half-siblings, though I know only the lightest information about any of them. He moved a lot, was generally sociopathic in my experience, and when not taking photos, he usually was either in sales or trying to individually broker international computer chip sales (and failing for being sniped by the pros).
He was a gamer. He wrote. He built and tinkered with computer systems (i.e., early AMIGA, Commodore, Atari, IBM, Macintosh) and loved ‘pc games’ and ‘bbs games’. He smoked Winston 100’s like a chimney and the fact it was not lung cancer that got him frankly astonished me.
He was a cobra temperament. He enjoyed dominating other humans. He suffered no ‘disrespect’ and my earliest memory of him is of being beaten by him while my mother screamed from the bathroom doorway that he was going to kill me. I had tried to make a bubble-bath for my mother because she was a Waffle House waitress and always came home tired and went straight to the bubble-bath before making us dinner. I didn’t know how to do this, so I just did what I remembered seeing her do; run the water, put the stopper in, pour in the bubble bath, wait…. As you might imagine, all the bubble bath and too much waiting was a big mess and, well, my father had no patience, less empathy, and all the frustration of a young, married, 19 year old boy.
I was 2. I have about three memories of early life, this is one of them. My mother later confirmed my age and the events, which was helpful in establishing the reliability of my own lived experience (sadly, an issue thanks to all this and a good bit more).
My parents split when I was 3. I have stories from later in life, through about 11, when my father departed my life again until I was in my 30s. A brief blip in the 2000’s and a falling out over an over-stayed agreement, and the next I heard, he was dying in Nevada in 2023.
Apparently, he was able to stay with the Thai woman he married and with whom he had three sons; he died in their care and was, I assume, buried. He reached out to my daughter some months before he died and asked her to reach out to me. She did. I thanked her and asked her not to do so on this topic again.
The regret I have feels ancient, but is mostly of that ‘what might have been’ variety; the remnant weight that trembles in my chest as I type out this last paragraph is, if not a fitting epitaph for an abusive, horrible, and ultimate monstrous father, a reluctant grief at the cruelty of faultless loss.