Frank

I don’t remember my father from my early childhood. I remember snippets of him; short pieces of time in snapshots. I remember him not being there and then there for a bit and then not again for a while. We didn’t talk in our house, adults to kids or vice versa unless you were being questioned as to “Who did this, was it you?”, which you knew would be followed up by a healthy helping of the leather belt if you dared say yes.

I remember an early snapshot of him standing in front of my step-grandmother, who was sitting at the kitchen table, turning around and pushing his pants partly down on one side. Later I would understand that he was getting shots in the butt for TB; Tuberculosis he had contracted while in service. Much later I would come to know his earlier disappearance was due to surgery to cut out a piece of his lung.

Not too long after that, he went missing again. My grandmother was at the house quite a bit. Then my father appeared with a bandage around the side of his face and a patch on his eye. No conversation as to what this was caused by. Later I would learn he had a tumor that was removed.

After this disappearance and sometime later, my father seemed to become a regular fixture, appearing each night after work and we would all wait for him to come home, delighted to see him, for he, unlike my mother, loved his children. We would run out the door and hang on his leg and he would walk like Frankenstein, carrying us along, laughing. In an attempt to escape our house and spend time in a calmer energy, I would accompany my father to his second job, cleaning offices, where I would help by emptying ashtrays and garbage pails while he was off cleaning the bathrooms. A few years later, I would help him while he coached Little League for my brother’s team, helping the kids with less skill to swing a bat. I got hit with the bat more times than they learned to swing them properly, but in both cases, I was accepting that although I wasn’t connecting with my father in activity or conversation, I was with him and that helped.

My father reminded me of Danny Kaye and Andy Williams; calm with a melodic spoken voice, mild-mannered, easy-going, gentle, genuine, proper, loving and kind, a beautiful spirit with a warm laugh, quick wit, great sense of humor, and welcoming smile. He was tall, good looking and a gentleman, with hazel blue eyes. He never cursed, tried to be encouraging, and would look at you more than say anything if he disapproved. He really didn’t talk much, and really not to us, not early on anyway. As I got older, we would talk here and there but it was never any conversation in length or depth. I would later understand two things; the first was my mother deliberately keeping my father and me from having a close, or really, any relationship, and two, he was pretty much in the same boat with the rest of us; she attached herself to him shamelessly and would tell him what he was going to do just like she told the rest of us and all throughout the house and forever, until the week before she passed, you would hear the shrill cry of this Long Island warbler reverberating wherever they were, “Fray ank, Fraay ank”, followed by his marching orders. There was no question, she was in charge. When he was in trouble, it was “Fra ank Anthony”.

A pivotal point came in our relationship, (my father and I), when I was twelve. I was being wrongly accused of some infraction, by my mother, with a full-out punishment to follow.

I asked my Dad to take a walk with me, where I explained that I was not the culprit of these latest antics and should not be punished for something I did not do. I then asked him if he could talk to my mother. Without a moment's hesitation, he told me that he couldn’t help me because if he defended me to her, then she would think we were ganging up on her and he couldn’t do that. W_H__ A__ T?

I didn’t respond, I was completely in shock, not believing what I just heard - I was twelve. And from that day until my early twenties, I hated my father, period. There were no conversations, no interactions, no relationship, nothing. I kept to myself and it really did not appear to be a blip on anyone’s radar. Se la vie…..

As we, the children, got older and less dependent, and my parents both settled into better jobs that finally gave them money to do some of the things my mother had wanted, my father would speak to me about how he may not be approving of my various goings-on but with no actual conversation. He had this skill that I observed in no one else I knew, where he could basically say the most profound and direct things in five words or less, that would absolutely slay me. Dead Stop Cold. I would understand the gravity of the point he was making instantly, but beyond leaving me speechless, I would marvel at his ability to say so little that meant so much. Holy crap.

When I was out on my own and giving up the childhood hatred towards my father, I would try to spend time with him alone, try to have a relationship with this man that I hardly knew. I only knew what I had observed but I was smart enough to know that what I saw did not constitute any knowing of this gentleman and why he did what he did and how he felt about anything, number one, why he stayed with my mother; even then I was wise enough to know that control and manipulation are fear-based, not love.

I wanted to know him and I wanted him to know me. The person I really was, not the one my mother was always comparing to someone else or putting down. But no matter how I tried, my mother would insert herself into any time or any chance I made an effort to be with him alone, even when I would directly ask them together if I could spend an hour or so with him. They would both be fine with it and then she would wait five minutes or so and then appear where we were, asking what we were up to. Or if we were going to meet away from the house, she would show up with him. Both my father and I would say something, in the kindest way - mainly him, me exasperated, but she always ended up firmly planted and the time has gone to shit. After a while, I just gave up.

My parents got older, retired, and moved to Florida. As I was told that I would be responsible for their care and life as designated Power of Attorney and Health Proxy, my latter visits were more to discuss their arrangements, wishes - all hers, and things that my mother would not have. Wills, living arrangements, and finances, and it was during these times I would watch as my mother asked - but really, told my father that if she should go first, he couldn’t possibly want to be with anyone else. Right? Of course, he would be devastated, beyond consolation, “Right”. I would be so taken back at this selfishness and then wonder why I was so surprised, and he would just laugh that laugh I had gotten so used to and the same one that I have when I am nervous and want to laugh away anything I am thinking at that moment so it doesn’t escape my mouth. Oh and the other thing she told me was absolutely, under no circumstances, if she were to go first, was my father to live with my younger sister. Well, I asked her for that in writing because I knew that was going to be a sore point in an already misaligned relationship where my younger sister was going behind my back to get me off as their POA and declare me and their will invalid. Yay for me. The last few times I saw my mother, she made me promise to “take care of my father” and for the tenth time, I assured her that I would. And in that promise was my own silent promise to him that I would allow him to just be.

Well, my mother did go first and my father and his life were left to me. I would go down to Florida, work remote while helping him out, asking him what he wanted, respecting and when need be, defending his wishes, straightening out his affairs, taking him to appointments and spending the time with him that I didn’t get to spend, only now, I wasn’t fighting my mother, I was fighting time and I was losing badly.

My father had Lewy body dementia that was evident and diagnosed before my mother had passed and now became a slow downward avalanche to silence and fear. This caused him to be lucid at some points in time, but never consistent in duration and never during any particular part of each day or sometimes it would skip a day entirely. When he wasn’t lucid, he would question me on things but then forget or not quite get it or remember and ask the same question over and over and over again. He wouldn’t be able to dress himself or undress to use the bathroom. While there, I would find the writing exercises that he was miserably failing at or the art pad closed and pushed to the side. On a shopping trip to buy him more practical clothing, easier to get him in and out of, I lost him. He wandered off with the cart and I spent ten minutes freaking out while trying to locate him. Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh.

And I would find myself so easily irritated at all of this, so impatient with him, not being very kind. I would come to realize that it wasn’t really the impatientience, I was angry. Extremely so. Not at him, but the knowing that I had already lost, period. When he was lucid, he would want to know how bad he was or what was going to happen and I tried to reassure him the best I could.

There was a night I will never forget. My older sister and I were standing in the kitchen of his house and we were telling him he needed to do something, part of the conversation we were having in what our next plan would be for him. My father, in one of his more lucid moments, did not respond and then out of nowhere, and never have I ever witnessed anything remotely as fervent with him, he raised both his fists, slammed them down hard on the table in unison and cried out. “Don’t tell me what to do. I do not want anybody telling me what to do anymore…”

I both heard and felt his frustration, his utter rage and anguish and in that moment, I understood everything.

After we sold his house and moved him into Assisted Living, we were in his living room, Kohlie and I, sitting on the couch with him, me going through some boxes of papers from the house. Out of nowhere, he turned and said to me, “I am sorry that I wasn’t the father you needed me to be and I see how it has impacted your life”. W_H__ A__ T?

Again, shock. I was in shock and did not respond to him right away. When I did, the only thing I could deliberately think to say was, “Thank you for letting me know”. Inside, I was thinking with great agitation, “Now? You are saying this to me now? I am in my fifties, so what am I supposed to do with that?” Aaarrrggggghhhhhhhh

It took me a while to wrap my head around that. but in the meantime, we never spoke about it again; I didn’t really need to. Instead, I asked my father to do one last drawing for me, one of his ink point pictures of the Dali Lama. He wasn’t sure he would be able to do it, he had lost most of his writing skills, as well as other basic skills, and had not tried to draw in some time, actually afraid to find out, but he said he would try for me. Meanwhile, back at home I would get a call from the Assisted Living Facility that they found my father in his girlfriend’s apartment with the door closed.

What? My father had a girlfriend?

They called to let me know that their policy was “doors need to be kept open when entertaining guests of the opposite sex”. Forget that. “What girlfriend?” I asked before she could even finish her sentence. “Oh, didn’t you know, your father has a girlfriend, her name is Claire. They sit in the lobby making out, they’re too cute. All the women love your father.” W_H__ A__ T?

Well, my older sister got the same message, so we called each other, had a good laugh and cheered my father on and decided we wouldn’t say anything, giving him a chance to tell us about her in his own time. Well, he didn’t, so my sister finally asked him and he confessed, but not with any guilt or shame. He was happy. On my next visit, he introduced me to Claire and she was absolutely lovely, sweet, soft spoken, with a beautiful smile and I was truly happy for him. And I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that not only was my mother being restrained wherever she was, so she couldn’t somehow come storming back from the dead and wreak havoc on him, but an added bonus, Claire was Jewish and my mother was the biggest racist and prejudice beyond measure, with anyone and everyone that wasn’t her. Go Dad!

Eventually, with the dementia, my father would become unable to talk, write, draw, feed himself and care for himself and the next time I would see him was when they called to tell me to come, that I didn’t have much time, he would be passing soon. I flew down to be by his bedside where I would be so shocked to see what he had become. A silent, withdrawn, skeleton of the man he had been, bent, eyes closed, no indication that he was still inside. I told him to leave, he shouldn’t have stuck around as long as he did. It was heartbreaking.

Later, in his room, (he had since been moved into memory care from his apartment), I would find the drawing that he had attempted to draw, but then crumpled in frustration, unable to finish it. It was my picture of the Dali Lama, where he was only able to achieve a very rudimentary pencil sketch, which was one of multiple tries appearing on the paper. I knew how hard this had been for him, how much had been taken from him and in a very real sense, from me. I took the crumbled sketch with me.

In the end, I had become my father’s daughter. Sitting together, we didn’t need to say much, only what counted; just the words we both needed to hear.

And I pray to God, that he was given the Cloak of Invisibility when he crossed over to the other side so that he could continue in peace, my mother never able to find him. But I bet they’re all up there hearing that shrill Long Island warbler cry, piercing the beautiful tranquility, “Fra aynk, Fra aaynk”. Lord have mercy!

Happy Father’s Day!