Yes, I know this happens every year, and I’ve mentioned it before. But the difference between this year and last year is that in the last 6 months, I have had the unexpected chance to connect with my fathers’ daughter from his first marriage, Lisa, and eventually meet and discuss him with her mother, his ex-wife, Vicky.
I made a reference in a prior post that ‘pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place’. This opportunity, to have met Vicky to learn more about my dad back to their mutual age of 14, into and thru their marriage and their many experiences, has been like finding a lost collection of puzzle pieces that would fill a gaping hole in a treasured puzzle you had come to accept as incomplete, writing off that segment, never imagining a scenario in which they might suddenly be within your reach years down the line.
After meeting her and getting to sit with her for some 90+ minutes as we went through her photo albums and discussed a literal lifetime of topics, I called my brother in Utah on my way home. I conveyed the many things I had learned about them knowing each other in high school, being young and starting a family, their friends, his navy stints and more. Vicky shared with me what a good man he was, how smart he was, about the accolades he’d receive from his coworkers as to his character, and that her family and their friends loved him.
What Vicky had to say about my father was wonderful. I had given her full license, up front, to be honest and direct, and to please share with me the good, the bad and the ugly. I wanted truths and honestly.
Vicky said, verbatim, that she had absolutely nothing bad to say about my father.
She spoke of how my father would always jump at the chance to talk to anybody. How he would always be a positive, happy and authentic person. How kind he was to her family, and in particular to her grandparents, and to all of her extended family, with an emphasis on “all”. She told me about the small home they 1st lived in, the different homes and experiences they shared, how he would be away for six months at a time on duty as a radio operator in the Navy, while she was home raising their kids and awaiting his return.She also said, more than once, that they “married too young”. Vicky was just weeks away from turning 19 when their first child was born. But they had been close friends since the age of 14. They were neighbors. They went to school together. They grew up together, experiencing their youth and developing their character at the same time. Although she did not make any direct reference to having been pregnant when they married and I certainly did not ask about it either, I can’t imagine it was uncommon.
Vicky also shared the sobering story of my grandmothers’ removal from my fathers’ childhood home to be institutionalized due to her having syphilis, and her resisting on the way to the car, crying out in tears “who will take care of Alan? Who will take care of my son?”
As we talked, Vicky made more than one reference to having “blown it“. Direct references, not veiled or couched. It became very clear to me that her perspective is and has always been that she made a mistake. That she lost out on her husband and family because of something that broke their marriage apart.
Vicky loved her husband, my father, and has carried a guilt about their break up for close to 60 years of her lifetime. It resonates from within her to this day, I heard it, and I felt it too.
THIS… this is a beautiful and heartbreaking love story. A 1950's story of wartime era suburban love lost, reflections over time, and redemption of sorts in the final act. I love having learned this, and knowing that it is a story I have a connection to. It is certainly tragic in a broad sense, yet beautifully human, and it's invaluable to me.
But It’s also hard to reconcile.
My own mother’s recollections of my father are dramatically different. I can’t argue about or comment on anything she experienced before I was born, or in my childhood years, but I can say that in my later years as a young adult, I don’t recall any indications of the magnitude of issues she relays. In fact, for most of those later years, I actually used to feel a great amount of empathy for the position my dad would wind up in. We had a weekly family meeting, held every Sunday morning, which would routinely digress into a discussion of his faults & failures and such, while we two kids sat haplessly to the side as they would argue and bicker until we felt comfortable enough to ask permission to leave. I later referred to these incidents as “verbal castration”. It was that painful to witness. And it seems it was painful enough that I had forgotten about until writing this (or, should I say, I’ve blocked it out, but not subconsciously and that has likely played a role in my own relationship issues).
As I talked with my older brother on that drive home, we discussed my conversation with her and how many positive things Vicky had had to say about our father, David expressed the idea that there was a certain “redemption” taking place throughout this. How fortunate we are to have received such substantial missing puzzle pieces, here in our later years, while Vicky is still with us, sharp, and so open to sharing. David felt that maybe these validations of and for our father, who we both have fond memories of, would give his spirit peace if he able to see it playing out. Poetic justice.
There certainly is a significant degree of poetic nature in this, as both justice and redemption. And it occurred to me later that Vicky giving us these puzzle pieces is as much if not more of a gift to him than they are to my brother and I.
The loss I feel has never lightened in its intensity, only in its frequency. One might think this would heal over time if it were not being routinely reopened. That I lost the chance to share with him my understanding, that I inherited his character, of my gratitude for the things he did (or tried to do) in so many ways…., will never go away. But I don't actually think I would want it to either. I would feel wholly disconnected from the heart of the human experience were I unable to have this for perspective. And as far as re-opening wounds go, this one had been badly infected for some time. Vickys’ detailed stories, experiences, the photos, Lisa… they are all a wonder-drug and are proving to be a powerful healing agent.
I’ve been told on occasion that I’m a good dad. I want to be a great parent to my kids, and although I’m not always sure I am, these comments have given me enough confidence to believe that at least my intentions are recognized. I may not be perfect. And neither was my father. But he was still, to me, a good father. And his having died at 54 cheated him out of the opportunity to see his efforts and intentions be acknowledged and appreciated.
Perhaps this wound I’ve borne so long has more to do with that loss, his loss, than it does my own.
Perhaps I’ll write about that more, same time next year.