My father is going to die. Not anytime soon as far as I know, but eventually. We haven't spoken since shortly after I was married almost four years ago, and before that, maybe another four years. We have a complicated relationship, to say the least, he and I.
I have two young sons, one of which is creeping slowly into adolescence as I type this. I am constantly worried about how they view me, and what their adulthood impression of me as a father will eventually be. Will I be remembered as a disciplinarian? An easy going guy? A dreamer? Or a shit? The more I try to label it and steer myself toward it, the more confused I get. I realize that that there is no single trait that carries on with your name, at least to those who grew up with you around. It is a collection of traits. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my father wasn't solely a "shit". He was a man lost inside himself, desperately aching for freedom. Freedom from the confines of the nine to five. Freedom from the rule of his own father. Freedom from age. My father, as cruel and revolting as he may have been, was just a lonely child in a dark forest.
I know little of his childhood. He was born in Morocco, on an Army base. He was the third of ten children, the first male. He was smart as fuck, but was more interested in girls and quick cash than studies and the future. He and his father fought fiercely, and often, leading up to him being kicked out of the house at age fourteen. He lived in abandoned vehicles, at his grandmothers, worked odd jobs, and rented rooms. He worked construction, and spent his money on new clothes, girls, pot, and whatever else was around to keep a smile on his face, and worries anywhere else. He was the same young man you pass in the summer outside of a bar, or pounding bass in their new car. A young man, loving life.
Around 18, he met my mother, and at 19, they got married. They had their fun together for a few years, and when he was 26, I was born. This is where my father becomes abnormal. Well, abnormal in the face of what someone should be.
The way I see it, at this point, married with a kid, my father realized he was no longer free. The man who refused to fade with age. He who would be young, virile, and tough as fuck for ever, was moving slowly toward death. He was never a calm man, and to ever say he was "happy" would be an exaggeration, often wildly so. He got cold feet, and to make an extremely long story much too short, he fucked up. A lot. Eventually, as I turned twelve, he took off for good.
And it was a blessing.
Over the next decade, I saw him every few years, and even stayed with him for a few months when I was twenty to try to mend the relationship. It was a disaster. We didn't speak for a few more years, and I even went so far as to tell him, and mean it, that my life was better when he wasn't in it.
When I was twenty-three, I felt guilty, and got lunch with him one day. I introduced him to my wife. We shot the shit. His hair was grey. His face was a mess of lines and bags. He was getting older. He talked about friends dying. He talked about aching bones. Wasted years. I was still upset with him, for everything (mostly that I haven't divulged here). We left, and I haven't spoken to him since. I wouldn't even know how to get a hold of him if I wanted to.
I can't imagine being him in this scenario. To be so estranged from my own sons that they feel toward me as I do him? I understand his position. Wanting to be free. Escape. Eternal summer evenings. Booze, women, smiles, I get it. But to go through with it? Or, more accurately, to think you could actually succeed in it, and to try? The sacrifice that takes? The wake of dead relationships you leave behind?
And now, here I am. Twenty-seven years old. Two sons. And wondering when my father is going to die. Am I so angry at him that I can forsake him completely? Have I tried enough? Do I keep trying? Do I keep subjecting myself to his shit? How much longer before I don't have the opportunity to make the choice?
My father is 55 this summer, and he has been less than careful with his health. It won't be long. My father is going to die. What do I do? What would I want my own sons to do? Is that even a relevant comparison? I should probably figure this shit out soon, because eventually, my father is going to die.
-A.
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