It's been 16 years since I last saw you. You were finishing a jigsaw puzzle in the livingroom and didn't want to join us at Musikfest. Mom made it a point to show me an article in the newspaper about a high school friend's wedding and you got irritated and told her that "Kerry's not interested in that stuff". I think that was your way of letting me know that you knew I was gay and the fact that it would be the last time we saw one another before you quietly checked out of life on earth a few days later.
Since you crossed over to the other side, I've been doing a lot of mending and healing from the turmoil of our relationship. I am just now coming to fully understand and to have compassion toward you and how torturous it must have been for you to endure the pain you carried while you were here. I am aware that you were very broken. I do not say this to make a judgment about your being in need of repair but rather as a statement of fact - the reality of what was.
I spoke in great detail about you and your relationships with your parents and siblings in a healing session that I had a few days ago. I remember how harsh your parents were and how grammy would tell you to tell us kids to shut up. And that you should control us better. It made me think of how she must've spoken to you when you were a child. Her words and her tone cut the air like a sharp knife. You must have been stabbed over and over. I remember how gentle you were with your sister. It touches me today because I know that you probably protected her because I'm aware that pappy beat her. And I am guessing that he beat you. Once in awhile when you were drunk, you'd make a statement to us about "how good we had it". I never knew what you were referring to, but now I believe it was about the fact that you didn't hit us and that we didn't have to endure what you did from your father. My healer believes that you used alcohol to numb yourself so that you wouldn't act out in the ways that your father did. It enabled you to protect yourself from hurting us physically. My healer said that this was your attempt at wholeness.
I used to question a lot about why you adopted me and my sister. I never felt like you wanted children or could even be bothered with us. Fatherhood didn't seem like a natural fit for you. It felt awkward. Though when our brother was born, you did seem happy for a little while. That faded pretty quickly. I am learning from my kabbalistic healer that when our parents have not healed their own wounds and they carry on the pain from their parents that they use us to try to complete themselves. To fill a void. It feels like that is true for you and mom and perhaps that is the reason you adopted me. You tried to teach me to fish but got so frustrated because I would cast my line into the weeds and it didn't turn out to be as peaceful as you had hoped it would be. I felt your frustration and impatience and irritation all the time. I know now that it wasn't personal. The whole being a father was not what you thought it would be. And you were so wounded by your own father that it just spilled over into everything.
For most of my childhood, I was terrified by you. Let me re-phrase that: I was terrified by your behavior. You were unpredictable. Your raging scared me the most. Especially when you gave that certain look and raised your hand. It was the potential threat of what you could do that really scared me. And when you yelled at mom in the middle of the night in a drunken stupor. I spent countless nights with my pillow over my ears in an attempt to drown you out.
And then when I got older, I was so angry at you. Vengeful. I hated you. I wished you dead. I realize today that all of these expressions of feeling toward you boiled down to one thing: I wanted to feel your love. I wanted to know I was loved by you. I can say today that you loved me in the only ways you knew how and yet this may always be an unanswered question for me until we meet again on the other side.
I spoke to mom about your time in the Korean war while we were in Hawaii taking a walk on the beach and I asked her if she knew what you had witnessed because it was obvious that being there had a significant impact on you, especially when you would freak out about any TV program related to war being on. She told me how you witnessed your sergeant, who was your closest friend, throw himself into the moving blades of a helicopter. I cannot even fathom having witnessed this let alone having this image plague my mind on a regular basis. As a fellow alcoholic, I surely know that I'd want to drink myself into oblivion just to make that picture in my head disappear. Sometimes when you were drunk you would make mention out loud that "we had no idea what you saw over there" or "what was done to women and children". I know dad that you probably saw and perhaps did horrific things in the name of fighting for your country and that you were not honored when you returned or considered a "hero". It was an invisible war. And you too made every attempt, day by day, to slowly disappear. No one knew yet about PTSD and it is so apparent to me today that you were riddled with anxiety and the only way you knew how to deal with the terror you felt inside was to anesthetize yourself with booze. I too know about the seductive power of alcohol and what we believe it's capable of.
When you did a brief stint in a rehab, I was really proud of you. And I'm aware you had no choice and that your doctor sent you there or the booze would kill you. And it eventually did.
When we had family therapy group sessions there, I wanted my siblings to come and it was too scary for them. I was pretty new to sobriety myself and my therapist encouraged me to see you because it would be healing for me. I remember reading you the letter about the impact of your drinking and I could barely speak through all of my sobbing. I don't know if I had ever before sobbed that hard in my life. I have a few times since then and, ironically, they involved my own pain associated with you. I always wondered if my reading that letter was helpful to you or if you were even able to take it in. I don't remember you having much of a reaction and perhaps you were dissociated or detached or just felt too much shame. I am aware that mom and my siblings hid the fact that you picked up booze again about a month or two after you got out of the rehab and I kept cheering you on and when I found this out, I felt duped. Betrayed. I get it now why you couldn't say anything when I see folks in AA meetings who return after having relapsed and come back with their tail between their legs and the weight of the remorse and guilt for being deceptive. And I know everyone else was protecting me since I was newly sober and they knew I'd be so let down.
You must have been so so tired to live after all that you experienced. You probably doubted that God even existed. And it was just easier to let go and slip away so you wouldn't have to feel any more pain any longer. Or be a burden to mom with your medical issues. Or be a disappointment to the rest of us.
I am working hard in my life today dad to accept you for the person you were and what you were capable of. To let go of what happened. To know you did the best you possibly could given the circumstances. To forgive. To move forward.
I hope that you have found peace on the other side.
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