I miss my Dad.
I guess he’s been dead long enough now that I can stop pretending that his death does not effect me. It does. He was my father, and he’s dead, and I miss him.
I can even start forgiving him for what a crappy dad he was and how his anger issues clouded my childhood and left me without any real father figure growing up.
Because that’s the thing about angry parents. Their children do not trust them and can’t relax around them so they can’t really connect with them and that means that, bottom line, they are not there for their kids and do not fill their role psychologically speaking.
Like my three siblings, I was afraid of him for most of my childhood. Later on, when I was older and he had mellowed out some, we got along okay. I liked watching The Nation and The Journal on CBC with him. We had a lot of good conversations about politics and the world and such.
And we went on that trip across the USA and then back up north into Ontario to see his family way back in 88, and had lots of good conversations along the way, too.
Like a lot of angry parents, he was a pretty good guy when he wasn’t mad. He was always helping the neighbors with this n’ that. He was charismatic in a very down to earth way. As a kid, I would watch him talk to people he’d run into when we were out shopping or whatever and marvel at how easy and friendly he was and how easily he seemed to connect with absolutely anybody, from welfare bums to the Mayor himself,and treated them all the same.
As a socially isolated and anxious kid, this was beyond being a superpower and was more like some kind of holy magic.
Looking back, I wish I had tried harder to connect with him and understand him. So much of my childhood was spent in a kind of defensive crouch when he was around that connecting with him was the last thing on my mind.
I mostly wanted to avoid him.
But looking back, I can see how much that hurt him. And I regret that the way the family dynamic worked out made him the enemy.
I mean sure, it was his own fault, but still. I wish it had been better.
And perhaps this is my secular messiah complex talking, but I can’t help but wonder if I could have saved him. If I could have penetrated his armor and show him kindness and understanding and helped him get through some of his issues so that he could have calmed down and been a happier, healthier father to all of us.
Probably not. But it’s a nice thought.
Obviously, it’s far too late now. He’s gone and I will never see him or talk with him or watch the news with him ever again.
And that hurts. It hurts like hell.
Yes, I remember Larry.
And I miss him.
More after the break.
The Other Larry
Yeah, I remember him too.
Time for me to pay for the sins of my father in hopes of laying them to rest or at least do a better job of burying them this time.
We’ll go chronologically, with him leaving poor little four year old me me naked and alone in a rather large shower stall at a place called the Spa.
In terms of consequences, that’s easily the worst. Being raped by a stranger at the age of 4 is the event that shattered me. It turned a happy, bright, gregarious, slightly spoiled little kid into the shivering, defenseless wreck I still am today. If there was one event in my lfie that I could erase, that would be it.
But the degree of his culpability is impossible to determine. It could be that he literally only left me alone for a few minutes to get something and my rapist saw this and made his move in that brief time.
Or it could be that it was the 70’s, sexual license was at an all time high. and my Dad sacrificed me to this man’s cock in hopes of socially advancing.
Or anything in between.
Moving on. there is a childhood spent walking on eggshells due to his impatience and rage. The biggest manifestations of this were his dinner table tirades where he would rip into Anne or David and verbally savage them while my sister Catherine and I sat there feeling helpless and my mother cried.
Well, I eventually stopped being helpless and learned to fight back with words and eventually chase him away from the dinner table entirely.
And I resent that he made me do that. As with the bullying I endured, I feel like it took something from me and left me a more savage and brutal person as a result.
That’s how you truly lose your innocence : when you have to become more of an animal just to survive.
And finally, his masterstroke of selfishness, taking me and my brother out of university so that he could take early retirement instead of sticking it out for a few more years so my bro and I could graduate.
And the worst part is, I was so desperate for my parents’ approval and so accustomed to sacrificing everything for their convenience that I agreed to it.
With a smile on my face.
Thus abandoning both my own future (and my brothers) and the only real friends I had ever had up unto that point.
And then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown that I still haven’t recovered from and it has been 25 years.
That’s what happens when something hurts you so bad it breaks your ability to care for yourself or look out for your own interests.
So yeah. The case of me versus the late Larry Donald Bertrand is pretty damning.
But he’s dead now. This world no longer has him in it. He is gone forever and he can’t ever hurt me again.
And warts and all, he was still my dad.
And I miss him.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.