It’s the end of the year which means it’s time to ruminate.  I was thinking about—well, a number of things—but especially what it’s like to lose a parent—especially one for whom your past together was complicated.  Now that Dad has been gone a whole month, I’m beginning to feel sad about it.  When he first passed, I think I was so relieved for him, that he was that off those machines and out of pain and not in a drug-induced haze anymore, that I didn’t really feel the loss personally.  But now it being the first Christmas without him, I’m super melancholy.

There are traditions you have at Christmas time, even when you’re not close.  Dad always sent us Swarovski crystal stars, for instance, and usually a sentimental Christmas card.  We’d talk on the phone and he’d tell me what his wife made for dinner or he’d tell me how they went out to see some dumb movie he disliked.  And he’d give me the report on all the animals.  The conversations were pretty similar every year, but you grow to count on such things.

I was feeling it when I was home for my annual visit to Shreveport earlier in December.  Usually he and I would get together a few times for lunch and maybe a movie.  They were never long visits, but they were nice.  We’d discuss politics and the anti-Trump videos he watched, or we’d talk about books we read.  Sometimes he’d ask how my writing was going. I suppose I had noticed last December that he was moving more slowly than he had used to, and he’d talk about some of his ailments, but he never seemed like he shared a litany of “old man troubles.”  He was, simply, my Dad and I accepted him and loved him for whom he became in his later years.

That’s not to discount all of the absolute misery in our lives that he and his wife contributed to.  Now they are both dead, I can be honest and admit that my sister and I were victims of their child abuse, all the way through high school.  I don’t want to go into it—it doesn’t serve a purpose—but I share this detail about my life because while I can appreciate who he ended up as—someone with whom I was friendly and cared for—it doesn’t erase the bitterness of my childhood and teen years.  It doesn’t make up for the probably tens of thousands of dollars I’ve spent on therapy and medications for depression and anxiety ever since.  It doesn’t make up for the loss of the absolute sun in my life that my Dad was for me when I was very young. They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and I have no interest in laying bare my grievances, but I keep remembering I’m conflicted—even as I feel sad and miss him—and that’s really ok. I can’t put on rose-colored glasses and forget how his neglect and his condoning her abuse made life hell.

But humans are complex, aren’t they? And I can focus on his misdeeds and continue to be miserable, or I can forgive him for his failings as a father, and just be glad for the good years, for me up to age 10 and the 2010s onward. That’s probably the healthy way to approach it. And for all I know, I may not have been a picnic for some of those years (but I wasn’t the adult in that situation).

Anyway, so many people have expressed their condolences, and I am grateful for them. He lived kind of an amazing life—he was so talented in art, electronics, medicine, gardening, music—and he was brilliant, and well-beloved as a doctor.  So people’s sympathy is warranted (and appreciated) because a life like his should be remembered, even celebrated. (My sister wrote a beautiful eulogy for him that had to have moved everyone who heard it.)

When people ask me how I’m doing, I say I’m ok, and I mean it. I’m sad, as I mentioned, but I’m not beset with grief to the point that I’m incapacitated. I believe if he’s not in heaven yet, he’s heaven-bound. God says what we forgive on Earth is forgiven in Heaven, and I can say with a true, full heart, I forgive him. People don’t deserve forgiveness, but when we give it, we make loose the chains on our own hearts, and it allows us to be lighter and happier. And that’s what I really want—to be peaceful and unburdened from pains from the past.

I have a few mementos from him—photos and such—and they fill me with warmth when I look at him in his heyday.  Here’s a photo of him from 1968 with his hair done up in flowers most likely by his sisters.  He looks so cute, doesn’t he?