A Letter

January 1, 2009

Dear Daddy,

You’ve been gone for…25 years.

After you died I wasn’t sad. I was relieved. And angry with you because I felt like, one last time, you had to mess up a chance for me to have a friend. To not be alone.

I was supposed to spend the night with Lisa the night you died. When Mommy picked me up at school and told me you had died my first thought was, “I’m not going to get to send the night with Lisa. I shouldn’t even bother asking because the answer will be no and I will look like I don’t care that you died.” Even though I didn’t care.

I spent so much time alone the first 12 years of my life.

You liked people.

Do you know what it is like to be isolated?

How empty it feels?

How lonely?

How unloved you feel?

I just wanted to be with you. To be part of something. To feel loved.

I can still feel the hollow, lonely, empty place in my soul.

What you did feels like it took part of my soul.

Before you died you asked for me to come to your hospital room – you wanted to give me your parting words. The wisdom of your life. Your hopes and dreams for me.

It meant nothing.

And I feel guilty for that.

I wanted to care. I didn’t want to be angry at you. I wanted you to be the Dad that I could trust.

And I didn’t trust you. I believed through your whole illness. Through all your apologies as you grew weaker and weaker and closer to “God”.

That if the doctors found a way to make you better that things would be the same.
This is the only thing I believed.

I didn’t understand how you could be such a hypocrite and “repent”. Did you really believe that all you have to do is say you’re sorry and then it goes away?

It doesn’t work that way.

And anyway, you never apologized to me.

You only apologized to Mommy after we had been summoned to the side of your bed to read the scriptures to you.

And only once as I recall.

And, from my perspective, you were sorry because you knew what you had done was wrong and now you were dying.

Convenient.

I have never felt your presence since you died. I know it is because I have shut you out. I’ve felt Joel and Lauren’s presence – anytime you’ve been on the periphery I’ve closed myself. It probably hurts you. I’m sorry that I haven’t forgiven you.

It’s still the same. I want to care about you but, really, I have to protect myself first.

If I allow myself to care about you then I will get hurt.

Not by your fists – that was never what really hurt.

But by the loneliness.

By the withdrawal of attention and love.

So here I am now. I’m 37. I just got a divorce last year and not a week – sometimes not even a day - goes by where I don’t think, “Thank God I’m not married to that man anymore”.

I want to be happy.

Mommy lives close by.

You really did a number on her.

Did you love her?

Why did you hurt her?
She is kind.

She used to plead with you not to hurt her.

How do you think it feels to hear your mother beg like an animal? Beg not to be beaten?

I can still hear her voice pleading with you.

I wanted to kill you.

Do you remember when you made her take off her clothes so she couldn’t run away from you while you beat her? And she was so afraid that she ran out of the house naked?

Why did you do that to her?

I hate you.

I don’t want to hate you.

I hate you!

And here I am again with that hollowness in my soul.

Is it the spot in your soul where you are supposed to feel love for your father?

On the day of your funeral I remember riding in the hearse. As we drove through downtown Des Moines I saw one of your students, a young man who you had mentored. He had been late for the funeral and as the hearse drove by he realized he had missed your service (very touching – the dutiful daughter had to read a poem – everyone was so touched because I read it without even crying). The instant of this realization, this young man crumpled to the sidewalk in anguish.

You see, you had made a difference in his life. And he was sad that you were dead.

And I wanted to feel that…

Alone

I spent a good portion of my childhood in my bedroom. I never lacked for toys or books due to my Mom's willingness to overspend to feel better about our situation. What I lacked was anyone to talk to. My Mother and I didn't discuss my father's volatility other than whispers about what we would do to protect ourselves as each situation arose.

My father's blindness did make some things easier. He couldn't see the things she bought for me. He couldn't see that she had trimmed my hair despite his express orders not to let our hair be touched by scissors. The Old Wive's Tale about blind people having enhancement of their other senses is true, however. He could smell if someone had a piece of chocolate in the other room. He could hear a drawer opening. A footstep creeping.

I once had a therapist ask how my Mother and I could have been so brutalized by a blind person. She obviously had no idea about the control that an abuser exerts on your very being.

Sure, we could have dodged a fist, ran into another room but we still had to live with him. Avoid the punishment now and it would be that much more painful later.

My mother did try to get help. She called the police. In the '70's the police did not get involved in these types of things. She called her father who had no money to help her leave but did ask if she wanted him to, "come beat up Glenn". She turned to their church. When the Bishop told my father that God didn't want him to beat up his wife he forbid my mother to attend church any longer and didn't himself return until he found out he was dying. She turned to friends who were unable to help. My father was very insecure about her leaving him - he was afraid to be alone without anyone to help him with his illness or disability. He told my Mother many times that if she left him his parents would hire pricey lawyers and that she would never see me again. He was able to create enough fear, doubt, and guilt in her that she stayed.

So there was no choice for me but to take whatever punishments he decided to dole out. For me, many times, they were not physical. It was different - canceling my party the morning of my birthday because I went to the neighbors house without asking, requiring me to use the (scary) bathroom at the park across the street from our house because I had used too much TP, sending me to my room for entire days because I was in the way.

Ever since I was a little girl I have felt alienated from other humans. As if I don't really think the same way as them, that they had no way of understanding what it is like to be me. I felt different.

I lived in a 100 year old house filled with a large collection of fragile, inconvenient, and uncomfortable antiques. The other kids at school mostly lived in new housing developments with new furniture.

My father was blind and walked with a cane.

My father restored antique cars and had as many as a dozen in our specially built garage at any given time. He was always out in our driveway working on one of the cars.

On the weekends we usually either went to a horrible swap meet or auction out of town to look at car parts or, even worse, some weekends we had to dress up in clothing from the era of the particular car we were going to drive to a car show. The worst was when people would get so excited to see us all dressed up in the old car and wave excitedly. I was so embarrassed for their stupidness and I hated them.

My father was always being written up in one newspaper or another as a stellar example of what a blind person can achieve - a high school teacher, an old car collector, blah, blah, blah.

It seemed to me like anything that other people did, we had to do differently. Anything that other people owned, ours had to be different.

It's funny because as much as I hated all this differentness as a kid, it is something I prize in my adult life. I don't want to do the same things as everyone else. I don't want to look the same, have the same things. I want to express my individuality.

So maybe these "weird' things I could have accepted about my childhood if I had only had someone to talk to. Instead I have always felt as if I was an outsider. I like to be alone. It is easier to tolerate loneliness when you are not in the presence of others.