A hard lesson to learn:

On November 12th my phone rang early in the morning. I was laying on the couch in one of those half awake half asleep modes. I almost got up to get it, but I thought to myself that no one calls this early unless it’s bad news. Well, I unfortunately was right about that. My Mom left a message; “Joey, your father passed away today at his home. I’ll call you from work later on today”. I laid there with no emotion. I wanted to feel something, anything. But, it was such an odd relationship between my biological father and I. 
He had walked out on us when I was just young. He was a gambler, a drinker, and a wife beater. For all those bad things, he still had a way of making you forgive him anything with his quick wit, contagious laugh, and the ability he had of making you believe the most outlandish tale. He was the tough guy in his younger days. A very large man of over 6feet. Most of the town I live in knew him. He was even voted Man of the year by our local boys and girls club. Unreal. You could call him a bully, but you’d also have to say that he had a kind heart, too. For every negative about the man, there was a positive. Something that I find very hard to put into words. 
I was due to deliver a daughter on the 15th of November, and my birthday was on the 14th. What a time. If you knew him, you would think that he planned it that way. Just his final way of making sure he wasn’t forgotten. 
So I lay there on the couch, really awake at this point but trying to make myself believe that I was able to go back to sleep if I really wanted to. I thought of my Dad. Not my biological Dad, but the man that raised me. If that call would have been about him, I would be insane with grief. Yet, here I lay trying to figure an emotion out. Maybe because I hadn’t talked to my Dad in two years, maybe because I didn’t even call him Dad but rather by his first name. I don’t know. 
I started thinking back to being a kid. Playing “tickle monster” on the couch. The one and only time I ever remember him hitting me, when I got beat up at school and came home crying about it. (My Dad was big on being able to beat anybody up anywhere, anytime and was, and probably still is, known for this). I was remembering the time that he was playing with me on the playground and I fell off the slide and fractured my skull and how afraid he was for me. The times we went to the shore and he let me beat him in pong and let me get on the carousal by myself like a big girl. The funny stories he used to tell and the mouse people he drew for me. He kept a diary for a while about how much he loved me and the daily events that went on. I’d give anything to know where that was now. Then there was his voice. He could sing so smooth and nice. He used to sing me songs all the time when he lived with nanny after my parents got divorced. Usually he sang me Puff the Magic Dragon and I cried every time when Jakie Paper got killed even though I knew Dad would bring him back to life in the song. Then the negative hit. The time he hit my mom and broke her nose, the time he walked out on us with no money or food in the house and didn’t care that I was crying and wanting him to stay. His drinking. The affairs he had right in front of me that I knew better then to tell my Mom about. When he didn’t show up to court to defend his parental rights and my “new” Dad adopted us. I really honestly thought he’d show up. The worst memory was when my Nanny died and I tried to call him to make sure he was all right and the phone was disconnected. That was the last time I saw him for over 5 years. For that whole time he was gone, I had someone else teaching me right from wrong and being my Dad. 
When I turned 18, I found him again. Things were strange between us. I got such a different story from him than I did from my Mom. A lot of what he said I knew wasn’t true. But, that old charm came in and how could I resist? I think a lot of it was that I had grown up thinking that if I had been a good daughter, he wouldn’t have left me. 
Again, a bombshell hit, and Dad and I had an argument. We didn’t talk to one another for another few years. I had a Dad and a Mom and I was fine. I didn’t need him to be my Dad. So, I started to refer to him by first name. It got easier and easier to call him by his name as the months turned into years. I started to hate him. It was no longer my fault that he wasn’t there, now I blamed him for being a rotten father who didn’t care about anybody but himself.
A phone call. My Aunt called me right about Thanksgiving two years ago. Dad was in the hospital and they didn’t think he was going to make it. His large intestine had exploded and it was very unlikely that he was going to make it through the night, will I get over to the hospital to see him right away. Well, now what should I do? My husband told me to go. That I needed to make sure that I didn’t have any regrets if he were going to die. I called my Dad (the one who adopted me) and he told me I should go to. Off I went. My legs felt like lead in that elevator going up to his floor. I had trouble finding enough air. Then to his room. How many machines and tubes can possibly be fit into one man. He looked so helpless. For the first time in my life that I ever remember, he looked helpless. I stayed there with him then for a long time. I talked to the doctors, talked to my family, and mostly talked to my Dad about not letting go and getting better. True to his nature, he beat all the odds and came home. He was still dying. He had cancer throughout his body and refused the treatment he needed to prolong his life. He started drinking again, and slowly but surely the phone calls between us got fewer and further apart until we fought again and stopped talking.
Now, two years later, I find myself in a funeral home looking at a man I hardly know at all. Between his wife, his sister, and myself, we managed to be able to tell the funeral director enough about what we thought to be true of him to get a nice obituary in the paper. He always had a way of making you believe he did things or had been to places that just didn’t happen. I walked into that funeral room. There was my Dad, laying on a table that was so out of place for him in that it just didn’t seem to fit. He had on a bright red sweater. His favourite sweater I was told. It almost makes you laugh in a sad way; My Dad, on a funeral table wearing a bright red sweater, it’s just so like what he would have done himself if he could have chose how it was going to be. He looked like he was sleeping. I didn’t want to go up to him, but with some assistance I did. Here I am with this big old belly going up to see my Dad after two years of nothing between us. From somewhere inside of me I cried out in an anguish that surprised myself. I could only say, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry”. I was told it was okay, and he knew I was sorry. Sorry for what? Sorry that I didn’t show him respect as a human and love him just because he gave me life. Sorry that I was never going to be able to tell him that he hurt me but that I forgave him anyhow. So sorry that I was never going to be able to say goodbye. It was so hard. I couldn’t stop shaking. I found the emotion that I was looking for so much. It was painful, even agonizing to me. 
I swear, I kept thinking he was going to breath. My brother sat beside me thinking the same thing. We just kept watching that bright red sweater waiting for it to rise or fall slowly. It wouldn’t be at all beyond my Dad to jump up and say “gotcha” if he could have. He never lost a battle in his life. He either beat his way, cheated his way, lied his way, or charmed his way out of anything. It was to hard for my mind to comprehend that he didn’t manage to beat death. 
It’s funny how your so much a part of the people that enter into your life. From this man I thought I hated, I learned probably the most important lesson anyone has ever taught me. Don’t waste a day, not even a minute, of life. Every bad thing that my Dad did seems so minute when compared to how I feel about not getting to talk to him one last time. I may have thought that I shut that door to my heart, but this made me realize that the places you keep people in your heart do not come with a lock and key. At some point in time those emotions come out, and it’s those emotions that help define who you are. 
I can just hear my Dad now asking what's wrong with me. Why am I crying over him? He’d say something like “Don’t worry kiddo, you’ll be here soon enough”. I still don’t understand how you can hate someone so much, and love them so much at the same time. 
Dad, if you're up there; And I know you talked yourself through the pearly gates somehow, I just wanted you to know that I think you were the best person that you knew how to be. That you were the best Dad that you knew how to be. I know this because I’m old enough now to realize that you were what was taught to you. And Dad, when I get there, I can still beat you in Pong.
 
(Nov 15th, 1998)

Copyright Joey L. Eddins

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