Dear Daddy, Do You When You Loved Me? 6xd6s

Dear Daddy, Do You When You Loved Me?

Lyd Marcet

© 2012 Lyd Marcet. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 2/1/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4208-6373-4 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-4634-9825-2 (e)

Contents

Acknowledgments:

About the Author

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to:

Andrea, for all your help, your and for thanking your parents

Dan Clarke, for understanding what I was doing, you “got it” right away and for your editing skills, your corrections and suggestions were invaluable

My husband Dan, for your love, patience and understanding and for being so good to Dad

My daughter Tiff, simply for being…I’m so proud of you

To those of you who knew dad, the purpose of this is not to change anyone’s view of the man you knew. This book was not born of anger but rather hope. Dad was a remarkable man who was a good father in many, many ways. He was a devoted husband to Betty, a loving brother to his two sisters and a loyal friend to you. Please keep your memories of him close to your heart, because that’s where he belongs.

When the phone rang at 4:15 in the morning, I knew you were gone. My heart broke in two at that very moment. I knew you didn’t have much time left here, but the finality of it hit me hard. I went up to the rehab to see you because, even though you were gone, I needed to see you one last time to say goodbye. I am so sorry that I wasn’t there holding your hand when you left us. I was by your side every step of the way, but I feel that I wasn’t there when it mattered most. I’m sorry that you were alone. When Betty died six years ago on Thanksgiving Day, you were lying beside her on the bed listening to her breathe; you knew the end was near for her. It was so important to you to be there with her when the time came for her to leave us, and I wanted to be there with you when it was your time. Kevin, Diana, Ryan, Dan, Tiff and I were all there with you Monday night when the priest came in to give you last rites. I must say, that pretty much freaked me out. He caught me completely off guard. He walked in wearing khakis and a Hawaiian shirt. I thought he was a visitor who had the wrong room until he introduced himself and explained why he was there. When I asked him if that meant you wouldn’t make it through the night he said, “No, I just prefer to do this with the family present.” I asked every nurse I saw that night if they thought this meant you would not make it through the night. They all said, “No”. In fact one nurse even said to me “Believe it or not, I’ve seen people live two weeks like this.” I couldn’t be there twenty- four hours a day, daddy. I’m sorry; I thought we had more time. I hope you know how deeply I loved you throughout my entire life. There was some anger and resentment along the way, but despite everything my love for you was without question and unconditional. I worshipped you daddy; you were my God. The first few days following your death I was on automatic pilot as I am certain is the case with most people as they go through the process of planning a loved one’s funeral. Somehow, you just get through it. The service was beautiful; I think you would have been pleased. Sean gave the eulogy and he did a great job. One thing I specifically was when he said that you and Betty made a great team: she loved to travel and you knew how

to get there. That was so true.

*****

On March 29, 2003 I received a call that you were being brought to the hospital by ambulance because you were in need of more blood. I was not surprised by the call because at that time you had been receiving two units of blood every five or six weeks for at least a year, with the need now coming every three or four weeks. The doctors never did figure out why you were losing blood. I met you at the hospital. You were itted and you stayed there for ten days, coming home on April 8, the day after my forty- third birthday. During your stay I was there every day at dinnertime because I didn’t want you having your dinner alone. I took care of the house, brought you the mail and whatever else you might need. When you came home on the eighth you felt pretty good, a little weak but that was to be expected. You were using your cane to get around the house and sleeping in the recliner, which you had already been doing for quite sometime. I think it was the only place you were comfortable in for any length of time, but as the days ed you didn’t seem to be getting your strength back. You told me that you wished you had come home with the oxygen that had been offered to you. On Monday April 14, I brought you to your appointment with Dr. B. That evening the oxygen was delivered to your home. I watched you steadily decline after that as you went from using a cane to a walker. You were having great difficulty getting around the house even with the walker and the oxygen didn’t seem to be helping very much. The visiting nurse started coming in along with a home health aide to help you bathe and I was there everyday to prepare your meals and do whatever else that needed to be done. On Monday, April 21, you had another appointment with Dr. B. I made your breakfast and you got ready to go. As we headed out the door with oxygen in tow, you made it down one-step and said, “I can’t do this, because I’ll never get back up the stairs.” You were simply too weak. We went back in the house and I called Dr. B’s office to tell them you were not strong enough to get back up the stairs even if we did manage to get down them; therefore, we would not be able

to make your appointment. Dr. B said that he would come to you. Tuesday, April 22, I went to your house early in the morning before I went to work. You were having a difficult time getting up out of your recliner. You could do it, but I could see it becoming more and more difficult for you each time you did. I made you breakfast, helped you to the table, and sat with you while you ate and organized your medication for the day. When you were ready, we headed back to the recliner and set you up for the day. You had your remote for the television, drinks, pudding packs, pills and phone all on a table within your reach. On the floor next to you was a small cooler with lunch in it and beside you was a urinal and commode so that you didn’t have to risk a walk to the bathroom. You were equipped with everything that you needed to get through the day. I arrived back at your house after work to make dinner and to help you to the table because by then you truly needed to stretch your legs a bit. The change of scenery was good, too. This was not an ideal situation, rather a temporary one which would work until we figured out what our next move should be. You and I had discussed several options during the preceding months leading up to this. We discussed Dan and I selling our house, you selling yours, and buying one together. We had also discussed someone moving in with you, but you deteriorated so rapidly in such a short period of time, we were unable to do any of those things. On Wednesday I followed the same routine, fixing you breakfast and helping you to the kitchen table. That exertion seemed to take every ounce of energy you had, and you sat at the table with your head down in your hands for quite sometime. Finally, you ate your cream of wheat and organized your pills for the day. When you felt strong enough we went back to your recliner and I set you up for the day, just as I had the previous day. Then I went off to work, returning in the afternoon to make dinner for you. When I asked you if I could stay with you that night because I did not feel that you should be alone, you told me that my place was at home. I knew when not to argue with you; I went home. The following morning I returned to follow the same routine. I could see that you were getting weaker and weaker as each day ed. It had only been three weeks since your last transfusion, and you seemed to be in need of another one already. When I returned that afternoon, I insisted on staying the night. You did not resist this time. You knew as well as I did that you were much too weak to be alone, so I spent the night on the couch. Every hour and a half during the night

you would call to me to help you out of the recliner to use the commode. When you were ready I would ease you back into the recliner. You didn’t seem to be able to hold anything in. Not that you were eating very much at that point but whatever you did eat just wouldn’t stay put. On Friday morning Dr. B came to check you out. He listened to your heart and lungs and said everything sounded good. He looked at your swollen ankles and told you to keep them elevated and chatted with you for a few minutes before he left. I could not believe that he was not itting you to the hospital. It was obvious to me that you couldn’t continue this way. I went outside with him as he was leaving and when I asked him why he was not itting you he said he couldn’t it you unless you had a medical condition that allowed him to do so. I was stunned to say the least, but what could I do? All day Friday and throughout the night, it was up and down to use the commode. Sometime late morning on Saturday the 26th, Kristen and Pam came to visit. I fixed your lunch and you wanted to sit at the table. Using your walker, with the oxygen tube trailing behind and a little assistance, you managed to get there. I sat at the table with you while you ate and took your pills. Then you just sat there for quite awhile with your head down in your hands once again and then you started to shake your head and said “I can’t do this anymore.” When I asked what you wanted to do you said, “I want to go to the hospital.” I called the ambulance and we went to the hospital; you never came back home again. While in the emergency room at the hospital, a doctor came to listen to your lungs, told us that you had pneumonia and itted you. I stayed with you until they moved you upstairs to a room, then I went home to on the news. On Sunday morning I received a call from the hospital telling me that you had congestive heart failure and they had moved you into the Intensive Care Unit. Pam was with you when I arrived, I believe she was with you when it happened. It was frightening to see you that way with a large oxygen mask over your face forcing air into your lungs, machines beeping and tubes everywhere. I didn’t know what it all meant. Finally, you opened your eyes and were cognitive. I began to feel better about things. Having spent most of the day in the ICU with you, I went home to make my phone calls, feeling confident that things were going well. The following morning my phone rang at 6:30 as I was heading out the door for

work. You’d had congestive heart failure once again. When I arrived at the hospital a few minutes later you again had that large oxygen mask over your face with nurses coming and going continuously, it was very scary daddy, but you made it through. After spending a few days in the ICU, you had improved enough to be moved out onto the ward, but you still needed to be hooked up to a heart monitor. It was then decided that you would need a heart catheterization but were not strong enough to endure such a procedure. When you were well enough to be released from the hospital, you weren’t strong enough to go home. We decided that you should spend some time in a rehab facility to get you strong enough for the catheterization. Next we had to decide on a rehab facility that you would be comfortable in. There were several places to choose from. For me the closer to home the better as I would continue to go wherever you went on a daily basis; yet the decision was entirely yours to make. You chose the rehab where Dr. B was not only on the Board of Directors, but he was the house doctor as well. You felt as though that way you could keep him as your doctor and see him almost daily. You and Dr. B had a strong and unique relationship. He was family to you, almost like another son. He had been your doctor for more than twenty years at that point, ever since he opened his practice I believe. He would not only make house calls when you couldn’t get to him but he would also stop in on occasion just to visit with you. This is highly unusual for a doctor these days. You were like family to him too. I a few years back when your health insurance company pulled out of our area forcing you to choose a new plan. You chose a plan that cost you a fortune in s, but it allowed you to choose whatever doctor you wanted, thus allowing you to keep Dr. B. On Friday, May 9th, you were transferred from the hospital to the rehab facility. Fortunately by chance it happened to be five minutes from my house. Unfortunately, the next day it was discovered that you needed more blood so you went back to the hospital for an overnight stay; you returned to the rehab on Sunday morning. The plan was still to build up your strength with diet and exercise, as you had spent the past couple of weeks in a hospital bed, your muscles were quite weak. There was a lot of work to be done to get you ready for the heart procedure. You

and I had a meeting with the staff after you had been there for a few days to discuss the routine they had in mind for you and everything seemed to be going in a positive direction. After about three weeks in rehab you needed more blood. Still, no one could figure out why you were losing it the way you were. Of course when your blood got so low, your energy level was zero and it was one step forward, three steps back. This caused another overnight stay in the hospital on Monday June 2nd. Being your person and your health care proxy, I was the one to receive the phone calls and I would follow wherever you went. I would then people to update them on your condition. On Monday, June 9th, I received a very frightening call from the nurse from rehab telling me that you were throwing up a tremendous amount of blood. She said an ambulance was on the way to bring you back to the hospital. I met you there. We found out a blood vessel had ruptured, so they went down into your intestine with a scope of some kind to cauterize it. Once that was taken care of, you developed an infection and wound up staying in the hospital until June 25th. When you returned to the rehab once again, it was a major setback for your recovery. At this point you were much too weak to even attempt physical therapy at all, so we had another meeting with the staff to discuss what to do now. Being with you everyday, I saw whether or not you were progressing. It had become quite clear to me that you were not; there had been too many setbacks. I was also aware that your insurance company would pay for rehab only as long as you were making progress, therefore, I knew the real possibility was there for your insurance company to stop paying at any time. The need might arise to transfer you into long-term care so I began to seek information about how it all might work. On Tuesday, July 1st, I went to see Dr. B. He being on the board of directors, I knew that he was the one who could explain things to me. I felt a little more at ease after speaking with him, certain that he would help us in any way he could. Seeing you in a long- term care facility was the very last thing I would have wanted, but I also knew that there was no possible way you could go home; you couldn’t even get out of bed. Things went downhill from there. On Saturday, July 5th, I was in the kitchen when Dan called out to me asking what Dr. B’s first name was. When I replied, “Robert”, he said, “I think he died.” I couldn’t believe it. I went in to the living room, read the obituary in the newspaper, and sure enough, Dr. B was dead at

age fifty-five. My only thought was that I had to tell you before you heard the nurses talking about it. I felt this news should come from me. I told Dan, “I have to go tell dad, but this will kill him.” Little did I know at that moment, just how true those words would be. I left immediately for the rehab, taking the obituary with me, knowing that you would have to read it to believe it. When I walked into your room you were alone, sitting up in bed watching television. I sat down next to you and said “Dad, I have to tell you something. I wanted you to hear it from me, Dr. B”, and before I said another word your eyes lit up and you turned your head toward me saying, “Oh, is he here?” My heart broke having to continue, but you had to know. Even if you had not heard it from the nurses you would have wondered why he hadn’t been in to see you. There was no way to keep this from you. I said, “He died, dad.” I will never forget the look on your face. I hated being the one to tell you but after all that we had been through together, who else could it have come from? It had to be me. You simply looked over at me and said “Huh?” with this look of total disbelief on your face. I handed the obituary to you and said, “I thought you would want to see this.” You took it in your hand, looked at it for a moment and then looked away. You kept going back to it and then looking away, as though you needed to absorb this information slowly. Finally you closed your eyes and crumpled the paper in your hand. I sat there for a few minutes, just watching you, knowing that you were completely devastated and feeling so sad for the loss that you felt. I finally asked you if you wanted to be alone for a while. Without opening your eyes, you just shook your head yes. I said, “I’ll be back in a little while.” I left you at 2:30 in the afternoon. When I returned at around 5:00 I could not believe the change that had occurred in such a short period of time. You were now lying down in your bed with a film over your eyes and your mouth slightly open. It had already begun; that quickly, you were dying. The news of Dr. B’s ing took away your will to live. I suppose you could not imagine your life without him as your doctor, and your friend. I knew exactly what was happening at that moment. I never understood just how strong a person’s will to live or die was until I walked into your room. When I went back on Sunday, you were propped up in bed a little bit but your eyes were still filmed over and your voice was but a whisper. I had brought you some orange juice, but being too weak to take it through a straw, I had to give you a spoonful. You only took one, you didn’t want anymore. My friend was

with me as she was home from Minnesota and wanted to see you. You were able to talk to her briefly but only in a whispered voice. I think that it meant a lot to her to be able to see you and I think it made you happy too. I was in and out that day, as was the rest of the family, and you seemed to continue to fail. Monday morning July 7th, I called work to say that I wouldn’t be in that day. They had known nothing of the events of the weekend, but I was going to Dr. B’s funeral, knowing that you couldn’t possibly attend it; I felt the need to be there in your place. As I was getting ready to go to the funeral one of your nurses called me. She told me that your kidneys had failed and that you did not want any more of the morphine shots. She said the shots went quite deep and were painful. You’d had enough. She explained to me that there was another painkiller they could give you that was istered under the tongue and was painless. I could hear the hesitation in her voice as she tried to get out her next sentence. She told me this painkiller could speed up the dying process. At that point you must have been unresponsive because as your health care proxy, it was my decision to make. I said, “Give it to him.” I did not want you in pain. After returning home from the funeral, I was getting ready to go see you when I got a call from the rehab doctor who was covering Dr. B’s patients. He called because he saw on your chart that I had given the okay for the substitute painkiller. He had also noticed on your chart that it said DNR (do not resuscitate), DNI (do not intubate) but that it did not say DNH. I didn’t know what that meant. He explained that it meant ‘do not hospitalize’ and told me that his first thought was to call an ambulance to bring you to the hospital. When I asked him what they could do for you there at this point, he said short of hooking you up to dialysis, there was nothing. I then asked if you would ever come home again and he said “No”, but I already knew that. I also knew that you trusted me to make the decisions that you were now incapable of making. Once again I said, “Give it to him.” He told me that my decision was fine and that he just wanted to make sure I was aware of everything. I made my phone calls to inform everyone as to what was happening and that afternoon your room was full. Kevin and Diana, Ryan, Kristen and Matt, Kyle and Sarah, Tiff, Dan and I were all there. Sean and Pam had been in earlier in the day. Kevin and Diana, Ryan, Tiff, Dan and I were all still in your room when the priest arrived about 7:30 pm. If only I had known daddy, I would have stayed all

night. I never would have left your side. We left around 8:00 pm, fully expecting to see you in the morning. Daddy, do you know why I am reliving this, moment by moment, with you now? I want you to how deeply I loved you. Do you know why I was there with you every single day at dinnertime for two and a half months, whether you were in the rehab or in the hospital? I never missed a day, did I? I do not think that there was ever any doubt in your mind that I would be there before your dinner arrived. I fed you by spoon on those days when you couldn’t feed yourself. Do you know why I did that? Two reasons: First of all, because if Betty had been alive she would have been there, without fail, everyday. She couldn’t be there with you, so I was. Second, I wanted you to know that just because people get angry and have disagreements, they don’t take away their love. Love is a precious gift that should never be used as a form of punishment. You and I had a horrible year leading up to this. Maybe that is why it became so important to me that I somehow make you know deep in your heart that a parent/child relationship is supposed to be that of unconditional love forever. I needed for you to know that I would be there for you no matter what. That I would never not love you. Do you when you loved me, daddy? I do; I . Of course I cannot when I was born or when I was a baby, but I know that you loved me. One day last summer when we were outside at Dan’s parent’s house I noticed my brother-in-law Sam with his daughter Michele. She was just a year and a half at the time when she went up to her daddy, wrapped her arms around his leg, and he knelt down and kissed her on top of her head. As I watched this, I could feel the love he has for her and I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Don’t ever stop loving her. She’s your little girl, your little princess. Always love her no matter what.” You loved me just like that daddy, once upon a time; I know you did. I don’t have to dig very deep to feel the love that you once had for me. I when I was maybe three or four years old. Ma, Ryan and I were riding in the car, looking for Kevin, I think, and she stopped at Roger’s farm to see if he was there. When she got out of the car, she didn’t realize that I was climbing out of the back seat to go with her and she closed the door on my hand. She rushed me into the barn and threw my hand into a bucket of icy cold water.

The next thing I is you holding me, rocking me, telling me that it would be okay and kissing my bandaged hand better. That’s what daddies do for their little girls; they rock away their fears and kiss away their tears. I always felt safe when I was with you. I knew that as long as you were there, nothing or no one could hurt me. All you had to say was, “Everything will be alright”, and I just knew that it would be. After you and Ma divorced when I was five, Kevin, Ryan, John and I all went to live with her while you went to live in the trailer in the Smith’s yard. Even though I loved my mother very much, I missed you terribly. You and I had this amazing bond and we simply loved being together. It was a mutual feeling daddy, I know it was, without a doubt in my mind. You loved me as much as Sam loves Michele. It was a beautiful love. If I close my eyes I can feel your love surround me. I so well. That was a difficult time for me; as I always seemed to be feeling guilty. When I was with Ma I felt bad that you were alone, and when I was with you, I felt bad that I wasn’t with her. Since the two of you hated each other, I could never be with both of you at the same time. I’m not sure just when or how it happened, but thankfully, I eventually got past those feelings. I used to love to visit you at the trailer. I it so clearly. When you walked in the door there was a couch to the far right along the back window. There was a shelf at the base of the window where you would keep your pinecone tree with the white lights on it. I recently made myself a pinecone tree just like the one you had, from pinecones that I collected from the pine tree in your yard last fall. It’s just a little piece of you for me to keep. Directly across from the door was a table with a half circle bench around it where we would eat and to the left was a small hallway through the kitchen area and into the bedroom. The Smith’s had a golden retriever named Snoopy; they gave her to us when you moved. Snoopy was the best dog ever. how she always had to have something in her mouth, a leaf, a stick, a stone, anything she could grab quickly whenever she would come running up to us? She was a great dog. One night when you drove me home from our weekend together, I told you that I wanted to come live with you. I must have been about eight at the time. I don’t think it was too long before you made it happen. Ma and I were in our apartment, (Kevin, Ryan and John had already moved out by this time), making

our plans for the following day. We were going to the Memorial Day parade, and we were very, very excited. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and when Ma opened it, there you stood with two other men. I can only guess at this time that one of those men was your lawyer and the other a policeman. You took me right then. I can walking through the apartment with Ma holding my hand, crying hysterically, as we gathered up a few things for me to take with me. How heartbreaking that must have been for her. One minute I was making plans with her, and the next minute I was gone. I never told her that I had asked to come live with you; I would have hurt her too much. I am certain that I do not have all of the details of this event. Maybe you two fought it out in court. I’ll never know. What I do know is that you took her by complete surprise that night, devastating her when you did. She didn’t deserve that, and although I think that you went about it the wrong way, I was happy that I would be living with you. Yet, this plan didn’t work out the way we wanted at first. You lived in a one bedroom trailer and I was not allowed to live with you. Instead, I had to live with another family in town until the house that you were building for us was completed. I hated living there. They had two sons a little younger than I was, and I would get blamed for everything they did. They would sit me in a chair facing the wall until they felt that I had served my time. This wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I had actually done the crime. I may have been young but I do being a very well behaved child. You were the mailman in town, the only mailman back then, and I lived right up the street from the post office. You would walk up to see me everyday after work. I lived for that moment when I would see you coming and I would run into your arms. One day I told you what was happening, how dreadfully unhappy I was. The next thing I knew, I wasn’t living there anymore. You had bought a piece of property on a back road in town and were building our house on it. Right up the street from our future house was a wonderful family by the name of Hendricks who lived on a farm. You had arranged for me to live with them until our house was finished. This family was a godsend to me. Living on the farm with this amazing family who welcomed me with open arms was a wonderful experience for me. There was Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Paul, Brooke and Chris. The entire family was very kind to me, treating me as though I were actually a member of their family. Mrs. Hendricks held my birthday party there after school one day with all my friends getting off the bus to a true old

fashioned birthday party with pin the tail on the donkey and peanuts hidden in the stone wall for us to find, with cake and ice cream too. There were horses, cows, pigs, chickens and even a bull. I the pig’s name was Sweet Pea, and we would sometimes try to ride her. When she had her babies, they named the runt of the litter Arnold. An odd thing for me to , I suppose, but I guess it meant a lot to me to be there. I learned how to ride a horse and rode as often as I could. I did love to ride. I when Trixie gave birth to Sheba, it was an incredible sight to see. Within minutes this beautiful baby was standing on wobbly legs right before our eyes. I will be forever grateful for the love and kindness this family showed me. While I was living on the farm, you were building our house. There was a chicken coop somewhere in town that was to be torn down, and somehow you worked out a deal to attain all of the wood from it if you tore it down yourself. You, Kevin and I’m not sure who else, tore it down and built our house with the wood. I could walk just around the corner from where I was living to visit you everyday. The outside walls of the house were up, but there were no walls inside yet. There was a plank to walk up to get in the front door, as there were no steps. I walking up the plank with my songbook in hand and wandering around the house while you guys worked, singing God Bless America, America the Beautiful and Home on the Range. I must have driven you all crazy, but I don’t anyone ever complaining or telling me to stop. Maybe I was good, but I think instead that you were all being extremely kind. The date on the foundation said June 1968, and I’m guessing that we all moved in sometime in the fall of that same year. When we first moved in we were all together, you, me, Kevin at nineteen, Ryan at eighteen and John at sixteen. I was the baby and the only girl, a double whammy for me I suppose. Kevin didn’t live there for very long before moving out on his own. Ryan left shortly after, ing the Navy and heading out to San Diego, John got into some trouble. I would get off the bus at Hendricks in the afternoon because, being only eight years old, I was still too young to be home alone. One day, we hadn’t been off of the bus for very long when some neighboring kids came running up the road. They had just gotten off the bus to discover their house had been broken into.

Mrs. Hendricks called the police and it wasn’t too long before they discovered that it was John who had broken into that home. He ran away. I don’t just how long he was gone, only that I missed him and wondered if I would ever see him again. Then one evening when I was in the bathroom I heard his voice. I couldn’t believe he was finally home. I ran out of the bathroom and threw my arms around him. I was so happy to see him. I went into my room and when the two of you had finished talking, he came in to see me. He came in to explain what had happened and that he had to go away for a while. He was going to jail. It was only you and I now, and Snoopy, of course. She was a great dog and a part of our family too. She used to sleep in my bed with me under the blankets until she’d get too warm and leave. Although I missed my brothers, you and I had a good time together. You had built us a beautiful ranch house with three bedrooms and I got to pick out my own ing for my room. I the day we went to look for it, thumbing through the rack until I found the perfect shade that I wanted. There was a beautiful Ben Franklin wood stove that heated the house so much, in January we were wearing shorts and had the windows open. In the summertime, on really hot days, my friends from the neighborhood and I would climb in through the basement window and play down there for hours, because it was nice and cool in there and also pretty empty at the time. With plenty of room to run around we would set up obstacle courses using old tires, insulation, whatever we found. This kept us busy for hours. It seemed as though I always had a friend over, either after school or to spend the night. You absolutely adored all of my friends, and the feeling was mutual. I think you truly enjoyed kids. With you being the only mailman, you knew every single person who lived in town, and I think you had a pretty good rapport with most of the kids. You were the driver whenever my friends and I went anywhere. You would drop us off at the movies or the bowling alley or wherever it was that we were off to on that particular night, and you were always there waiting for us when we were through. You were never late and always patient if we were. You were most definitely our very own personal taxi.

I often times, when I was young, you would sing to me in the car. There were three songs in particular that you would sing, “You are my sunshine”, ”Three little fishes” and “ Mairsydoats”. Sometimes I would sing with you and other times, if it were late and I was sleepy, I would lay my head on your lap and fall asleep as you sang to me. I loved to go with you wherever you went, whether it was for a long ride or just down the road. It didn’t matter to me, as long as we were together and I know that you loved having me with you. We always had a lot of laughs. Do you the time that Aunt Mary and Uncle Brian went away for the weekend so Gina and Kelly spent the weekend at our house? They had recently gotten a new puppy named Pepsi, which they brought along with them. He was the cutest thing and we all had a blast playing with him until we awoke the next morning to discover that he had done his duty in every room in the house, except yours because your bedroom door had been closed. We were hysterical with laughter. Every room someone went in we’d hear “Oh no, he got this room too!” I think we laughed all day long. Do you the time Kelly spent the weekend with us and we took every sheet of paper from a notebook and made paper airplanes? We must have had a hundred planes flying around the living room. Poor daddy, you were sitting there just trying to read the newspaper and kept getting pinged off the head with our airplanes. You didn’t care; once again, we all just laughed. Sometimes you would get down on your hands and knees and chase Kelly and I around the house with she and I running and laughing and screaming all at the same time. We knew that when you caught us, and we always knew that you would, you would tickle us until our stomachs hurt and we’d be crying from laughing so hard. I loved you so much, daddy. Just thinking back to all the good times, the hugs and kisses, the laughter, I can feel that love flowing through me. I can feel your love for me. You loved me just as much as I loved you; I’m certain of it. I there were days when I wouldn’t take the bus home from school. Instead, I would walk to the post office and hang around until you were through for the day, just to ride home with you. You were always so happy to see me; I could see it on your face. I the boat show up at the old airport with tons of boats in this giant

hanger and you were the bartender for the day. I walked uptown after school to see you and you gave me ginger ale in this fancy plastic cup. I felt like such a big shot, ”My dad’s the bartender.” I was always so proud to tell anyone that you were my dad. I wanted everyone to know, after all, I had the greatest dad in the whole world. We would go to the town beach quite often. I would ride my bike there daily in the summer, and often you would stop in after work. I never knew anyone who could swim like you. You would go under water and be gone for what seemed an eternity to me, then suddenly pop up right in front of me and scare me; we’d laugh so hard. You’d put my friends and I up on your shoulders and toss us into the water. We’d keep coming back for more until you got tired and would again disappear under the water, resurfacing again out by the raft. You and I would go to Lowell’s Dairy every Friday night for dinner. You knew everyone who walked through the door. Once again, I was so proud to be sitting there with you, as you were so well known, well liked, and respected. We couldn’t get through a meal without talking to someone. We had so much fun together, you and I. We shared an amazing relationship. Daddy, do you think every father loves his little girl as much as you loved me? Like Sam loves Michele?

When I was twelve years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was going to be a Psychologist. Probably not many kids at that age know with such certainty what they want to be when they grow up. Even at that young age, daddy, it was my ion. It was in my soul. When I was in the seventh grade I was voted ‘best problem solver’ in our class newsletter. Kids would come to me to talk, to help work out some problem they might be having. I guess it’s something that is hard to explain but I had this need to take away a person’s pain. This may be difficult for you to understand, but when somebody was in emotional pain, I actually felt that pain. I would feel that person’s sadness as though it were my own and at times it was unbearable. Maybe by taking away their pain, I took away my own. It sounds a little selfish doesn’t it? Maybe that’s how Psychologists feel, I don’t know. I had it all planned out. After graduating from high school it was off to college for probably seven or eight years, all the way to my Ph.D. Then intern for a few years and have my own practice by the age of thirty. It was a good plan, a solid plan. It never happened. What happened to us, daddy? Why did everything have to change? In the blink of an eye, you turned my world upside down. You took away your love, maybe not entirely. I think that you still loved me, but it was different now. You took away my sense of security. You left me feeling unprotected. I suddenly didn’t feel safe anymore. You stripped me to the bone emotionally, daddy, and life has never been the same for me since. One Saturday, in February when I had a friend over to the house, we took a walk up the street and met up with a couple of other kids. We were hanging around in the barn down the road and we lost track of time. When we went outside to head for home, we realized then that it was dark out. It wasn’t late, just dark. It was probably dinnertime, maybe 6:00 or so and we knew that we were in trouble because it was dark and you would probably be worried. When we rounded the corner to our house we saw her parent’s car in the driveway. We knew then we were in big trouble. When we walked into the house, all eyes were glaring at us and we got the standard “Where have you been?” We headed into my room to wait for whatever was coming our way. There were all sorts of things running through my head. I don’t mind telling you, I was scared. I had never seen you so

angry. I knew I would be grounded; I had never been grounded before. I thought that you would probably take away the phone, a twelve year old girl’s lifeline, and maybe even the television, another critical item. We heard you coming down the hall and my heart was pounding. I was really scared. You walked into my room wearing a look on your face that I had never ever seen before. You pointed your finger at me, and in a tone of voice that was completely foreign to me said, “If you ever do that again, you can go live with your mother” then walked away. I wasn’t grounded and you didn’t take away the phone or the television. Instead, what you did was the worst form of punishment a parent can impose on a child. You planted a seed in me that said “I only want you if you’re good.” At twelve years old, I didn’t get the full meaning of that statement. Life pretty much went on as usual for me, I think, but the seed had been planted. About a year later, I was spending the weekend at Kelly’s. They lived on a lake and we would swim in the summer or take out the canoe. I the time we entered the Blue Gill Derby up at the beach. I didn’t win, but it was just one of those fun things to do. We were always playing Barbie dolls, using pieces of Gina’s scrap material to make furniture for our dolls. Their house was close enough to town that we could walk to Benny’s to buy more Barbie clothes or to get a pizza. There was always something to do, and we seemed to keep busy. On one particular weekend, things didn’t go so well. I don’t if it was on Friday or Saturday evening, but Kelly and I went to a department store with a friend of hers and this girl’s mother. To this day, I cannot tell you why I did this, but I stole something. I had never done anything like that before. As I walked around the store with the items I had taken, I was so scared and I kept expecting to get caught, but I didn’t. When we walked out of the store I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see it was a security guard; I had gotten caught after all. Daddy, you have no idea just how terrified I was; I could not believe what I had just done. I was a good kid; I didn’t do stuff like that. When the security guard brought all four of us up to the office, the girl’s mother was mortified I’m sure. How could she have taken this rotten kid with her to a store? Then it was decided that I could not go home with her because she wasn’t my parent. She and her daughter went home while Kelly and I sat there and

waited. We explained that I was spending the weekend at Kelly’s, so they called Uncle Brian. Daddy, I had never been so scared in my life. I just sat there in a chair, rocking and crying. I thought that I was going to jail. Poor Kelly, she didn’t know what to do. I think that she was probably just as scared as I was and she didn’t even do anything. Although she could have gone home with the others she sat right there next to me. Finally, Uncle Brian walked in. I felt better just to see him there, even though I was so ashamed. I thought he would hate me, but at least he was a familiar face. He talked with the guard for a few minutes, but again it was decided that I could not go home without a parent. The phone call was made. In my wildest imagination I cannot fathom what you must have felt when you answered that phone. I knew that you had probably a forty-five minute ride ahead of you, plenty of time to build up a good rage. Knowing that you were on your way, I sat there waiting with my thoughts and emotions running wild. Aside from being absolutely terrified, afraid of what might happen to me, I was also feeling terribly guilty, humiliated and ashamed of myself. After speaking to the guard for a few more minutes, Uncle Brian walked over to me and knelt down in front of me. I was crying so hard my whole body was trembling and he looked up at me with a smile on his face and said, “I used to steal yo-yo’s from the five and ten.” I have never forgotten that. That one simple sentence said so much to me. It said, “You screwed up but you’re still a good person and I still love you.” I felt a little better. Even though I was still very scared, I felt just a little bit better. I was just a kid, daddy, a good kid who made a bad decision. Now I would have to suffer the consequences of my actions. I guess what I was doing to myself emotionally says that my conscience was doing it’s job. One thing I knew for sure was that I would never do anything like that again, and I never have. After what seemed an eternity waiting for you to arrive, you walked in. You didn’t say a word to me. You went straight over to the man in charge and, after speaking with him for a few minutes, we all left and I was relieved beyond words to be heading home. We all went back to Kelly’s house where I couldn’t

even bring myself to look at Aunt Mary. Thinking of how ashamed she must be of me I simply wanted to go home, take my punishment, which I fully deserved and expected, and try to forget the whole thing had ever happened. I went into Kelly’s room to pack up my things, sat on her bed, and waited. Daddy, you cannot know just how badly I was feeling about myself because I knew that I had not only angered you but that I had disappointed you as well. I surely knew that this time I was in for the full punishment: grounded, no television, no telephone, and whatever else you could throw in for good measure. I knew you couldn’t just let me get away with what I had done. I was ready for whatever it was that you decided on, or so I thought. Once again, I didn’t get grounded. You didn’t take away the television or the telephone, as I had anticipated. As I heard you come down the hall, I stood up, grabbed my bag and was ready to hear, “Let’s go.” Instead, you looked at me very calmly and said, “I think you’d better stay here for awhile”, then you left. No hug, no kiss, no “I still love you, we’ll talk about this later”, nothing. It was never spoken of again. You punished me that day beyond belief. That punishment lasted thirty years. The seed that you had planted in me one year earlier, “I only want you if you’re good” was now a permanent part of my soul that would govern the rest of my life. Our relationship would never fully recover from that night. Instead of forgiving me for a mistake that I had made as a child, you allowed it to change the entire course of my life. My life became a journey into fear, self doubt, isolation, insecurity and mistrust. You stripped away any and all sense of myself that I had. I started skipping school, my grades began to fall, and I began to use drugs. Daddy, I was thirteen years old and I was taking drugs. You didn’t know that did you? You never said anything if you did. You began closing me out, giving me the silent treatment. I no longer had the comfort of your undying love and devotion. I no longer felt protected by the strength of your love and laughter. I was no longer daddy’s little girl, and I felt the sting of that to the very core of my being. The changes were very subtle at first, and I cannot say that there was never anymore laughter in our house. We still had fun together and still went places

together, but things felt different now. You and I were the only two people living in the house. There had to be some kind of communication, but you began to ignore me sometimes like I wasn’t even in the room. I one time in particular, but it certainly wasn’t the only incident. I was in my bedroom when I realized that I needed something at the store. I walked out into the living room where you were reading the newspaper and asked “Could you bring me to the store? I need to get something.” Nothing, no response at all, it was as though I didn’t even exist. I stood there for a minute or two and then simply turned around and walked back into my room. About an hour later you came walking into my room and said, “Are you ready?” I said, “Ready for what?” You replied, “I thought you wanted to go to the store?” I was too young to realize this at the time, but it had become all about control. Life was to be led your way, no one else’s. School had become an extremely painful ordeal for me. I had lost all selfconfidence and self- esteem and in my second year of junior high, it had become a whole new world for me. Up until that time I had been a pretty good student achieving mostly A’s and B’s. I had lots of friends and I think that I even liked school. I went to birthday parties and sleepovers and even played softball for a while. You used to umpire the little league games in town and I would always go with you so I could hang around with my friends. I was a very sociable, outgoing kid because I was comfortable in my surroundings. I had self-confidence and self-esteem and I trusted the people around me. Not that life was perfect, children of all ages have their issues, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Life was good. The junior/senior high school was a regional school, so upon entering the seventh grade, I was faced with hundreds of students whom I had never seen before. Things were going all right until the incident happened and life changed for me. I was becoming a different person. I was suddenly frightened, unsure of myself, uncomfortable being around people and I had begun to turn inward. I avoided eye with people and was keeping more and more to myself. I had started smoking the previous year, maybe about the time that the first incident occurred. Maybe it was a sense of security for me, I’m not really sure. I the very day that I started smoking, enlisting the help of a friend who already smoked. I told her that I wanted to try it so we bought a pack, went off to a hiding place and I began the disgusting habit of smoking.

At some point during the eighth grade I became aware that some people were doing drugs, I had never been exposed to any such thing before. One day I decided to give it a try. It was a little pill called THC. When I approached a kid in my class whom I thought could get it for me he was a little hesitant at first, probably because he didn’t know me very well and maybe I didn’t seem the type to do drugs. But in the end, he got it for me. He told me to be careful, as it was my first time, and he told me what to expect once it kicked in. By that time I was getting off the bus at home and was alone in the house for a couple of hours before you would come home. I was scared daddy, but I took the pill, and I waited. Before too long this amazing feeling of euphoria came over me and I felt at peace for the first time in a very long time. I wasn’t scared anymore. The kid who gave it to me called to make sure that I was all right, which was nice I suppose. I took this drug every chance I got after that, welcoming the euphoric feeling that lifted me up into the clouds. Life was easier up there then it had become for me down here on Earth. I had also started smoking marijuana and although it was easier to come by, it didn’t have nearly the same effect. I guess it was just something to do. It really doesn’t matter what I took. The point is that at the age of twelve I had my entire professional life mapped out and just one year later, I was skipping school, watching my grades plummet and taking drugs. Didn’t you notice daddy, or didn’t you care? My teenage years and into my early twenties were hell for me, spending all of my time and energy just trying to survive, swimming against the tide the entire time. It wasn’t until maybe six or seven years ago that I figured the whole thing out. It was all about control yes, but it ran even deeper than that. You see, daddy, you could never control Ma when you were married, or Kevin, Ryan or John either. Each one of them had a strong personality of their own. I came along eight years after John and I was your little princess, your little girl. When you and Ma divorced, one by one, we all went to live with you. When our house was finally finished, all five of us moved into it, and one by one, the boys all moved out. You and Kevin had a horrible argument, he moved out and the two of you didn’t speak for eight years. Ryan ed the Navy and John ended up in jail. They were too strong for you to control and keep under your thumb. That left just you and me.

I think maybe you felt that I was this perfect child who would never cross you. When I did, by coming home late that Saturday evening, you were so caught off guard by it that you didn’t quite know what to do. It was as though you had just discovered that your perfect porcelain doll had a crack in it, so there came my warning: if I did it again, I could go live with my mother. As I said earlier, daddy, that planted a seed in me, but at that point it didn’t cripple me. I was still a child with a lifetime of mistakes and bad choices ahead of me. As a parent, it was your job, your obligation, to guide me through those mistakes and bad choices, not to punish me for a lifetime because of them. Then came the department store incident a year later and that filled you with such an inner rage that all you could say to me was, “I think you’d better stay here for a while”, permanently imbedding that seed in my soul, in my psyche. You only wanted me if I was good. You didn’t send me to live with Ma though, did you daddy? Do you know why? I do, because if you had sent me to live with Ma, you wouldn’t have had anyone to control. Having control made you strong, it made you all powerful, but as I have already stated, it ran much deeper than that. You know something, daddy, I honestly believe that you were not even consciously aware of what you were doing. I think that maybe something inside of you sensed that you were losing control of the one and only thing that you had control of; me. It became a whole new ball game then and so began my descent into hell. Feeling that you were losing control of me, and that maybe I was becoming a stronger person in my own right, you began to criticize me and find fault with things I said and did. If I said right, left was better. If I said the sky was blue, you said it wasn’t quite blue and you would do the headshake thing. You would put this look of utter disgust on your face and shake your head back and forth meaning; stupid, senseless, or foolish. I believe that most people either didn’t notice or just didn’t pay any attention to it when you shook your head, but I on the other hand had been so programmed by you that I took it as a direct hit every single time. You continued to do that to me right up until the very day you died. A lifetime of it, and oh, how I came to despise it. You never encouraged me, never once said to me, “You did a good job”, “You

made a good decision,” You never told me that I was smart, that I could do anything I set mind to do. Most importantly daddy, you never ever said the words, “I’m proud of you.” Never, not once. You put me in a cage and locked the door. I spent the next thirty years locked in that cage, watching life by me, trying desperately to find a way out. But there was no way out. I wanted so desperately to live my life. I wanted to finish school, go to my prom and go to parties with my friends. I wanted to have a job, to earn my own money, to have some independence. But there was no way out of the cage. The day you died, the cage door swung wide open, but then what…

When I was fifteen you got remarried and Betty had four kids of her own. Her oldest son never lived with us as he was away at college and upon graduating, never moved back to this area. Sean seventeen, Kyle, fourteen, and Kristen, eight, all moved into our home. You were married in the living room of our house on October 10, 1975, and I was very excited for you. A very big concern of mine had been that you would be alone when it came time for me to move out on my own, and yes, at that time, I still had hopes that one day I would be free. I simply could not see myself ever leaving you alone. I never wanted you to be lonely. Do you have any idea, daddy, just how much I loved you? Your feelings and well being were of utmost importance to me. Throughout my entire life you were always a top priority. As I was struggling to find my place in your world, in moved this whole new family. Although I was very happy for you and they were truly a wonderful family, it only seemed to intensify what I was already fighting. By that time, at the age of fifteen, I was two years into my new role in your life, that of struggling for your approval, your respect, your pride and yes, even your love. I was still taking drugs, not daily, but whenever it was available. I had become somewhat of a loner at school and it was becoming increasingly more difficult for me to socialize with the other kids, but I was still hanging in there, doing the best that I could. As our new family began to settle in and we became more comfortable with each other, things seemed to get worse for me. Looking back, I can see it all so clearly. It all goes back to that control that was all so important to you. Betty was a strong, independent woman; you weren’t going to control her. Her children also had strong personalities of their own so you couldn’t control any of them either. I believe that intensified your need to pull all of my strings even tighter. One day Betty asked me why you affected me the way you did while you seemed to have no effect at all on anyone else. I could not answer; I didn’t know why. Now I do. At the time, it was you, Betty, Sean, Kyle, Kristen, and maybe Ryan, for a while, and I living in the house, yet I was the only one affected by your behavior. Ryan

was a grown adult who had already spent time in the Navy. Sean, Kyle and Kristen first of all, already had the influence of their own father, plus they still had the influence of their mother on a daily basis to offset anything that you may have projected onto them. I, on the other hand, had become completely submissive, with you being my sole influence from the ages of eight through fifteen. Up until the age of twelve, I was the love of your life. I was strong, confident, and full of life until you yanked it all away from me and began to play the game. Sometimes I felt your love and other times I didn’t exist, never knowing from day to day which way it would go, “Will he speak to me today or will he ignore me?” I went from extreme highs to extreme lows, on a daily basis. You didn’t have that emotional play with the others, so you tightened your grip on me so as not to lose your grip altogether. I soon learned that you were demanding perfection from me or I was worth nothing at all. While I knew that I had to be perfect, I also knew that there was no such thing as perfect. I could have gone either way, you know. I could have gone after everything full steam, running into brick walls at every turn, trying to be perfect, or given up on everything knowing that it wasn’t worth the effort because after all, no one can be perfect. I went the way of the latter. I wasn’t strong enough to give anymore than I was already giving; simply surviving took all the strength that I had. Adjusting to my new family was extremely difficult for me. I no longer felt as though I belonged in my own home. I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t like them. I had become so self- conscious and self critical that I could barely function around people. School had become an absolute nightmare by then. I was unable to look people in the eye at all. If called upon in class, my standard answer to any question was, “I don’t know”, even if I thought I knew the answer. I was afraid that if I got it wrong, everyone would know just how stupid I really was. I participated in nothing, no sports, no drama, no music, nothing. I was paralyzed with fear. I don’t ever giving an oral report in class, being either absent that day or conveniently in the nurse’s office. I always found a way out of it and took a zero. I was doing so poorly in school that one semester I brought home a failing notice in all five of my courses. All you said to me was, “You better do better

than that.” I didn’t care enough to do better. All that mattered to me at that point was just getting through each day. I didn’t date, I didn’t go to parties and I didn’t have a job. I went to school, got through the day and came home, day after day, that was my life, occasionally spending time with one friend at a time. All the while retreating deeper and deeper within myself. The hell I suffered at school you brought into my home the day Betty and her children moved in. I no longer had a private haven in which to hide from the world. Please don’t misunderstand me, daddy. Betty was a wonderful woman whom I eventually grew to love as though she were my own mother, and all the kids were great. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; I simply didn’t know how to be with them. They were, as a family, what I considered to be normal. They talked, laughed, played and fought together, and if they got into mischief they would be scolded and then forgiven and the best part was that through it all they always loved each other. This was completely foreign to me. I had no idea how to interact with them. I wanted so badly to be like them, to be a part of their world. Instead, I retreated even further within myself, by becoming a virtual recluse in my bedroom. It was my only sanctuary, the only place that I felt safe, a place where I didn’t have to work so hard just to exist. I would spend hours alone in there, coming out only to have dinner at the table or occasionally at night to watch television, depending what was on and how many people were out there. Aside from that, I was locked safely away in my private hideaway. I was an avid reader, sometimes reading an entire book on a Saturday. I would listen to music, do crossword and jigsaw puzzles, or rearrange my room. On my eighteenth birthday I received a portable black and white television. It was the best and the worst thing that you could have done for me. It was the best thing because now I hardly ever had to leave my room, and the worst thing because now I hardly ever had to leave my room. I became increasingly more of a shut in with each ing day. The more time that I spent alone, the more difficult it became for me to socialize, even in my own home. I knew that this was not a healthy way to live but at the same time, I was powerless to change anything. I spent some pretty dark times in my room. I am certain that I was in a very deep depression throughout my teens. I can times when I felt as though I were in a deep black hole. I would

spend months trying to climb my way to the top and just as I put my fingers over the top to lift myself out, someone or something would come along, step on my fingers and send me into a freefall to the bottom of the hole again. The exhausting process of climbing back out would begin all over again. I was in serious trouble, daddy, but you didn’t seem to notice. I was so deep inside myself at that point that I couldn’t even scream for help. The depth of my problem became quite apparent to me the night Ryan and I went to the airport to pick up you and Betty; I was maybe seventeen at the time. The two of you had gone to Florida and your plane was scheduled to arrive at the airport around midnight. Ryan was going to pick you up so I decided to go with him, figuring there wouldn’t be too many people there at that time of night. I was wrong. Three planes had landed around the same time and there were hundreds of people there, it was total chaos. It seemed an eternity until you finally located your luggage so we could leave. I found myself paralyzed with fear, unable to move, as though my feet were frozen to the floor, I had begun to shake, have heart palpitations and was sweating. When the room began to spin, I said, “I have to sit.” I found the nearest chair and sat there perfectly still until it was time to go home. I felt somewhat safe in the chair, whereas when I was standing I felt as though all eyes were on me, picking me apart piece-by-piece. As long as I was sitting in the chair I felt grounded, almost like I was wrapped in a cocoon. The problem progressed quite rapidly, as it became even more difficult for me to leave the safety of my room. Each time I did venture out I felt as though everyone were picking me apart, the way I walked, the way I talked, the way I ate, laughed, smiled and breathed. Everything I did, I was doing it wrong. I became completely self critical to the point of changing my walk in mid stride because I felt that I wasn’t walking the right way. When I laughed I would say to myself, “You have a horrible laugh, stop laughing.” Everything that I did, I was now picking myself apart. Somewhere along the way, I began speaking like Kelly; you know they all have an accent, Uncle Brian, Aunt Mary, Gina and Kelly. I would hear her accent or her laugh come out of my mouth, not always, only on occasion, but I never understood why I did this until a few years ago. One night when I was maybe fourteen, you were fixing the fire and I laughed at something, I don’t

just what it was, but you looked at me and with such venom in your voice said, “Stop mocking Kelly!” I was humiliated. I couldn’t understand why you had said that to me. I had not yet become aware that I had been doing this. One day at work a few years ago, as I was speaking to someone I heard Kelly’s accent come out of my mouth. It was as though someone had just slapped me and I suddenly understood completely. Whenever I was in a social setting where I had to in a conversation, if I was nervous or anxious at all, I would speak like Kelly. It was a form of self- protection. If someone laughed at me, or made fun of me it wasn’t really me they would be laughing at. It’s like an actor who says that he is really a shy person but when he is in character he has no problem; because he is in character, he is someone else at that moment, therefore, no one can hurt him. Once I realized why I was doing this I was better able to keep it under control. I had quit school when I was sixteen because I had become completely unable to function around people, I simply could not stay in school. Although I did try to go back, twice, for you, so that you could see one of your kids graduate; I didn’t succeed. Once again, I had failed you. Betty and the rest of the family probably thought I was lazy and spoiled because I didn’t go to school, didn’t work and daddy handed me money whenever I needed it. They couldn’t possibly have known the truth, or have been further from the truth. You know daddy, you probably had me right where you wanted me at that point. I was completely helpless, and you had total control over me. I had to go to you for everything. If I needed gas money, you handed me your credit card. If I needed money for cigarettes, you bought them for me, leaving two packs at a time on the counter, I’d have to ask you for them when I needed more. If I needed money to go out with a friend, you’d ask, “How much do you need?” Yes daddy, I did go out with a friend occasionally, but only one at a time. I couldn’t be with more than one person at a time because you had instilled in me the very distinct fear that if I made someone angry they wouldn’t want me anymore. I had to be perfect, I had to agree with everyone or they wouldn’t want to be my parent, brother, sister or friend anymore. As long as I was with only one person, that concept worked, but if I were with two or more people and they disagreed on something, I would have to choose a side. One of them would be angry with me; one of them would not want me anymore. I stuck with one person at a time.

Anyway, while I was home, not working or going to school, I was ing through the living room one day and the television was on. I heard this woman’s voice describing me to the smallest detail, she had my attention now so I sat and watched the program. She described the paralyzing fear, the heart palpitations, the anxiety and the sweating. She spoke of being unable to be in social settings and how difficult it could be to even leave the house. I sat there anxiously waiting to hear the word. What was she talking about? Then I heard it, daddy, I heard her say the word, Agoraphobia! I couldn’t believe it; someone had just given a name to what I had been experiencing. Right then and there I became a self-diagnosed agoraphobic and began to feel better almost instantaneously. It was as though someone had lifted a tremendous weight off of my shoulders. “Now that I know what it is, I can deal with it.” So I did. I began to push away my crippling fears. I came out of my room a little bit more, slowly of course. I forced myself to stop at stores whereas before, if I saw people inside a convenience store that I needed to go into, I would drive right by and go somewhere else. When I felt myself wanting to run and hide, I would reason with myself, calm myself down by telling myself that nothing was going to happen to me if I went in that store, that the fear was all coming from inside of me and that I had the power to overcome that fear. No one could see the fear inside of me; therefore, I could control it. It certainly didn’t happen overnight, but gradually I overcame it completely. It actually took years and a bit of outside help that I would encounter a few years later, but I’ll get to that. I hadn’t realized until that television show that I had the power within myself to take care of myself, and the power to fight you. I an earlier experience when a similar incident occurred. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time because maybe I was too young to grasp it’s meaning. We had a black and white cat named Big Kitty, which Ryan and I had brought home one night, much to everyone’s surprise. Whenever I saw Kristen playing with Big Kitty or holding him, showing him any kind of affection at all, I would become so angry that I would have to leave the room, unable to watch them. She couldn’t have been but nine years old at the time and I never said anything to her, she was just a kid, loving a cat. Something inside of me knew that it wasn’t her fault that I was feeling angry. As time ed, each time I saw her paying any attention at all to this cat, I would become so angry that my body would begin to shake and I would have to go into my room to recover. As long as I didn’t actually see her

with the cat I was okay; I just couldn’t watch it. One night I was in the car with Ryan and somehow the subject of Kristen and the cat was brought up. I told him what had been happening and do you know what he said to me? He said,” That’s because you feel threatened.” Oh my god! It was so simple: I felt threatened. I knew that Big Kitty loved me and he was the only thing in my life that I was certain loved me. “What if she takes his love away from me?” “What if he loves her more than me?” Once it was brought to light and I understood why I was feeling the way that I was, it stopped just like that. It was so ridiculous to think that just because Kristen showed this cat attention, he wouldn’t love me anymore. It never bothered me again from that moment on, to see Kristen and Big Kitty together. That’s what you had done to me. Sick, isn’t it? I truly didn’t understand at the time that I had the power within me. When the agoraphobia issue came along, that’s when I knew, that I still had all these awful feelings like fear, self-doubt, and confusion, but now had the power to handle them a little bit better. It became a continuous learning process for me, and the whole trick was to find the root of the problem. This has sustained me to this very day daddy. Once I find the root of any problem, I know I can find a solution. This knowledge didn’t take away any of the problems, just allowed me to adapt my life to them, learn to live my life around them a little bit better then I had been doing. Instead of shutting myself in completely, I began to venture out more and more. I had stopped doing the major drug by that time because I had a bad experience one night. Instead of it making me euphoric, allowing me to forget my pain, I cried for hours. I never took it again because it had ceased to serve its purpose. I got a job as a homemaker working with the elderly. I would go into their homes and clean for them, do their laundry, food shopping, provide companionship, whatever they needed. I discovered that I was extremely comfortable around them. They loved me, and I had a way with them. They loved me for who I was, not expecting me to be perfect. Unfortunately, I had not a lot of experience in the workforce and I had not yet developed much of a sense of responsibility, so I bounced back and forth between jobs for a few years, never really settling in anywhere. I was still lost, looking for a place where I belonged.

My life took a positive turn the day my daughter Tiff was born. She is a blessing in my life. Shortly before she was born I made a solemn vow to myself that she would not grow up to be like me. She would be strong, confident and self-assured. She would know that I was proud of her and she would be secure in the knowledge that my love for her was unconditional and everlasting. It was a great plan, with only one flaw. How do I teach what I do not know? How do I give what I do not have? I decided that she could learn from what I projected on to her, even if I did not necessarily feel strong, I could show her strength. Although I had zero self-confidence, I could show her self-confidence. Aside from when I was at work, Tiff and I were always together, reading, playing and watching Rainbow Brite together. She went shopping with me, to bridal showers with me, she even went to Gramp’s funeral. She was only one but everyone we knew was there, and I would never have left her with just anyone. She was so happy and good- natured that she was welcomed everywhere we went. Tiff spent the entire time at the funeral with her Uncle Johnny-Mike, (that was a nickname we had given John years before and it stuck, I’m not sure you ever knew about that). Whereas he lived in New York, she didn’t see him very often but she didn’t care. She knew we were all around her. John held her the whole time, loving every minute of it, he was in his glory. He loved Tiff very much. I would talk to people, be friendly, even though I was scared to death. She didn’t know that, all she knew was what she saw. Even though I was terrified of being with people and had not one ounce of self-confidence or self-esteem, I projected a positive image on to her. It was basically the same principle that I had used to get past the agoraphobic thing. No one actually knew what I was feeling, it was all about what I was projecting. I knew now I had to do it twenty-four hours a day, I could not allow her to see me in any other state of mind but a positive one. I became an Oscar worthy actress capable of filling a warehouse with those statues for some of the performances that I pulled off over the years. When you portray something like that for so long, as I did, it becomes a part of you, my entire life became a bluff. I instinctively knew when to turn it on; I do it to this day, when I need to.

The only time I relaxed was when I was alone. I could just be myself then, although it became difficult to know who I was, the real person or the actress. It was completely exhausting but I couldn’t help but get stronger from it. She did that for me, and she is strong, confident and self-assured today at twenty. She is the outside help I spoke of earlier; I believe she saved my life. She makes mistakes, some bigger than others, but life is about making choices and mistakes, learning from them and growing from them, then moving on as a stronger person. Tiff knows without a doubt, daddy, that I love her with my whole heart and soul, through the good and the bad. She knows I am proud of her, just for being who she is; she has no doubt about that. Do you know why she knows that, daddy? Because I tell her, I say the words and I have said those words to her throughout her entire life and will continue to say the words for the rest of mine. When Tiff was about nine, she and I were living on our own when I realized something rather important. I was planning a trip to visit a friend and when I called to tell you about it, Betty answered the phone. When I told her of my plans she was excited for me and asked me if I wanted to tell you, I said to her, “No, you can tell him because I really don’t care what he thinks.” WOW!!! That was a first for me. I realized at that very moment that all my life, whenever I did anything, I would always have to tell you my plans. I just thought that the thing to do was keep you informed. I was wrong; that wasn’t why I did it. I would tell you everything because deep down inside of me somewhere I needed to know whether or not you thought it was a good idea. I was constantly seeking your approval. Maybe because I was now living on my own for the very first time I was beginning to break away from your control over me. I also think that a big part of the reason is that Betty had become a buffer between you and I. When I would call to inform the two of you of anything, which I was now doing less and less, I would tell her why I had called and let her it on to you. If you disapproved of anything, she saw the shake of your head, I didn’t. She heard your disapproving words, I didn’t. Betty was a saint, she just took everything and let it roll right off her back. Now I do realize that the problem still existed, but it was simply being diverted so that I didn’t have to deal with it head on. I was growing stronger because of it. I was finally on my way to becoming an independent person. Then I met Dan, another true blessing in my life.

December 1993 was a tough month for me from beginning to end. On the second of the month I was to get my divorce, but he didn’t show. I came home disappointed only to find my roommate was moving out of our apartment with her two daughters. She never told me that she was moving out, and by the time I got home, she was almost all moved out. That was on a Thursday and that evening I went to you and Betty to ask if Tiff and I could move back in with you for a while. I knew I couldn’t swing that apartment completely on my own. You and Betty said yes. The following day on my way home from work I rented a storage unit for our things. Betty came by shortly after I had arrived home and told me that it wasn’t a good idea that I move back in because you and I would fight. Tiff and I had already lived with you two the year before; it was for about a year when I was first separated. We did lock horns during that year because here I was an adult, thirty-two years old and I was back fighting for my life again. Now that I was back in your house, you could get complete control again. You still had to keep me down because you were still gaining your strength by keeping me weak. You know, daddy, if I had been able to move out when I was eighteen I probably could have broken away from your control, but so much damage had already been done to that point. I wasn’t strong enough to move out on my own. You had me completely dependent on you. During that year when Tiff and I lived with you, do you what you said to me one night after dinner? Tiff and Grammie were in the other room and just you and I were in the kitchen. Trying to make conversation I said, “How about that woman who won sixty million dollars?” and you said in that degrading tone of yours, “I know people who’ve won a million dollars and they’re broke today because they weren’t smart enough to handle it.” The only response I could come up with to that was, “I don’t think I’d want sixty million dollars, that would change my life too much, but I could handle a million.” Your reply, “I don’t think you could handle that.” Daddy, think about what you said to me. In one sentence you said, “They’re broke because they weren’t smart enough to handle it” and in the next breath, you said you didn’t think that I could handle it. What you were telling me was that I wasn’t smart enough. At thirty-two years old, my father was still telling me that I was not smart enough. Five years ago, when Abby died, you were sitting at my kitchen table when the

phone call came. When I relayed the news to you, you asked me how old he was and I said, “I don’t know, I’ll ask when she calls me tomorrow with the arrangements.” When I was at your house on Tuesday, cleaning, I said to you, “Abby was sixty-seven years old.” You never even looked at me, you simply said, “John Doe downtown said he was sixty-eight, yup, he was sixty-eight.” In other words, you would believe someone from downtown before you would believe me because after all, I couldn’t possibly be right about something. Shortly after our conversation the newspaper came and I asked you if there was anything in there about Abby, you said, “Yes.” I said, “I’ll read it when I’m through cleaning.” The article I read said he was sixty-seven. Daddy, why couldn’t you have said to me, “Gee, you were right, he was sixty-seven.” No, you couldn’t even give me that. I would never be right about anything in your eyes. So it wasn’t so much that we fought. I had to disagree with you sometimes to try to maintain some semblance of my own identity. If I gave in to you every time, I never would have survived, I would have crumbled completely. Moving back in with you was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. I had gotten away and now I was back, relinquishing what little self-confidence I may have gained while I was gone. It was terrifying for me. When Betty suggested that I not move back home, I decided to stay where I was. On the following Monday, December 6, I got my divorce. Later that evening I got a call saying that my mother had had a heart attack and was being rushed to the hospital. By the time we arrived at the hospital, she was gone. That week of course we had the wake and funeral. During that same week I discovered that someone had stolen money from me. A week or so later I was asked by someone if I were taking drugs because I was not showing any emotion over the events that had been occurring in my life. I started laughing and said, “Where the hell would I get money to take drugs?” Finally December thirty-first came, the month of hell was nearly over, I was ready to begin a new year. But alas, the month was not quite over yet. Something happened on that day that was quite terrifying, but I don’t think I ever told you about it, and there’s no point in telling you now. Let’s just say the month of December was hell for me from beginning to end. Somehow I knew that if I cried, I would fall apart completely. I couldn’t allow that to happen, so after Ma’s funeral, I shut down. I felt nothing, just numb. After the first of the year, I knew that I needed to deal with emotions that I had buried,

but no tears would come. I watched sad movies, listened to sad songs, nothing. I had buried my emotions so deep that I wasn’t even able to force them out. By this time I was in debt pretty good. I wasn’t making that much money, trying to maintain an apartment on my own and a ten year old daughter, but I was expecting a fifteen hundred dollar tax refund in a few weeks and that was going to clear up my bills. Life was looking better. In the meantime, I met Dan. Dan was this normal, all American guy. He was very good to both Tiff and me and I felt very fortunate to have him in our lives. Sometime around the end of March, just a few weeks after meeting Dan, my tax return arrived. I opened it excitedly only to find a letter inside explaining that I was only getting half of what I was expecting because t taxes from the previous year had not been paid, as I had been told that they were. Whereas they received my return first, they took it from me. I received a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars. I was completely devastated and the tears poured like rain, as if someone had turned on a faucet that I could not turn off. I guess that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Dan called later that day and when he heard what had happened he said, ”Is that all? I thought your car blew up or something.” That was awesome. That sentence put everything into perspective again. I began to feel better about things again and to take things one day at a time, to just do the best I could. I was feeling pretty strong, pretty good about myself. Living on my own was good for me. Even though Tiff and I were struggling financially, we were making it work. I no longer felt the need to seek your approval on everything I did. I had become more independent. Dan and I continued to date throughout the summer and in the fall he bought a house for us all to live in. We had become a family and life was getting better and better. I was actually beginning to feel like what I perceived to be a normal person. I had worked very hard my entire life to get to this place. Your thoughts and opinions were still important to me, but they no longer ruled me. At this point in my life, I was finally able to say, “If he doesn’t like it, tough.” What a glorious feeling. I was my own person at last. I was feeling so good about life that I decided to go to college to study Psychology at the age of thirty-six. I going to your house after I had ed for my first course to tell you and Betty. I hoped you would be pleased even though I was not doing it for you, but for myself. Still, I wanted you to be

pleased because a part of me was hoping that you would finally be proud of me. That need was always an underlying factor, but not my main focus. I suppose on some level, I was doing it for you too, because I still wanted you to have an opportunity to see one of your kids graduate. I think I realized just how much I needed to hear you say the words, “I’m proud of you”, the day Kristen graduated from college. I went to the graduation with you and Betty and afterwards there was a party at her house. She was opening cards and gifts and when I read what Betty had written in her card, my heart sank just a little bit. She had written the words “You are the light of my life.” How I did long to hear those words from you, daddy. That was when I knew that for as long as you were alive, I would crave to hear those words from you. As I said, although it was no longer my main purpose in life, it would continue to be an underlying factor in everything I did, something that would never really go away completely. My life continued on a very positive track, with Dan and I marrying on February 1, 1997, an extremely happy day in my life. Tiff was doing well, making many good friends whom I like to refer to as the ‘posse’. They practically lived at our house, and we loved having them here. Also while the kids were all here, we knew where they were and that they were safe. I was doing exceptionally well in college, receiving mostly A’s and B’s, even making the Dean’s list, quite a contrast to my grades in high school. I was even able to stand up in front of the class to give an oral report. As horrifying as that was for me, I knew that I simply had to do it, so I discovered that the whole trick to it was to volunteer to be first. If I was going to have to do this, I may as well go first and get it over with. I figured this way I wouldn’t have to think about again, I could just sit back and watch everyone else sweat. I married into an amazing family who welcomed Tiff and me into their lives with open arms. I love them all dearly and feel very fortunate to be a part of their world. We all get together for dinner every other Sunday; it’s nice because it keeps the family in touch. Life was good, real good. Then bad news struck. Betty told me that she was having some kind of problem and she wasn’t sure just what it was yet. She was scheduled for exploratory surgery to find out. You and I were there at the hospital during her surgery, awaiting word from the doctor. When he finally

came out to give us an update, I was not prepared for the words he spoke. He told us that she had colon cancer and that it had eaten through the wall of the colon, into her liver. I can only speak for myself when I say that I was completely blown away by the news. I think I went a little bit numb. Knowing just how much you treasured this woman, I cannot even begin to imagine what you felt at that moment. In early March 1998, you called a family meeting to be held at Kristen’s house. The family as a whole was given the news of her prognosis. There was nothing that could be done for her. She had been given twelve to twenty-four months, quite a large time span, but we all hoped for the very best; hoping they were wrong and a cure could be found. Once again, I can only speak for myself, as I am quite certain that this news affected each and every one of us in our own way. I was devastated. This beautiful, amazing woman was no longer my stepmother, she had become over the years as much of a mother to me as was my own biological mother. She had become my trusted friend, my confidante. I loved this woman to the depth of my soul. After reeling from the news for a few days, I began the process of accepting it. During that process I was stricken with such a sickening thought that I actually felt my body go limp. My mind had flash forward, for just a split second, to the time when she would be gone. I suddenly realized that not only was I about to lose the woman who had become my mother and my friend, but also my buffer. I would once again be taking the full brunt of your unhappiness. I realize that must sound selfish of me and I do hope you understand just how much I truly loved this woman, but at the same time, the fear I was facing was real and terrifying. Sure everyone else in the family would still be around, but I knew that everything would fall on me. I wrote Betty a letter a month or so before she ed. When I asked you if I could give it to her, you asked me to wait a few days, because she had written one to us. After I read her letter, I knew that it was all right to give her mine; it was filled with love, for both her and you. In part of my letter I told her that no one on this Earth loved you more than she and I did, and that I would see to it that you would never be alone. I meant every word, daddy. It was a difficult summer and fall that year as we watched Betty slowly fail and

getting weaker as each week ed. Throughout October and November hospice was coming in to help with whatever Betty needed. You were so good to her daddy; my heart was breaking for both of you. For Betty, because of what was happening to her body and what she was going through emotionally, and for you, because you were watching your beloved Betty, your very best friend in the whole world, dying. There was nothing any of us could do for either of you. We had to just be there. On Thanksgiving Day, 1998, we had dinner at Kristen’s house. Those plans had been made a few weeks prior when Betty was still able to get around a little, with the hope that she would be strong enough to attend, even if she had to leave early she was only minutes from your home. She didn’t make it to dinner that day. She had begun to fail rapidly a week or so before, so we all had dinner without the two of you. Later in the afternoon, Pam and I brought dinner to you. When we arrived at your house, you were lying on the bed next to Betty, counting her breaths; you knew it wouldn’t be long. You came to the table to have a little bit to eat and talked with us for a few minutes, then went back to lie next to Betty, you didn’t want to be away from her for too long. You wanted to be there with her right up until the end. Later that evening Dan, Tiff and I were at home and Dan asked if we wanted to go do something, I said, “No, I think I need to be by the phone” and sure enough your call came about 7:30. Betty was gone. Your heart was broken and I ached for you. The three of us went over to the house and poor Tiff, she was only fourteen, her little heart was broken too. She had lost her Grammie whom she loved with all her heart. You gave her one of Grammie’s pretty hand mirrors and she cried herself to sleep on the couch, clenching the mirror. After Betty died, you came to my house for dinner every Tuesday and alternating Saturdays and Sundays. Every other Sunday we had dinner at Dan’s parents house so you would come that Saturday and the next weekend it would be Sunday. We did this without fail. Not once did you not come for three and a half years. I didn’t want you eating dinner alone every night, so it worked out well. I think you really enjoyed it because you were comfortable here. You and Dan had an excellent relationship. He knew how to handle you and you had tremendous respect for him. I enjoyed seeing that. I, for the most part, enjoyed having you here, but I must say that there were times when you made me feel so bad about myself that it was extremely difficult for me to get through those few hours.

My concerns about what would happen once Betty was gone all rang true, a thousand times worse than I had anticipated. Although I constantly had this inner battle raging within me where you were concerned, there was an unbreakable bond that tied me to you, through the good and the bad. I was the one who was always there for you. I was coming to your house every Tuesday afternoon to clean. I would vacuum, wash the floor, do laundry and clean the bathroom, whatever needed to be done. I didn’t mind doing this for you but at the same time, there were days I absolutely dreaded going over there. I never knew what I was in store for. One time I would walk in to find you in a good mood, talkative, even laughing. Other times, you were a completely miserable person who wouldn’t speak at all. Sometimes all you did was rip people apart, telling me how stupid this one was or that one doesn’t have a brain. Maybe I would say something that you thought was utterly stupid and would shake that head of yours again. Just like the good old days. I had become somewhat stronger over the previous fourteen years since Tiff had entered my life, but with Betty, my buffer, gone, I was now an open target once more. I knew it would not take long for you wear me down and fill me with selfdoubt again. I had never really dealt with the issue, I simply hid from it, only now I could no longer hide, I had to face you head on once again. It was terrifying. Every time you didn’t speak to me or you shook your head at me or you ripped someone apart, I plunged deeper and deeper back into that black hole of my teenage years. The only thing that saved me was the fact that I was now older and more capable of fighting you, but that was completely exhausting. I would have to pump myself up before seeing you. If you were happy, I just wasted all that energy for nothing, but if you were miserable, although it still hurt me, I was better able to ward you off. Either way, it took every ounce of my energy just to be in your presence. I never once let my guard down. You see daddy, I was still very much aware of the fact that you could still leave me. If I were ever to make that one mistake that you deemed intolerable, you wouldn’t want me anymore. You’d simply throw me away. Although it had softened a bit, between Tiff’s arrival and Betty’s ing, it remained somewhere deep in my soul and now it all came flooding back.

Betty must have been a saint to put up with you for all those years. I know you loved each other beyond words, but there is only so much one person can take. She was the one taking ninety percent of it, she listened while you ripped people apart, she watched you shake your head, she dealt with the silent treatment, all the while letting everything just roll of her back. She seemed unfazed by it all, which helped me tremendously, throughout the years. With Betty gone, I became the person you dumped all of your negative comments on and I watched you shake you head. Dan once asked me, “How do you know he means foolish, senseless or stupid when he shakes his head?” My reply was, “Because he often says the words as he shakes his head, after a while you just know.” Knowing that I had to be perfect in order for you to love me, and also knowing that achieving perfection was an impossible task, it left me feeling inadequate in all aspects of my life. I found myself once again trying to prove myself worthy of you, an exhausting chore daddy, truly exhausting. I found myself becoming completely self-critical, belittling myself constantly. “Why did I say that, that was stupid. I should just keep my mouth shut because I have nothing worth saying.” When I would laugh I would criticize myself in mid laugh “I have a stupid laugh, I shouldn’t laugh anymore.” I found myself changing my walk in mid stride, because I walked stupid. Every single thing I did, I criticized: the way I sat, the way I sneezed, the way I coughed, the way I smiled, and the way I looked. I was losing every ounce of self-confidence and self-esteem that I had been able to attain over the previous fourteen years. You see, daddy, I hadn’t really attained much at all, most of it was all a bluff, but I was able to get by on it until now when I was once again facing you head on. Over the years I have applied for jobs, on occasion, outside my company, sometimes getting the job and sometimes not. On those occasions when I did get hired for another job, I would find a reason why I shouldn’t accept the job and turn it down. Either the pay was the same or I would be getting less vacation time or it was too far to travel, there were several excuses that I could come up with to convince myself not to take the position. Bottom line, I knew that I could bluff my way through an interview, after all, I had become the master and an interview lasts only a few minutes. I guess it was enough of a ‘fix’ for me, like a drug almost, to simply hear the words, “You’re hired.” It’s a great confidence booster. I have been at my job for fourteen years and we are like family. Although I have my tough days on occasion, overall I feel safe there, like I

belong, like I’m accepted for who I am and that feeling is rare for me, therefore I treasure it. When I was in college, I had to take Algebra, an absolutely dreadful subject. Betty once told me that people usually understand either algebra or geometry, but not both. I don’t know whether or not that is true, but I at least grasped the concept of geometry. There is a purpose for angles, but I will never understand how to add letters and numbers; they just do not belong together. Anyway, my required course was college algebra but because I had never taken it in my life, it was recommended to me that I take algebra I, then algebra II and finally college. I decided to start algebra I in January of that year which led me to algebra II in May and finally college algebra began in September. By this time I was pretty wrung out. I didn’t get it and was barely squeaking by, with each week becoming more torturous than the last. On one particular night I walked into class to discover that we were going to be playing a game. We were instructed to move our desks into groups of four and we were then given a problem to be worked out as a group. I was devastated to say the least. As I sat in my group, barely saying a word, listening to my teammates work on each problem, the tears slowly began to fall. Our instructor glanced over at me and seeing my tears, called me up to her desk. She very discreetly said to me, “I did this for you. I thought working in a group, having people to discuss it with, would help you.” I said to her, and thankfully she was a very kind person, “When I sit in the back by myself, only I know how stupid I am, now everyone knows.” As I stood there sobbing uncontrollably, this poor, sweet woman who was only trying to help me, was speechless. I excused my self from the room, took a few minutes to regain my composure and returned to my seat in the back of the class where I suffered in silence for the remainder of the evening. I was completely humiliated. That’s what you did to me, daddy. You virtually crippled me emotionally. I had to fight tooth and nail, mentally, my entire life just to keep from drowning, always fighting the tide. I wasn’t getting ahead but simply maintaining this slight ability to function. I always had to pump myself up right before any type of social gathering, although over the years I had learned how to do this quite well, when it was over I was exhausted. It is truly exhausting work to do this day in and day out at work, at school, with family and friends or running into people I know in the market, virtually anywhere that I may have to converse with someone. It’s a horrible way to live, daddy. About three years ago, I found myself talking like Kelly once again. It had

stopped for a while throughout the years, when Tiff was growing up, I guess. Looking back now, I can see that I was feeling pretty strong on my own at that time, having no need to hide. On this particular day I was at work and there was a conversation going on around me. I must have been uncomfortable and feeling inadequate, that since Betty died all of my feelings of inferiority and inadequacy had come flooding back to me. Out it came, Kelly’s accent, Kelly’s laugh. I was truly horrified and thankful that no one seemed to notice. I instantly realized what I was doing, and ed why this was happening. I was able to stop it immediately and keep it under control. It still happens, on occasion, but it is extremely rare. Kelly and I spent so much time together as kids and well into our teens. She was the person I ired most, the person I always wanted to be just like. She was smart, popular, sociable, pretty, and full of self-confidence. She taught me how to swim in the lake at her house and how to ice skate when the lake froze. I suppose she was the logical choice, in an illogical scene, for me to hide behind.

In November 2001, you were in the hospital for three weeks and I was there everyday. I would stop by your house to pick up your mail, feed the birds, and whatever else needed to be done, then head to the hospital to get there before your dinner arrived. It was about this time that you began to lose blood. You came home on December 12th, I believe, and within two weeks you needed two more units of blood. It eventually reached a point where you were in need of more blood every six weeks, taking two units each time. Sometimes you were able to drive yourself to the hospital for your transfusion, while other times I would take you because you were too weak to drive. Over the course of the next year or so you had several tests done but the source of the blood loss was never determined. We tried to do everything we could to help out, like mowing your lawn when you were too weak, bringing in wood and home repairs, things like that. You were always an extremely independent man so I understand how difficult it was for you to ask for help. Most of the time we just went ahead and did things because we knew that you probably would not ask. But every now and then you did. Sometimes you were happy about what was done, while other times you were down right miserable. I understood that when someone doesn’t feel good, he might be a little cranky, but you went so far beyond cranky that I cannot even describe it. Again, I never knew what I would be walking into. I would walk on eggshells trying to do things perfectly so as not to see that shake of the head or even worse, make that one mistake that would cause you to throw me away. I lived my life to please you. Then it finally happened. The one thing I feared the most for thirty years of my life happened. You threw me away as though I meant nothing at all to you. You broke my heart, daddy. In June of 2002, Tiff graduated from high school. Oh, what a proud day it was. You, Ryan, Dan and I attended her graduation ceremony and then came back to our house for cake. We had her graduation party a couple of weeks later at your house because you had a big, beautiful yard. Sam brought over and set up a tent to keep us, and the food, out of the sun. It was a wonderful day, very hot, but everyone had a great time. We ate a lot,

played games with the kids and visited with each other. The day was a huge success. On Sunday, July7th, Tiff was off to college. Dan and I loaded up the truck and moved her into the dorm. She was to take a six- week summer program before beginning the fall semester as a freshman. On Monday, July 15, Dan and I went away for a few days. The following day Tiff called us at the motel to inform us that she had decided to come home. I asked her to please wait until we got home on Friday so that we could discuss it and to give herself a few more days to think about it, but kids are impulsive sometimes and she came home that night. A few of her friends drove up to the college, packed her up and drove her home. Dan and I came home on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning as we had since changed from Tuesday I went over to your house to clean as I normally did. You weren’t home when I arrived. You were out having your coffee and muffin uptown, but you arrived minutes after I got there. As I was walking up the steps to the kitchen door I noticed the birdfeeder from out back at the top of the landing. Just for a split second I thought, “Why is that here?” I went inside and began cleaning the house. You soon came in and started talking about who was at the coffee shop and telling me what was happening in town, general chit chat. I the conversation being pretty easy going that morning and I was grateful for that. When I asked you about the birdfeeder, if it was broken, you said, “No, I just took it down.” I then asked if you were going to put it back up again and all you said was, “ I don’t know.” I instinctively knew that something was not right. You loved those birds and you wouldn’t ‘just take it down’ without a good reason. When you and Betty married in 1975 and four more people moved into the house, you extended the back of the house eight feet. At that time you had sliding glass doors installed in the kitchen and for as long as I can , you would watch the birds at their feeder from the table as you ate or from the chair right next to the sliders as you read the paper. The birdfeeders and all the many different birds that flocked to them were a major part of growing up in our house. Now suddenly you just take it down, for no apparent reason? No, something was wrong, but I let it go for the time being.

Just as I was about to leave I decided I’d better tell you that Tiff had come home from college. I said to you, “I thought you should know that Tiff’s home.” Your reply to me was, “ I know, I talked to her on Tuesday” and then you shook your head in disgust and simply said, “Stupid.” Daddy, it was as though a bomb exploded inside my head. All I could think of at that moment was that my entire life I had seen you shake your head in disgust, knowing what it meant, foolish, senseless or stupid. It was so very painful for me to endure all of those years and there you were, aiming it at my daughter. I was furious with you. How dare you! I said to you, in a reasonably calm voice, “She’s not stupid. Not everyone is stupid you know.” I had to get out of there, being unable to even look at you. I simply said, “I have to go grocery shopping, I’ll see you in the morning at breakfast” and I left. Various of the family had been meeting for breakfast every Sunday for three or four years. Whoever could make it, did. Sometimes there was quite a crowd while some weeks, just a few. I never missed a Sunday, unless you knew in advance that Dan and I were going away. Do you know why I never missed a Sunday, daddy? Because one day you told me that no one showed up, you ate breakfast alone. I know for a fact this bothered me a whole lot more than it did you. You knew so many people in town, someone probably sat with you but the only thing I focused on was that you were sitting alone at this big table waiting to see who showed up, and no one did. I would never allow that to happen again. Your feelings were always foremost in my mind. I never wanted your feelings to be hurt even though you hurt mine all the time. I never wanted you to be alone. I loved you so damn much. When I arrived a Lowell’s for breakfast the following morning, you were there alone waiting for everyone. I sat down next to you and you started chatting away. As I’ve stated before, sometimes you would be talkative with me and other times you would barely say a word to me. I never knew which one of you to expect. This was good, you were talking to me. I was still a little sore about the previous day but nothing I couldn’t get past. I figured I had spoken my mind, letting you know I was not pleased with your comment regarding Tiff’s decision to come home and I would let it go at that. I guess my thinking was, ‘you are who you are and I’m never going to change you’, but that didn’t entitle you to get away with everything. I knew you weren’t mad at me because you were speaking to me. The others, I don’t exactly who had breakfast that particular morning,

arrived and the usual conversations began. It was business as usual, or so I thought. When breakfast was through, I walked to your car with you as I always did and as you were getting in I said, “I’m making dinner, if you want to come.” It was a standard thing, even though you had dinner at my house every Tuesday and alternating Saturdays and Sundays, I always asked you beforehand. I’m not quite sure why I still asked every week, maybe I didn’t want to be presumptuous but I think even more than that, I didn’t want you to ever feel that you were being presumptuous. I wanted it to be clear to you that we wanted you to be here with us. Your reply to me was always the same, without fail. “Well, that sounds all right.” You never once inquired as to what we were having for dinner, although I usually prepared the meal with you in mind. “Dad likes this, dad can eat that.” On this particular Sunday, for the first time in nearly four years, your reply was different. All you said to me was, “I have to see if I can get some grass cut this afternoon.” I knew at that very moment, for the first time since Betty had died, you would not be at my house for dinner that day. I got into my car and drove home, not mentioning a word to Dan about what had happened at your house the previous morning or your response to me after breakfast, I simply went about my day. I made dinner as usual, glancing at the clock occasionally, wondering if maybe I was wrong and you would show for dinner after all, but I really knew you wouldn’t. I hadn’t yet figured out what was going on, but I had this feeling stirring deep inside of me that it was somehow tied in with the birdfeeder left outside the kitchen door the day before. Shortly before dinner Dan said, “Your dad’s not here yet” and I said to him, “I knew he wouldn’t be”, and proceeded to fill him in on what had been happening. On Monday afternoon I called you to invite you to dinner on Tuesday, again this was my weekly ritual, with your answer always being the same, “Well, that sounds all right.” You were extremely chatty with me for about ten minutes but when I invited you to dinner you told me you had a doctors appointment in the city and you were going to stop in to see Kevin and Diana while you were out there. Now, the only time you did not come to my house for dinner was if you were in the hospital and therefore couldn’t come. But having an appointment and stopping in to see Kevin and Diana did not seem odd to me at all. I figured that you would probably take them out to dinner and that was great. On Wednesday, something nagged at me all day long while I was at work,

something just wasn’t right. I called Kevin at noon ‘just to say hello’, but what I really wanted was to know whether or not you had had dinner with them the day before. I didn’t ask him about it though; instead I waited for him to mention it, which he did. He told me that you had stopped in after your appointment and you had left to head home about 3:30 because you wanted to beat a rainstorm home that was heading our way. Right then I knew. Everything suddenly clicked into place, and I have to tell you, I was having trouble grasping what was playing out in my mind. I suddenly knew exactly what was going on and it was incredible, daddy, even for you. You weren’t angry with me, which is what I initially thought, because of what I said to you on Saturday. You were very talkative with me on Sunday morning and again on the telephone on Monday afternoon. If you were mad at me, you wouldn’t speak to me, how well I knew this. No, daddy, it wasn’t me you were mad at after all. It was Tiff. You were so angry with her for coming home from college that you were avoiding her by not coming to my house. Your wrath had now dribbled its way down to my daughter and I couldn’t have that. I simply could not allow you to get away with treating her that way. She had a right to make her own decisions and you had no right to give her your silent treatment, it was none of your business, and she didn’t deserve it either. After work on Wednesday I went to your house and I asked you straight out, “Are you so angry with Tiff that you won’t come to my house?” You said, “Yes.” I spent a great deal of time there trying to reason with you, explaining to you that she wasn’t giving up on college altogether, she simply didn’t want to go to that particular college. You wanted nothing to do with what I was saying. You got very angry with me, saying that she was your last hope. There was no getting through to you, daddy, you simply wouldn’t understand. Finally you clammed up on me and just sat there, ignoring me, like I wasn’t even in the room. I was absolutely livid with you. I stood up and said to you, “We all have choices to make and now you have a choice to make. The next time you can come to my house and speak to your granddaughter, is the next time you will speak to me.” I walked out. I got into my car, sobbing, the tears streaming down my face, and headed for Betty’s grave. I had to pull over halfway there, unable to see through my tears. I was completely devastated. When I arrived at the cemetery, I just sat on her grave and cried. Finally I called Dan from the cemetery to tell him what had happened. He was planning to stop by to visit you on his way home, so I told him that he might want to wait on that. I was so upset, daddy, I simply could not

believe this was happening. I couldn’t leave things the way they were, so I went back to your house that evening. You weren’t home so I drove around looking for you for a while. Unable to find you, I decided to leave you a note but just as I was about to write it, you pulled into the driveway. As I heard you come up the steps, I opened the door for you and said, “Hello.” You wouldn’t even look at me; you simply walked past me and stood at the kitchen sink washing out your utensils. I said to you, “I didn’t want to leave things the way they were.” You said, “It wouldn’t bother me if you did.” I then said to you, “You mean to tell me that it wouldn’t bother you if you and I never saw each other again?” Completely void of emotion, all you said to me was, “No, it wouldn’t.” I just stood there stunned. You walked away, sat in the chair and picked up a book. Conversation over. I just walked out of the house not knowing what else to do. I knew I wouldn’t get one more word out of you, so it was pointless to stand there any longer. I was completely shattered at this point. It had finally happened. After living with the fear that if I ever made just that one mistake that you deemed intolerable, you would simply throw me away, not want me anymore. I had just made that one mistake. You know, daddy, the funny thing was, it actually had nothing to do with me at all, and it was Tiff you were angry with. I made the mistake, in your eyes anyway, of standing up for my daughter, which I would do all over again if I had to. Still unwilling to let things go, I went back to your house the next day. Once again I tried to help you understand that it had nothing to do with you at all. It was a choice she made. You would barely speak to me, so I left. On Friday afternoon I tried one more time. I entered the house and in an attempt to lighten the mood a bit said, “I’m back, just like a bad penny.” All I got out of you was, “Oh?” You were sitting in your recliner watching television. I pulled up the rocking chair next to you and said, “I want to talk. Will you please talk to me?” You had already begun to shut me out so I didn’t have too much hope, but I had to try. After getting nowhere again, all you did was stare at the television, never once looking at me, I finally said, “Daddy, you said that she was your last hope. What about me? I have a degree, you went to my graduation.” Without even looking at me all you said was, “You got it after a while.” You were part of the reason that I went to college, so you could see one of your kids graduate and it meant nothing to you because I didn’t do it until I was thirty-nine years old. Well, daddy, it meant a lot to me. It took every ounce of courage I had to do that

and I worked very hard to earn good grades and earn that degree. Once again you completely belittled me by saying that it meant nothing to you. Well I am extremely proud of my accomplishment, even if you weren’t. There was absolutely no getting through to you, so finally I tried to appeal to any amount of sensitivity you might have had by asking you point blank, “Do you love me?” No answer. You just kept staring at the television. I said, “Daddy, this is not a difficult question. Do you love me, yes or no?” Without ever moving your eyes from the television, you simply lifted your hands slightly and said, “Probably.” Wow. You broke my heart all over again. Daddy, I want to try to make you understand just what it was like for me all those years, living in fear of you throwing me away. I spent thirty years of my life hanging off of an emotional cliff, looking up into your eyes, pleading with you to never let me go, as you grasped my hand, as I dangled off the cliff. You held all the cards; you had all the power. I was begging you, “I’ll be good daddy, I promise, just don’t ever let me fall.” But you did. When I hit the rocks below, I shattered into a million pieces. You know something, daddy, I am strong. I am so much stronger than you could ever imagine. Even though you tried over the years to steal my strength to build up your own and that’s what it was about all of those years, keeping me weak so you could be strong, it seems as though I had enough strength for both of us because I picked myself up off of those rocks and slowly put myself back together. My heart will never mend completely, but I am standing once again and I still have forgiveness in my broken heart because, unlike you, I am a forgiving person. I had the strength to recognize that it wasn’t your fault for being the way you were. I came to understand that between the two of us, you were the weaker one after all. I had the strength to stand and face my emotions; you never did. It’s kind of funny if you think about it. In a way, I guess you hid behind me. I would never ever throw my child away as you had just done. You showed me on that day that your own life was more important to you than that of your child’s. And yet I loved you as much as ever. The next day, Saturday, I went back to your house to clean, telling Dan that even though this had happened between us, I didn’t want you living in a dirty house and there was no way you could have cleaned it yourself. When I got there you weren’t home and I must say I was very happy about that. I wanted your house clean but I didn’t necessarily want to see you yet. I was still pretty upset with you. I hurried to clean the house as fast as I could so I could get out of there

before you got home. On the second Saturday after this incident, again you weren’t there when I got there and at that point I realized you were gone deliberately so you wouldn’t have to see me. I didn’t rush this time though, not caring if you came home while I was there or not. You did not, and this went on for another four weeks. You would deliberately stay away long enough for me to finish and leave. You knew that I had been coming all along because you could see that the house had been cleaned. You just refused to see me. Finally on Saturday of the seventh week, you came home shortly after I had arrived and began talking to me almost as though nothing had happened, not quite, the conversation was strained, but at least you were speaking to me and that was a start. But that was how you always handled things. When you were through being angry, that was that. No discussion, no apologies, just business as usual. Things weren’t quite the same, though. I did take notice that if people stopped by to visit you while I was there, your conversation with them was much freer, much easier. There was still a big strain between us, but I worked hard to try to bring you back. I needed for you to know deep in your heart that I would always love you, no matter what ever happened between us. I needed for you to know that just because you made me angry, it didn’t mean that I would ever take my love away from you. I would never throw you away. Daddy, I had to believe that somewhere along the way, probably when you were a young boy, someone did this to you. Someone instilled in you the fear that if you were bad, you wouldn’t be loved anymore. That was what you knew, so that was what you knew to on down to me. I needed to show you that this isn’t how love works. Someone did you very wrong and it scarred you just like you scarred me. I wanted to help heal you by giving you my unconditional love and in spite of everything. For quite a while, Dan was so angry with you for hurting me the way you did, he couldn’t visit you. I finally convinced him that it wasn’t your fault and that you needed to know he still loved you. One day he went over to see you, and, with time, he forgave you too. I was happy to see that, as he had always enjoyed your company. Eventually I asked you to come for dinner but all you said was, “I stick pretty close to home. I don’t go too far.” We both continued to ask, Dan and I, but your reply was always the same. You never stepped foot in my house again.

I finally did figure out the mystery of the birdfeeder. That was your way of telling me, “I don’t need you.” At that point I had been filling the feeder for you because the cellar stairs were getting difficult for you to maneuver. By taking it down, you no longer needed me to fill it. It was the same reason you never came to my house again, or anyone else’s for that matter. You wouldn’t go to Kristen’s for birthday parties or Sean’s for a cookout. If you came to my house for dinner, it would be itting that you needed us; you needed us in your life. There was something in you that simply would not allow you to it that to anyone of us, and you weren’t a strong enough person to overcome it. You see, daddy, I had to figure you out every step of the way. Maybe I didn’t always understand right away, but I always figured it out in the end. There is a song “The Greatest Man I Never Knew” recorded by Reba McEntire. Daddy, it’s as though they crawled inside my head and when they crawled back out, wrote this song. It’s the story of us. I have listened to this song periodically over the years and I think that just having it in the back of my mind somehow helped me understand you. I had learned over the years that it was the only way for me to survive you, to always know why you were behaving the way you were. I think it kept me from hating you. Gradually, over a period of months, our relationship improved somewhat. I never gave up daddy; I worked diligently to bring you back to us. Although you never did come to my house again, we would stop over to see you on a somewhat regular basis, I continued to clean your house weekly and I phoned you often just to keep in touch and to make sure you were all right. After all, you were living alone. Dan would stop by to say “Hello” and to see if anything needed to be done around the house. Kristen, Matt and the kids, Kyle and Sarah, Sean and Pam, and Kevin and Diana would all stop by periodically. They were all aware of what had happened between us and as you were no longer going to breakfast on Sunday mornings either, they kept in touch by visiting on occasion. Life seemed pretty much back to normal, except it was a little one sided. We would visit you, but you would never visit any of us. Just about everyone went to see you except for Tiff. Daddy, I think you hurt her so badly she just couldn’t bring herself to see you. I’m quite certain she felt betrayed by you. I didn’t want to tell her about it right away because I knew she would be hurt, but I had to. She would have wondered why you weren’t coming over anymore. Maybe her staying away from you was a bit of your own stubbornness coming back to bite you in the butt. Maybe she didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of crawling to you for forgiveness when she had done nothing that needed to be forgiven. Occasionally I would put a bug in her ear that maybe she should go see you, but

I never pushed the issue and she never went. You hurt your granddaughter very badly. By mid fall, you were back in full swing, sometimes pleasant with me and other times so miserable I couldn’t stand to be around you. I suppose that means I was somewhat of a success. You weren’t afraid to be miserable to me; you must have been secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t going anywhere no matter how badly you behaved. I one particular Saturday in November 2002. I was on my way home from cleaning your house and you had been downright hateful to me. I looked up to heaven and said, “Grammie, come get him. He doesn’t want to be here anymore, he misses you too much and I’ve had enough. I’m tired if fighting the fight.” Shortly after that day you called me from the garage up the street. Your car had broken down and you wanted a ride home. It was the first time you had called my house since July and I was so happy. It was the first sign that you were giving in a little bit. I very well that Tiff happened to answer the phone when you called. When you heard her voice you said, “Hi Punk” just like you always used to, just like nothing had ever happened. She responded in kind saying, “Hi” and asking how you were. Tiff is also a very forgiving person, just unwilling to crawl. She never did go visit you at your house. I left immediately, picked you up and brought you home. On one of my impromptu visits, sometime in January 2003 I think, I arrived at about 5:00 to find you curled up on your bed, looking pale and weak, waiting for a call from Dr. B’s office, you were in need of more blood and they were going to call to tell you when to go to the hospital. You knew you would have to go that evening to have your blood cross checked and would have the transfusions the following day. I left only after making you promise to let me drive you to the hospital that evening. I told you that you were much too weak to drive yourself. Five minutes after I arrived back home, you phoned. You needed to be there in half an hour. Again, I left immediately to bring you and once again, I was pleased that you had called me. Things between us improved quite a bit after that. You needed more blood in mid February, and I took you. You were getting weaker and weaker and in need of blood more often now. The transfusions you were getting were no longer lasting five or six weeks, more like three. I took you again in the beginning of March and then on March 29, I received a called saying you were being taken by ambulance for more blood. That was the beginning of the end for us daddy; we just didn’t know it yet.

Daddy, although I was aware throughout my life that I hungered for your praise, I never really knew just how starved for it I was until the day before you died. I was in your room at the rehab before anyone else had arrived. You and I were alone for a little while, when you looked at me and said something. You were so weak your voice was but a whisper and you couldn’t even move your lips. Your words were muffled but I heard you say, “I can’t thank you enough.” My heart was racing, daddy. As hard as it was for me to watch you dying, for just a split second my mind was soaring. In that one small sentence you said so much to me. In your own way, you were finally saying the words: you were proud of me, I had made good decisions, made good choices. The words that I had longed to hear for thirty years, there they were, right in front of me. I don’t think you could ever truly understand the clash of emotions I was feeling at that moment. There I was watching you die, full of sadness and pain because I loved you so much daddy, with all my heart and soul, and yet I was also filled with complete elation and satisfaction because at last, you were proud of me. After a lifelong effort, I had finally succeeded. My father was proud of me. I was completely overwhelmed. As all of these thoughts were swirling around in my mind I looked at you and said, “You can’t thank me enough?” You scowled ever so slightly, but I saw it and you shook your head. I could see the disgust on your face and my heart began to sink. I put my ear to your lips only to hear you say in your muffled voice, “I can’t explain where it hurts.” I was mortified daddy. There you were telling me you were in pain, and I was hearing that you were proud of me. I was that hungry for it. As pathetic as I felt at that very moment, at the same time I thought, “You couldn’t even give me a crumb, a lousy little crumb that you would brush to the floor. You just couldn’t say, “I love you, you did good?” That’s all I ever needed to hear from you, but you couldn’t even give me that. I was living in a nightmare that would not end. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing. You were on your damn deathbed shaking your head at me one last time for old times sake. I realize this may sound heartless, but you know me better than that. I am far from heartless, but if you had the presence of mind to shake your head in disgust at me, you also had the presence of mind to tell me that you were proud of me. You simply could not do it.

Someone must have hurt you so badly that you could no longer wear your heart on your sleeve. You guarded your feelings at all cost. That is why when I asked you if you loved me, all you could say was “Probably.” You couldn’t say the words, “Yes, I love you” because it would have left you feeling vulnerable, too exposed, open to an attack. I know daddy I struggle with the same fears everyday of my life. You ed that on to me. I guard my feelings fiercely, but I work very hard every single day to try to change that, to try to let people in a little. That is also why you could not allow yourself to come to my house ever again because it would have meant letting your guard down, leaving you feeling vulnerable. It would have been itting you needed us. Daddy, the fact that you called me for a ride home from the garage, that you let me take you to the hospital for blood and called me at work one day to come help you off the floor when you fell, that you knew without a doubt I would be at the hospital every single day at dinnertime, all of these things tell me I succeeded in showing you that whoever taught you that love was conditional was wrong. I loved you unconditionally and was by your side no matter what happened. You couldn’t push me away, daddy. You died knowing what pure, unconditional love feels like and just maybe it gave you some peace. I will never know that for sure, but I like to think so. I am so much like you. Deep down I am a loner because as long as I am alone, no one can hurt me. Even when I am with people, in a sense I am alone, because I never truly feel as though I fit in. I feel like I’m different from other people. I always have. It is something I have accepted over the years and try to live with. I don’t really want to be alone so I work hard at being open to others, not so closed up, afraid of being hurt. It’s really hard, daddy, because that’s all I know. A few weeks after you ed away we made the decision to sell the house. We spent the next couple of months cleaning out the house and preparing to put it on the market. During that time I was still on automatic pilot, not really experiencing much emotion. Once the house went up for sale in mid September and things began to settle down a bit, my emotions began running rampant, but they were thoughts and feelings that were unexpected to me. I hadn’t yet grieved for you but I also understood that sometimes it takes a while for grief to begin. When the grief finally hit me, I realized that I was not grieving for you, but for me. I suddenly became fearful of waking up one day to discover that I was seventy years old and realizing I had done nothing of which I was put on this earth to do. There is this emptiness inside of me; a thirty- year block of my life is

missing. I am only forty-four years old but I feel as though my life is rushing past me now. I need to fill my life with something positive before it is too late. I realized that I was grieving the life I had lost; my own. Daddy, it truly saddens me to say this and I hope you can find a way to understand, but I don’t miss you and I’m not sad that you are gone. I miss the daddy you were thirty years ago, the one who thought I was his little princess. I miss that man desperately. Feeling this way breaks my heart but the fight is over for me. I no longer have to work so hard to please you, to earn your love, your respect or your pride. As long as you were alive there was always a glimmer of hope that one day I would hear those words I hungered for, but now that you are gone I know with certainty, I never will. Although there is a sadness that comes with this finality, there is also a great sense of peace. I no longer have to fight the fight. The game is over now, and maybe it was a draw; we both won and we both lost. You won in the sense that by keeping me down all those years you were able to remain strong, but you lost out on a very loving relationship with your daughter, the one person who loved you most of all. I lost because I lost an entire lifetime, a lifetime that should have been filled with proms and graduations, college experiences and a career in Psychology. A lifetime filled with self-confidence and self-esteem, a lifetime filled with choices that would make a father proud. That is what I grieve, daddy, the life that I lost, the life that you stole from me. I won the game in a sense, because even though you stole my life, my sense of self worth and my strength from me, I was still strong enough to sustain it all and maintain a certain level of sanity. So daddy, here I sit, inside my cage with the door wide open. For a long time, although I was fascinated by the open door, I was too paralyzed by fear to go near it. Over the past year I have sifted though many of my fears and doubts and have since moved closer to the open door, just looking out breathing in the air of freedom. I don’t know how to go any further, daddy. You never taught me how to fly. Now at forty-four, I have to teach myself how to fly. The only way for me to do that is to take a giant leap and pray that my wings work. Although I am too scared to do that just yet I will continue to work on it. I will never give up. There is still much work to do. I have no choice but to try to reign in the demons that ravage my body and contain them. I don’t think that I will ever be completely free of them. They are a part of me, a part of who I am, but I can keep them under control and maybe learn to live peaceably with them and eventually,

daddy, I will learn to fly. I promise you I will. All of this fear and doubt sits inside of my body like a disease that I have been unable, thus far, to find a cure for. Daddy, I think I now know what to do, and again, please understand. I need to flush this disease out of my body in order to finally feel free and the only way I know to do this is to speak to parents, parents to be, anyone who will listen, tell them what happened, in the hope that they may learn what ‘not’ to do to their children. I want to get the message out: “Say the words.” Children need to hear the words, “I love you”, “I’m proud of you”, “You did a good job”, “You made a good decision.” Sometimes it’s not even a word, rather a look or a gesture. The point is the list of ways to encourage your child is endless. Daddy, please know how very much I loved you and how proud I am to tell anyone who will listen that you were my father. I am no longer angry and resentful, nor do I blame you for what happened. You did only what you knew to do and now I know what I have to do. I have to learn to fly. I love you, daddy…

*****

Dear Reader: Children need to be encouraged. They need praise and they need to know that their parents will always love them no matter what. Love your children. Be aware of the words and actions you are directing toward them. Children need discipline but they also need guidance and direction. They need to be taught right from wrong, but a parent’s love should never be used as a form of punishment. A parent’s love should be the foundation of a child’s life, a constant that will never go away. When a parent takes away love, or even threatens to, it is the ultimate betrayal to a child. A parent not only has a responsibility to feed, clothe, shelter and educate a child, but also to nourish that child emotionally as well. Emotional nourishment is an important part of the package that might not be getting the attention it deserves today. Life is busy, moving at warp speed for many families today. Therefore, words like, “You did a great job on your test today, I’m proud of you” or maybe

it’s the other way around, “You didn’t do so well on your test today, but that’s alright, if you keep studying you’ll do better next time”, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. A few encouraging words scattered throughout a child’s day might be all it takes to raise a child’s level of self-confidence and self-esteem. Isn’t that what it’s all about when you have a child, doing the very best you can, in every possible way, for your child? I genuinely believe every person who enters parenthood does so with the best of intentions. It all begins when you hear the words, “You’re having a baby” and you instantly fall in love. You begin to eat better, you try to stop any bad habits that may affect your baby’s health, you start buying cute little outfits and thinking of names. You rub the tummy and speak words of love and begin to make plans for your child’s future. I am quite certain that nowhere in those plans did you decide that you wanted your child to have zero self-confidence and self-esteem or that you wanted your child to be dependent on you for life or that you were going to damage your child’s psyche. All parents want the best for their children. So then why does it sometimes go so horribly wrong? We all carry around emotional baggage from our past, because after all, our past is who we are today. What’s important to though, is that we must never inflict that baggage onto our children. In this particular situation, I believe that is exactly what happened to me. I paid for the mistakes of my grandfather just as my father probably paid for the mistakes of his grandfather. Although I didn’t know my grandfather well, one thing I do know is that he was rather cold to my father as a young boy and into his teens, I’m not sure, but I don’t think my father felt a lot of love and affection from him. My father had this pain of some kind hidden so deep inside of him, and he must have felt as though I had betrayed him when I stole something on that night when I was thirteen, something inside him snapped and all he knew to do was to push me away. I am happy to say that the cycle ends with me. My daughter was not punished for her grandfather’s mistakes because I was able to recognize that there was a problem and I worked extremely hard to make the necessary changes. All I am trying to convey to you is please love your children, praise your children and encourage your children to grow up to be strong, independent, happy, successful and productive adults. Teach your children right from wrong, discipline when need be but in a rational way, not by taking away your love, and teach your children to be kind to others and to have forgiveness in their hearts. There are no guarantees in life and each individual child has a personality of his

or her own. They will each grow up to be unique, some happy and easy going while others may be defiant and rebellious, but you do the best you can in giving your child the very best possible start in life. That’s all you can do. The rest is up to them. There is one more thing, make absolutely certain that your child knows without a doubt that whatever happens in life, your love for your child is without question, unconditional and everlasting.

About the Author

I have many happy memories of my childhood. Dad and I had a unique and amazing bond that on some level sustained us for a lifetime, even through the darkness that became my life. Although he was the cause of my darkness and detached himself from me emotionally, he remained a figure who was larger than life to me. He wanted to love me; I am certain of it. He simply did not know how to fix what was broken inside of him. My journey has cost me a lifetime thus far, but now that I have crossed through the darkness and into the light, I want to share this experience with as many people that I possibly can. I hope to remind parents just how critical it is for our children to know that we love them unconditionally even when they make mistakes. I hope to remind parents to ‘say the words’ and to have forgiveness in their hearts. If I can succeed in doing this, then my journey was worth the ride. Every child should learn to spread his or her wings and fly.