Dear readers,
With Father’s Day approaching, I decided to write a very different type of column. My hope is that someone may see themselves in my dad’s story, decide to make different choices, and hopefully have many more Father’s Days with their children. My dad would have liked that.
Dear Dad,
This is the letter I wish I could have handed to you at age 20, for this was the turning point in your life that would put you on a very different path than you envisioned for yourself as a happy, high-achieving young man.
When tragedy strikes before your 21st birthday, I would hug you and tell you that a bright future was still possible. You must cry, be angry, mourn the loss, then slowly pick up the pieces and move forward, even if it’s at a crawl.
For this is the time when you got stuck and never recovered. This is the moment when your grief, guilt and anger became too much and you looked to numb the overwhelming pain. You move forward in life but your exposed wounds cripple your ability to trust, love and have faith.
You graduate from college and begin a career in insurance sales. You are quickly promoted and continue to find financial success until the business takes a downturn, and you are fired. This painful wound joins the others and you are further bogged down in your despair.
Alcohol becomes your best friend, although you hide it well. You marry a school teacher and settle down in San Francisco. Though there are some happy times, your wife is haunted by the memory of you breaking a coffee table in a fit of rage over something most would shake off with a shrug.
Your first child is born and you give him your name as he is the fourth generation to carry the family identity forward. You take such pride in having a son as your relationship with own your dad was cut short when he was lost in that terrible car accident just before your 21st birthday that nearly took your life as well.
You buy a home in the East Bay and soon welcome a daughter into the family. Nothing means more to you than your family, yet your dependence on alcohol deepens as financial responsibilities weigh heavy and old wounds stab you daily in the heart.
Soon you make a nightly run to the liquor store and place your numbing agent in a garage refrigerator. Two beers later and you become a violent, emotionally abusive husband and father. Your family refers to you as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as your morning personality is in stark contrast to your angry, belligerent evening self.
Your career stalls out as you have no ability to cooperate with others, particularly those in authority. Stress mounts and nightly verbal and physical assaults become commonplace. Your children fear, hate and love you all at the same time. Your wife begins a new career so she may find a way out of a hellish marriage before you make good on one of your threats to harm her.
A final fit of drunken rage finds you pushing your wife through a glass door. Miraculously, she is unharmed, but your family is permanently destroyed.
The home you took so much pride in is sold in the divorce and you live alone in a tiny, dark apartment near your office in San Francisco where you barely function as an isolated, mid-level employee. You have a small bed, a cook top and refrigerator to keep your best friend, Rainer Ale, chilled. Your children visit as infrequently as possible when they are home from college.
You retire to the Sierras where you continue to abuse alcohol while feeding the birds and squirrels on your daily walks down to the pond. Your children visit once a year at best, you have few friends, and your life becomes smaller and smaller.
Basic tasks become out of reach as your mind is now pickled from decades of alcoholism. You no longer pay the bills, eat properly or bathe. You refuse help from your children because you are terrified of facing the truth that your once brilliant mind is failing you.
Your final years are spent in a memory care facility having lost the ability to remember any detail more than one second old. You recall some of your past as you recognize your son and daughter, but can’t remember where your bedroom is or the name of the caregiver feeding you lunch. Your days are spent taking notes on a notepad and napping, slumped over on the living room couch.
Your physical health declines with your mental condition and you die alone in July, 2010 at the age of 80.
So Dad, if I could have told you this was your destiny when you first turned to alcohol to ease your pain in your early 20s, would your life turned out as you dreamed when you were voted most likely to succeed in high school? As captain of the football and boxing teams, would you believe this could be your fate?
I will not have a dad this Father’s Day. The truth is I lost you long ago. If only you had the strength to stop drinking one of the many times I begged you through tears to stop. If only.
