A Father’s Journey as Humbly Told by a Girl Child

I spent the early part of my years as every daughter should – being a complete Daddy’s girl.  As a child, my dad represented strength, stability.  I remember when we moved into a new condominium complex on Redlands Blvd and California Street.  My mom was working night shift and had our family car, so Daddy walked with us in the darkest of nights to the McDonald’s on Alabama St. (about a good mile or so) to get some Filet o’ Fish sandwiches.  This was before a Walmart shopping center, a post office, or before a multitude of business that have since sprung up there.  It was all quiet, spooky orange groves, and I remember my fear being significantly less knowing we were walking with my strong daddy.  Daddy was the one who would call me cherry because, through an allergic episode that apparently was quite bad and scared him half to death, my family found out I was allergic to strawberries.  He called me cherry because he didn’t want me to feel bad that I could no longer eat strawberries and wanted me to know that there were other great little red fruits.  Daddy was the one that helped us learn how to swim by using him as a dolphin and swimming on his back.  Daddy was the one who taught us our little mantra we had to say whenever a beer commercial or a love scene came on the television (only as passionate as 1980s censors would allow).  “Girls, what are the good things. . .”  Daddy was the one who freaked out so much when I got lost at Disneyland that he made us go home only after being there a couple of hours (sorry, Sissy).  Daddy was the one who could pick me up and carry me when I was tired.  Daddy was the one I ran to on the day my mom donated my crib to the Salvation Army, crying, “Daddy, the Army took my crib.”  Daddy was a rock.

Later on in life, a year before he died, I found myself going through a difficult divorce process.  My solace whenever the loneliness would hit hard would be to pack up my infant daughter and drive just a few miles away to their nursing home.  Typically in the later parts of my life, my mom had been the one I had turned to in crisis and the person I would seek solace in, but in going through the heartbreak of seeing all that I had hoped would be completely dissolve away, it was my dad that would ask me the probing questions.  He seemed determined to get to the route of what was going on.  I remember going into their room to tell them that I had to separate from my then husband.  My dad immediately went into problem solving mode.  “What happened?  What’s going on?  Let me try to call him and see if I can talk to him and figure it out”.  I looked at my bed and wheelchair bound dad and, given the circumstances, knew that the attempts would be futile.  But every time I saw him, it was the same concern, the questions.  Every time I would tell him the same story over and over again, update him on the complexity of it all, tell him what I was trying to do but that the situation was beyond just me.  One day, I was completely raw with it all:  I was tired of having my court dates pushed back because I would be the only one present.  I was tired of having to fill out form after form and having to sit in the long lines for the free assistance in the courthouse because retaining a lawyer proved to be too expensive.  I was tired from working 12 hour shifts and then having to come home and be the sole support of an infant, waking up in the middle of the night to get her back to sleep knowing I had a 12 hr shift I had to go to in just a few hours.  I roared at my dad, “If you ask me one more time what’s going on, I am packing up my daughter and leaving.  I have already told you! This is already hard enough.” He eased back in his chair.  He said quietly, almost beyond my hearing, “Your mom could have left me.”  I calmed and looked him squarely in the eye.  “Yes.  She could have,” I said matter-of-factly.

At the heart of it, that brief exchange of words summarized the time in between being a Daddy’s girl and then finding myself getting advice from my dad as a soon to be divorcee.  Life was full of challenges, and our family had our fair share.  Growing up from childhood, I also started observing a bit more, at least on a superficial level.  For me, it was easy to see the tangible efforts of my mom’s contributions to the family: the multiple 12-hr shifts she worked and the volunteer work she would do on top of that with our church and school activities.  My dad, though always present, became more withdrawn.  Though extremely educated, qualified, and intelligent, there was a test, the California Bar of Law Examiners, that stood in between him and what he had planned on accomplishing in the profession of law.  The test became a more symbolic barrier, though.  It served as a blockade to him getting to the next step in life, to the ideals of all the great and lofty things he had dreamed about accomplishing.  My dad was one of the smartest individuals I have ever known in life, so the fact that he could not get past this step was always a mystery to me, though my uncles have since offered me their thoughts on the matter.  But for whatever reason, the test was not passed, and my dad seemed stuck.  Instead of saving the world and doing good for his community in the way he hoped, he was at home with the primary purpose of being a caretaker for two rambunctious daughters. At the time, I never understood why he had us watch the movie Mr. Mom with Michael Keaton so many times with him or why he had an affinity for the TV sitcom, Who’s the Boss.  It finally registered as I aged:  these were strong men in a situation similar to his own.  It was relatable for him, and it was normalizing.

But as I entered into my teen years, I could not discern this.  I could not detect the feeling of lost in my father, couldn’t see the disillusionment of his life not being all that he had hoped life would be.  All I saw was a challenging life and my dad’s seeming inaction making it more challenging.  My strong dad was not coming through with the strength I thought he had.  By high school, I was frustrated and irritated with him and could not understand why my mom stayed.  I will never forget, upon graduation, we were asked to write a note to our parents.  With my mom, my penned flowed with tales of sacrifice, of being there and of being present.  With my dad, though lovely words on paper, they were more perfunctory. . .thank you for imparting your wisdom and for the gift of your intelligence.  I will never forget my dad’s face after reading it, especially given that he read it after my mom read hers.  For all of my carefully chosen, beautiful words, he saw right through it.  “So that’s all, huh?”  he said.  It was a look of absolute hurt that has stayed with me to this day.  Life continued to move forward.  My dad was diagnosed with CHF in 1998 enabling me to curtail some of my acquired frustration, seeing my father’s fragility.  However, there was a part of my dad that I still could not understand.

Flash back forward to me sitting in a nursing home across from a father that I had the hardest of times trying to understand as I grew, and in that moment of spoken clarity, it was like a veil dropped.  We could finally see and understand each other a little better.  A switch clicked, transforming my dad back into the dad I knew as a young girl.  Whenever we would come by, he would dote on my daughter, being everything a young granddaughter should have in a grandpa: someone who looked at her like she was a diamond.  We would have conversations about the most random things and then we would have conversations on some of the deeper things.  I remember once lamenting to him about how it seemed like I was going to be doing this parenting thing chiefly by myself.   He told me, “He (my ex-husband) knows you are strong and are capable of doing this.”  It was a turned-about compliment, but it was the first time in my life that my father had acknowledged me as being strong.  I didn’t think my father had been paying much attention to our comings and goings, but he had been.  Don’t get me wrong, my father would still vex me greatly, and I would tell him as much accordingly.  But it hit different.  It was like I could see the motivations of his vexing behavior.

Just when I was slowly learning to work through the heavy hurt of that year, and as I was bracing myself for a new reality, a finalized divorce, my dad ended up dying in the most sudden of ways just two weeks after that divorce finalized: massive subdural hematoma brought on by a backward fall in a wheelchair van because he wasn’t properly strapped in while coming from my sister’s baby shower the week before.  It took them almost an hour to get a spontaneous pulse going on him again.  When I had gotten word and had rushed to the hospital, I was brought in to see him in the ER, lying limp on the code table with evidence of a completed full code all around him: discarded medication syringes, wrappers, gloves, equipment all around the room with an endotraceal tube arising from his mouth.  I rushed out of the room to the nearest exit and started sobbing.  As a nurse, I knew the tell tale signs.  No more “Hey little Mandy” spoken to my daughter when we came to visit.  No more opportunities to have any more conversations.  No opportunity to say goodbye.  Hours later, we sat in the ICU room as my father was removed off of the ventilator.  I sat by his bedside holding his hand, my sister sitting beside me, aunts and uncles all around.  My mom and my grandmother had left the room, not being able to take it any more.  Slowly his pulse faded away, and eventually, I found myself sitting alone in that room, still holding my father’s hand, sobbing.  I was mourning years of resentment and words left unsaid.  And I was mourning the loss of someone who seemed to understand me and all of the recent things I had been going through.  You see, it is only now that I realized that my father’s experience with pain and disillusionment of all he had hoped life would be had recognized my own pain and disillusionment with all I had hoped life would be, and he had been able to counsel accordingly.  As I have gone through life, trying to “parent while re-calibrating life”, I have gained more and more understanding of my father.

I regret not being able to say goodbye.  I regret not being able to re-write the words of my high school graduation tribute to my father and being able to share it with him.  However, the tribute that I can do is share it here.  Maybe hopefully some child struggling with a father or some father struggling to father can hear them and gain some insight.  Sharing insight.  Sigh.  Could not think of a better tribute to my father.

Daddy, we made it!  All of those years of trying to impart to us “the good things” have paid off.  I know the years were not always the easiest, and I know those years entailed sacrificing some of your own dreams to help me stay the course of mine.  But I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I thank you for continuing to get dressed and show up to the parenting party, even on the days that it may not have been the easiest.  And I’d like to thank you for being intentional in striving to make me a better human in life.  The lessons about staying away from things that could bring me harm, the instillation of  the value of striving for the greater good in life by your zeal for politics and community activities (I owe my student government career to you), your admonishment to keep God first and to go to church every week (even on the days you may not have gone), and your resolute decision that I needed a Christian education all have aided to shape me into the person that I am. The sacrifice was worth it, Daddy.  That which you were not able to accomplish in life, I hope you realized that you passed on the baton.  I can help you finish the work.  You may not have always felt you were the perfect parent, but in your decision to continually be present, you have given me a gift far greater than you realize.  I love you, Daddy, and I appreciate you. – Tiffany