As I said in an earlier post, death, at least in my Dad's case, is a powerful public relations machine. The almost unanimous consensus among his friends and co-workers is that Dad was the most diplomatic, generous, kind, helpful, and compassionate person at his firm and in his yoga studio. That's in pretty sharp contrast to my more nuanced view of him as moody, distant, disconnected, sometimes resentful, unpredictable, and bitingly, sophomorically funny.
An anecdote not even from my childhood: while on a "family" ski trip in Colorado. I'm about 25 and able to take care of myself. My stepsister and her cousin, on the other hand, are still kids, maybe around seven or eight. Dad is trying to get them to ski school. Their tiny skis are falling all over the place, the girls are tripping over themselves, and finally one of them falls and starts to cry. My father rolls his eyes, grits his teeth, and says, "I hate being a Dad!"
My stepmother looks horrified, turns to me, and says, "He didn't mean it."
In turn, I look at her with resignation and replied, "Yes, he did."
It's true. He didn't like being a Dad, especially with little kids. All the patience and nurturing he could supply to hysterical law associates at work went out the window when dealing with real children at home. That's just the way he was.
Much, much later, during one of his many hospital stays, he had me and one of his partners by the bed. Dad proceeded to talk about me to the partner as if I wasn't there, "This one, I could never get her to do anything I said."
What sort of bullshit was this? I was 43 with a new marriage and a child. I had often taken his advice, stingily meted out over the years. And why try to humiliate a middle aged child over advice probably ignored 20 years ago? And why in front of his partner, who had the good grace to look uncomfortable.
Perhaps every parent does this, assigning a child a role and then never admitting they've outgrown it; as if keeping the child's emotional development in stasis shields the parent from having to adapt, or even notice change. For years, Dad liked to egg me on. I'll admit it was easy; I'd go for that bait while he amused himself. At some point though, probably in my late 30's, I stopped reacting. Who cared what he thought?
I thought our relationship had evolved, but towards the end of Dad's life I wasn't so sure. Once, when we were alone in the hospital, Dad looked at me sharply and said, "You've changed."
"What do you mean," I said.
"I used to be able to get you going, but I can't anymore. What happened?" He sounded bummed about this, as if I'd denied him some sort of entertainment.
"Everyone has to grow up sometime, Dad," I said in a matter of fact tone. But I was truly shocked. That was the last time we discussed anything about our relationship.
When I listen to non family members talk about my father, it makes me feel sad and a bit robbed. I obviously didn't get the best side of him. Maybe it was easier to give advice to an admiring young associate, who'd really listen to him, instead of a sulky teenaged daughter who looked just like him. Intellectually, I know that my Dad had traits he hated and he probably saw them in me, the kid most like him on every level. I did not feed his ego properly, the way his work associates did. I was challenging and argumentative and, I'm sure, often infuriating. I did not fawn, although my husband has recently told me he's always thought I was very nice to Dad, and he wasn't that nice to me. Perhaps my Dad wasn't the only person stuck in the past.
All of this, I'm sure, will become even more confusing at the eventual memorial service, at which people will give the work side of him ample spin. And I'll have to sit and try to reconcile the man I dealt with, a real mix of good, bad, and confusing, with the image of saintly warrior they're painting. Talk about feeling guilty.
And I haven't even discussed the fact that Dad was kind of famous, a whole other aspect of the split persona. That's next.
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