And it's not because I try not to think about my father; I think about him. Every. Single. Day.
It's mostly because even after almost a year of his passing, I still find it difficult to articulate.
Last year, when people noted to me any sympathy for my dad, the only thing I could manage was a watery-eyed response: "Yeah. That was my dude." Even as I type those words, my eyes are glistening, and I have to take a deep breath and a pause.
My dad was my best friend.
What some people may or may not know is that I didn't grow up with my dad as a constant presence in my life. Most of my formative years, my dad was represented as a card in the mail with some money in it or a voice over the phone. He used to tell this story to me about when I was a little girl. Apparently, I walked up to him and asked, "Are you my daddy?" He thought it was the most adorable thing he'd ever heard.
I was not so amused.
I never thought it was cute that I had to question my paternity. Yet as a child, and even to a large extent as an adult, I never understood all the different dynamics that kept him from seeing me. Sure, some of it was my mom's own paranoia, but there was also the fact that my dad suffered greatly from his bipolar disorder and was probably hospitalized more frequently in those beginning stages. It's a piece of my childhood puzzle I was only able to piece together a year before his death when we started seeing a Veteran's Administration physician and she attempted to gather his medical history. It was then I learned that my dad struggled heavily with alcoholism after his Viet Nam tour.
I started living with my dad when I was 17 years old--the July after I graduated from high school. This was supposedly going to be a short-lived arrangement as I was moving into my dorm at George Mason in the fall. But I performed at a below mediocre rate at Mason and Dad said he wasn't paying for another semester, especially since he'd taken out a loan for that first one. So I dropped out of college for a semester and went to live with my dad full-time while I figured out my next move.
We had our power struggles at first. Dad was trying to raise his little girl who'd grown up without him there. Our first struggle came when he made me sit down at the table until I finished my string beans. I didn't do vegetables; Mom had long since given up the battle and often put them on my plate as decoration (seriously--her words, not mine). Dad won that battle. Then at 20, he attempted to enforce a curfew; since he worked at night, I often ignored and flouted the 1am imposition. We ended up compromising when he asked that I be in before the sun. He wouldn't let me drive his car to celebrated when I graduated with my AA even though I'd paid for my degree myself, so I went out and bought my own the next day.
Though we were experiencing these growing pains, we were becoming a unit. I always referred to my Dad the "Carryout King" because although he could cook, more often than not, we would find a take-out spot or a dive restaurant and enjoy a meal. While his favorite cuisine was soul food, we would also find great places to have breakfast or steak and cheese or fish subs. In his own way, he was showing me his city--a place I'd only experienced from windows or the tourist experience. He was DC-bred, so he drove me through his old neighborhoods.
As I started experimenting in the kitchen, he would eat slightly healthier meals, and the refrigerator started getting stocked more with groceries than containers. I would wake him up for work and gradually, he would be better at his attendance, though it would not save him from being offered "early retirement" when the Post Office did one of its sweeping reforms in the early 1990s. My dad would make it to 22 years, just three years shy of full retirement.
We would also develop a habit of accounting for his medicine and curb his drinking habit, which made a big difference in how often he would have manic attacks. By the time we moved out of the apartment into a house, he'd not suffered from a manic attack in ten years.
there's so much more to write that I can't even reasonably put it all in one post, so I'll just end the post here.
