As I've written on here recently, my father is dying. It has taken me some time to come to terms with that. . And it does feel weird to say. It feels weird to feel that, to truly understand that. Yes, he moves around slowly and he's in hospice in my parents home. He has an oxygen tank when he needs it. We have a collection of pills that we need to dole out for him to maintain a sense of comfort. But when I look at him, do I see a dying man? No. I see my father who is difficult, who has emotional pain he can't access and will probably not fully access before he passes. I see the person who I tried to make proud my whole life. I see the person who I am trying to disconnect from before he dies so it isn't so painful. I know that last thing is impossible. I know that what I am really disconnecting from is the role he has played in my life, the role that I have put him in.
From an early age, I was fully conscious of the fact that I had been a disappointment. I was the first-born son. I think being the first born male child is important in our patriarchal culture. I was every bit myself from day one and that contrasted with my father's expectations. I'm pretty clear on that. And that's why I tried with 100% effort every day of my life for so long to make him proud. I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to think I was a person worth loving, worth knowing and worth caring about. I wanted him to be like me, open emotionally. I wanted all of these things for so long, so it was a surprise when we had an argument the other day.
Here's the set up: My father has become highly demanding in recent weeks. He wants what he wants when he wants it. And sometimes I can't give him what he wants right at that moment.. I try to be reasonable and explain to him that I will get to it when I'm done putting his pills in the pill box or washing his dishes or making meals for him. But that's not good enough. And my father can't let anything go. So he said, "Even when you were a kid, I would ask you to do something and you said 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' It was always manana, manana. You wonder why I'm always mad at you." And my IMMEDIATE response was, "You know, Dad. I don't really wonder. Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter." I didn't say it with anger, I said it as a fact. Okay, maybe there was a little anger...or more accurately, frustration because I was in the middle of doing something. But the frustration wasn't emotional and wasn't directed at the things I felt I didn't get as a child. I didn't really think about the story as anything other than me just telling my Dad that I don't think about him being angry at me.
Then I had a conversation on the phone today as I was driving back to Los Angeles from Santa Clara, where I went to see my former students in a show there. I was talking to my friend Dave, who was my theology professor in high school. Dave has known me most of my life at this point. And I told him about that conversation. He asked me how I felt. I said it felt healing. But still, I didn't get the significance of that conversation. I didn't get what it said about me. It took me a second. Then I got it.
It doesn't matter. What my father thinks of me, feels about me doesn't matter. For so much of my life it did matter. It was the only thing that mattered. And without realizing it or spending a lot of time in pensive thought, I suddenly had let it go. There's this great song from Kander and Ebb's first musical, "Flora, the Red Menace" that's called "A Quiet Thing." One of the lyrics is: "Happiness comes in on tip toe. Well, what do ya know. It's a quiet thing. A very quiet thing." That's how I felt today when I talked to Dave and realized that one of the things that was such an obstacle to me, the need to make my father proud, was suddenly gone. It did not matter to me any more. I don't know if I feel set free or this great sense of relief. It's just a quiet thing. A while ago I felt that I needed his approval and my whole being was wrapped up in it, now I feel differently.
I called this blog "I'm Back." And I thought of ending the blog several times because I felt like I had gotten back. I had arrived. Around the year anniversary of the blog, I really thought that I had nothing to write about. Not that my life had gotten "fixed", but I just felt like I was done writing about this subject and that it was time to move on and find another subject to tackle. But I'm finding that I keep coming back to the idea of "I'm Back." I keep coming back again to myself. Today was a reminder of how I'm Back yet again.
Dave also said something important. He said that it has been said that a son doesn't truly become a man until his father dies. Because he can't truly be himself and that once the father dies, he is able to own who he is truly and authentically. And I said to Dave that it would be surprising to many people I know that I haven't always been as self assured as I appear. I remember having conversations with high school and grade school classmates as adults who all said that I seemed so confident and self possessed. I know that the internal experience of myself was not that. I wasn't the least bit self assured. I was constantly doubtful. But something in me always poked through and that was my authentic self. I suppressed it and tried to put it away, but it always popped back up. So Dave's response to that was that there must be something deeper, a deeper place of authenticity that will be released. And I took that to mean that if I have this natural self-assurance, then it will either completely shine through or that there is more than I thought I had. I also think that means that my true purpose will reveal itself. And there's no better way to be back than that. It is a very quiet thing, this release, but it is a quite powerful thing as well.
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