Goodby, Dad

My father's last appearance in my life occurred in 1971. He had recently remarried and moved to Bishop, California where he had opened a lodge. In hindsight it was not the best career choice for someone who was swimming in a sea of alcoholism.

He had not had any contact with us for several years, partially because of his marriage to the bottle but mostly because he was not paying child support and he did not want to end up in jail.

His appearance was a surprise but was I am sure at the behest of his new wife. They only stayed for a couple of hours and as usual he was clueless when it came to gifts for his daughter. My sister received a dress that was four sizes to big and just as many years out of style. I cannot remember what he brought my brother but his new wife gave me a book on the Indians of Central and South America, which I still have.

A quick aside, I have never referred to her as my stepmother because this was our one and only meeting. They were divorced not much more than a year later.

The last time my father and I spoke was in early 1980. Once upon a time he had belonged to a local lodge and one of the members heard through the grapevine that he was ill and came up with a phone number, which they passed along to my mother.

Ill was an understatement. After years of alcoholism and smoking unfiltered Camels he had not only lung cancer and liver cancer but also brain cancer. According to the lodge members source he had no more than a year left.

I called him one afternoon from a friend's house, not wanting to open any old wounds at home. When he came to the phone a sob caught in my throat he sounded so old. In reality he was only 44 at the time but you could not tell from the timber of his voice.

We made small talk. He asked me how I was doing and how my brother and sister were. We discussed the Dodger's and baseball in general. He asked about my mom. Our conversation was all over the map but somehow we avoided discussing his fate. Maybe he was just trying to protect me from the bad news. He might not have even known that I knew. Whatever the reason our phone call lasted about thirty minutes and I never spoke to him again.

Flash forward six months. I walk in the door just in time to hear the phone ringing.

"Hello?"

"May I speak to Pat?"

"She's not home right now. May I take a message?"

"Whom am I speaking to?"

"This is her son Darrell."
"Well Darrell you do not know me. My name is G and my husband and I have been taking care of your father for the past two months. This is hard to say to someone I don't even know but I have to tell you that your father passed away today."

I almost dropped the phone. My father was dead. Even though I hardly knew he was still my father. As I groped for something to say G continued to speak.

"I also wanted to tell you what a rotten no good son you are. Your father has been living near us for the past six months and you did not bother to call, write or visit. Your poor father died with no one by his side but two almost complete strangers. I hope you can look yourself in the mirror at night because as far as I am concerned he would have been better off without children."

CLICK!

Before I could respond she hung up on me. I was shocked. How could someone speak like that to a teenager who had just lost his father? Obviously there was no way to explain the history of our family. No way to explain that after we last spoke he had moved again and I had no way of contacting him. Of course with her hanging up on me any explanation was beside the point.

I walked out the door into a night that was cold, wet and windy. Without a jacket I wandered the streets until I ended up at my best friends house. Her mother let me in and we sat for hours playing gin rummy and talking about my dad.

For many years I carried a lot of what ifs with me concerning my dad and anger toward the lady who called that evening. However, what ifs will not bring my father back and any family reunion will have to wait for some other place or time. He may not have been a great dad but he was still my father and he had his demons that he could never escape.

I am no longer carrying a grudge toward G. She did not know me. Her only knowledge of our lives came from my father and I have no way of knowing what he had told her. From her perspective all she saw was a man dying alone far from the home of his youth and the children he had loved. With nothing left to show for his life but,to quote from one of my poems:

A faded picture
From long ago
Of three small children
He used to know