The week I found my father

When resentment became understanding - and grace

It took me years to admit how much like my father I am. 

Not just in looks, although all my life people pointed out how much I resembled him, and I had to agree. That we looked so much alike annoyed me. I longed to have my mother’s beautiful hazel eyes or her operatic singing voice, or a nose that was more straight than my father’s.  

Instead, I got his black hair and dark eyes, and as I aged, my hair went white like his.  

I also got Dad’s alcoholism, but unlike him, I stopped drinking at the age of 28.   

My dad’s alcohol abuse and the scenes he caused when he was drunk made Father’s Day an event to be ignored in my childhood home. He was wildly popular at work and outside the house, with his storytelling, his humor, his ease with people and ability to work a room. But he was often abusive at home. My mother finally divorced him when they had been married for 24 years and nine months. I was 15. I remember being thrilled about the split, along with my sisters and brothers.  

 

My dad, though, was stunned to be summarily ushered out of the house on the West Side of Buffalo that he had bought for $22 down and a handshake in the 1960s. He moved into a tiny apartment in South Buffalo to brood and think about the mess he had made of his life.  

Three years ago I developed an old roll of film I found and was stunned to see it included this picture of my Dad, taken before we were about to go on a whale watch in Gloucester, Mass. about a year before he died.

Maybe it was his innate Catholicism, but slowly, he decided that my mother was justified in divorcing him. I heard him once tell my mother that the whole thing was all his fault. To his credit, he gave her more than court-ordered alimony. He was never late in his payments.  

But I mostly kept my distance. 

When I became engaged to my husband Pete, Dad was thrilled at the match. Mom had passed away by then, but my father looked forward to the wedding and was eager to be generous.  Smiling, he asked me what I wanted for a wedding present.  I was ready with my answer.  

“Just one thing,” I replied. “Don’t get drunk at my wedding.”  

His face fell. He was silent for a moment. Then he nodded and promised.  

At the wedding reception, he was one of the first to leave. “If I stay, I’ll get drunk, I know I will,” he told me.   

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, and I hugged him goodbye.  

My mother had always told me of my father’s sweetness, his essential goodness, and how she had fallen in love with those qualities. But growing up, I couldn’t see what she saw in him.   

Dad finally stopped drinking after he had heart bypass surgery that led to complications and a three-month stay in intensive care.  After the hospital discharged him and he struggled to recover, he decided that booze tasted terrible and he wanted nothing to do with it.  

He was several months sober when I took a week off from work and drove home to Buffalo from New England to help take care of him. He was frail - and a changed man.

His sobriety finally allowed all the shining qualities my mother had loved to come to the fore. He was wonderful to talk to. He had become a thoughtful, careful listener, and an insightful and understanding conversationalist.   

Every day, we talked and talked. I even found myself confiding in him.     

He had finally become the dad I had always wanted.   

One day, he told me that he had a hard time sleeping. “I think of all the things I did when you kids were growing up that I shouldn’t have. Then I think of all the things that I didn’t do that I should have. And I feel so guilty I can’t get to sleep,” he said. He looked just miserable.   

“Oh, Dad. How do you manage?” I asked.  

“I pray the rosary,” he said. “It’s the only thing that helps me.”  

It was then that I truly understood my father’s personal hell. Whatever I had experienced as the result of his shortcomings didn’t match his misery.  

He asked if I could help him walk downstairs from his bedroom to the living room.  He leaned on me, and as we began to walk downstairs, one step at a time, he said, “I’m sorry to be such a burden.”   

I looked at him, at this man who I had so resented, and yet so resembled, and I did what came naturally to both of us. I told him a story. It was about another set of stairs that he had helped me with when I was 4 years old.   

We were living on the seventh floor of low-income house projects. I had developed a sudden irrational fear of the elevators. We were all supposed to go somewhere, but I threw myself at Dad, crying, saying I couldn’t do it.    

He picked me up and held me. He told Mom to take my five siblings and wait in the car.  Then he held my hand and instead of taking the elevator, we walked downstairs together, all seven flights. 

I told him the story as we walked downstairs, taking the steps one at a time. His face lit up and he paused, turning to me. “I did that? Really? All those stairs?”  

“Yes, you did,” I said, smiling.  

“There must have been a hundred stairs,” he said in wonder.  

Dad died in his sleep two weeks later.   

On Father’s Day, and whenever I meet people and yet, feel at ease, or whenever I tell a story, I remember him. I think of  what he gave me. I remember that special time we had together. It wasn’t nearly long enough, but even so, it was a gift. Because, finally,  I saw the person my mother fell in love with, and when I met  that man,  I knew I had finally found my father.