A Quiet Power

I have been working on something for a long time now.  I am trying to forgive my mother, as I have my father.  Forgiveness is an interesting concept.  It requires you come to peace with something someone else has inflicted upon you, whether by design or accidental.  I forgave my father in order to have a happy life, not because he deserved forgiveness.  I forgave him because I was not going to allow him to continue to inflict pain and misery upon my heart.  I forgave him because I have seen Karma in action, and she is a bitch.  I forgave him because I saw the end result of living your life in a vile, contemptible manner.  I felt pity for my father in the last decade or so of his life.  My father was embittered, unable to hear or speak my mother’s name without a prominent emotional response.  After he retired, he spent most of his time in self-isolation, with occasional reprieves to go golfing with his brother.  He had no friends, and he drove away anyone who came near.  He closed the blinds and the curtains, allowing no sunlight into his home.  He literally imprisoned himself.  Of his six children, I was the only one he saw with any regularity. 

After I remembered what he did to me, I knew I had to keep my girls safe from him during visits.  He would try to separate me from the girls under the ruse “I’ll buy you guys pizza if you (me) will go get it.”  There were several places that delivered, but of course I had to go get it.  The girls were too little to know what was going on, and it wasn’t as if I could tell them.  So we played a game called I want to go!  I told the girls no matter what grandpa said, they were to yell “I want to go with mommy.”  They also had to see which one could be mommy’s little glue stick.  They always did such a good job I rewarded them both at the end of the visit.  It worked out well, the girls were playing a game and it kept them safe from my father. 

At first, I continued to visit with my father because despite what he had done to me, I was still seeking his approval.  That’s the sickness when you have been abused for years.  I felt if I was good enough, one day my father would be proud of me.  I had no self-esteem, no sense of myself as a person separate from my parents.  On some deep and far away level I was still taking responsibility for all the years of abuse I endured at his hands.   There must be something inherently wrong with me that he should treat me like this.  I also accepted how he treated me because I did not feel worthy to be treated any other way.  My precious girls, on the other hand, were worthy of being safe, protected and loved.  My dad said something awful to one of my girls once, and I remember lighting into him with a passion and anger only a threat to my girls ever raised.  When I was through yelling at him, I gathered up my children and left.

On the car ride home, one of them asked me why I was so mad at grandpa.  I told them grandpa had no right to talk to them like that, and I would not allow it.  Eileen asked me why it was OK for him to be mean to me, but not to them.  It was a good question.  I told them grandpa has always been mean to me, I was an adult and could take it, but they were children and did nothing to deserve his nasty temperament.  Christina asked me what I did to deserve being treated like this.  Another good question successfully diverted with a trip through the drive thru window. 

Every time I went to visit my father, it was always the same.  First thing he would say to me was “What the fuck are you doing here?”  I always answered the same, “I came to visit you dad.”  I was still accepting his abuse in order to gain his approval.  I wonder what I expected to change if I ever did get the approval I so desperately wanted.  No one ever asked me that question, but it is another good one.  I was a single mom trying to raise two little girls by myself, while protecting them from my abusive ex-husband.  I packed up and moved several times, and could not figure out how my ex-husband kept finding me.  I never left a forwarding address, and I went through a difficult and illegal process to change all our last names without leaving a paper trail for him to follow, and yet he kept finding me and the girls.  The mystery was solved one night I was visiting my father.  I wasn’t the only person visiting him; my ex-husband was, too.  It seems my dad was telling him where I lived, my phone number, anything he wanted to know, he could find out from my father.  My husband, after all, was the victim in my father’s eyes.  I was a cold hearted bitch who didn’t know a good man when I saw him.  My ex-husband had been victimized!  I was keeping him away from his children; he loved them and wanted to be a good father.   My father was trying to redeem all men from ungrateful women while trying to guide me back to where I belonged, with my ex-husband.  Though I did call him a couple of times, I didn’t visit him again for a very long time. 

I did start to visit with him again, still trying to seek his approval, and though he was the same nasty, vile man he has always been I started to notice how miserable he was.  His anger was consuming him and had turned him into something pathetic.  I still wanted his approval, but I could also see how Karma was making him pay for being vile.  I began to pity him.  I didn’t see any of my brothers, and all I knew of them was what dad could tell me.  It pained my father to admit the boys he worshipped and cared for were not in contact with him, not bothering to visit or check in on him.  My visits did not soften his heart toward my direction, but he hated to admit he hadn’t seen nor heard from them.  I also had two older half-sisters who would visit dad once a year.  When my father got his new family, his first family with two daughters no longer mattered.  He traded them in for a new family and was deeply disappointed when I turned out to be a girl.  He got a son the very next year, though, so he was finally happy.  Girls were disposable and my two half-sisters did not like being disposed of. 

One day, I was visiting when two of my brothers happened to be there as well.  We were in the kitchen, and dad was laughing and having himself a good old time at my expense.  My brothers, of course jumped on the verbal abuse wagon I was so used to getting run over with, but this time was different.  I looked at my brother’s girlfriend and said quietly, “you might notice I’m the only one here with an education.”  My brother said “What’s that supposed to mean?”  The girlfriend replied “She just called all of you dumbasses and you were all too stupid to get it.”  The kitchen was very quiet.  I smiled at my little victory.  Finally my dad said “It’s a good thing abortion wasn’t legal when your mother became pregnant with you, (referring to me) because you would have been the first!”  I didn’t say another word, I gathered up my children and left.  I could hear one of my brothers laughing as he said “uh oh dad, you made her mad, now.”  I was mad.  I was mad as hell and I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

When I got home, I wrote dad a letter which was way overdue.  It was the first step toward reclaiming myself, and separating myself from my father.   In the letter, I only addressed the abortion statement, telling him he could consider me aborted.  In my world, he no longer was my father, I was no longer his daughter, and he had no grandchildren.  I was done.  I mailed the letter, and felt empowered for the first time in my life when it came to my father.  Finally, I stood up for myself.  My only regret was that I had not had the courage to do it to his face, at his home at the time he made the statement.  The next two days I felt a bit disconnected, realizing I would never see my father again, but I was fine.  It only took two days for my letter to reach my father over an hour’s drive away, and to receive his return letter.  It seemed I had finally touched something resembling a human emotion from him. 

When I opened the mailbox on the second day, I found a letter from my father.  I was stunned.  I stood there holding the letter, unable to decide if I should open it or not.  It was a beautiful day, marred only by this letter in my hand.  I couldn’t imagine what my father felt so important to say that he must have responded and returned his letter to me the very same day.  That meant after he had received his mail for the day, Dad had to make a special trip to the post office to get his reply back to me so soon.  I sat down on the front porch step, quiet, solemn, still staring at the letter.  I had already granted my father his freedom; he no longer had to bear the burden of me being his daughter.  Surely, this letter would state his relief and agreement to my terms.  He would also include something negative and derogatory toward me.  I didn’t think there was anything worse he could possibly do to me, so I opened the letter.  I had to read the letter several times; I did not believe what my father had written.  He apologized to me!  My father never apologized for a single thing in his entire life, and here was written proof of his apology.  I knew my father well enough to know this was not his acceptance of me as a human being, I was still a lowly woman after all, but my father loved me enough that the thought of losing me out of his life mattered.  The power struggle in this relationship shifted a hair in my favor. 

I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy inside, nor was I elated I finally had proof of my father’s love.  I was almost neutral.  I had reconciled with never seeing or speaking to my father again, so to receive a letter of apology from him was something which had never occurred to me.  It wasn’t just the words my father wrote in the letter, it was the urgency he placed in returning it.  I expected anger or indifference.  I never expected an admission of sorrow.  I walked back in the house and picked up the phone to call him.  When he heard my voice, he expressed surprise I had received the letter so quickly, and then attempted to minimize what he said as he was “just joking” and didn’t think I would take it seriously.  I heard his words and for the first time I was able to hear what my father was saying in between the words.  It wasn’t what he was saying I noted.  The tone in my father’s voice as he was speaking to me was subdued and understated.  As he was minimizing and deflecting how hurtful what he said was, I understood this was probably the most difficult admission and conversation my father made in his entire life.  He realized I mattered to him, and I was a woman, the sworn enemy.  I allowed my father to minimize his “joke” and the impact it had on me because I understood for the first time in my life my father was a broken man.  The tone in his voice and the manner in which he said the words, told me everything I needed to know.  My father loved me, he was vulnerable, and he was scared.   

There are many choices I could have made at this juncture, and no one would have blamed me for any one of them.  I could return the conversation with anger and outrage; after all he was trivializing my feelings, and was judging my response to his joke as extreme.  I could have held firm in my decision to deny him as my father, leaving him as broken as his years of abuse had left me.  I could have chosen to confront him about the sexual abuse, something I never did, but if ever there was an opportunity, this was it.  I could have responded to my father as he taught me to behave, with cruelty and disregard for his gesture.  No one would have told me I was wrong had I done any of those things.  Instead, I listened to my father’s voice, and not the words he was speaking.  What I heard was a man so broken; I felt pity for him when I expected to feel vindicated and powerful. 

The child in me screamed out for vengeance.  This was my hour!  My father was displaying weakness, now was the time to make him pay for my years of suffering, for what I still suffer.  Instead, I allowed him the illusion of power, and I allowed the illusion of my submission.  Illusion was the foundation my childhood was built upon, I knew this dance well.  The difference was I was no longer a helpless child; I was a woman who had worked very hard to shed myself of the evils that permeated my childhood.  I wasn’t healed from it, and I had not fully recovered.  I do not consider myself fully recovered as of today, many years since this moment.  What I did next would compound my father’s pain and misery for many years to come, though that was not my intent, nor could I have envisioned the agony it was to create for him.   I was kind to him, accepted the only apology he was capable of giving, and forgave him. 

I did not tell my father I forgave him, but I did.  I still visited my father every couple of weeks to make sure he was OK.  The nature and purpose of my visits however, had changed dramatically.   I no longer went to see him because I was holding onto a shred of hope my father would finally see me as a worthwhile human being, worthy of his love and acceptance.  I went to see him because it was the right thing to do.  I was his daughter, and he was a shattered shell of a human being.  I thought seeing my dad like this would bring me some joy, relief, vindication, validation, anything!  It brought me none of those feelings.  Watching my father suffering brought me no triumph.  It did bring me a sense of peace to know he was paying dearly for the evils he inflicted upon me.  I didn’t feel satisfied at his suffering.  I did feel grateful I was not the instrument who sought justice.  Like I said, Karma is a bitch. 

I think the true test of one’s power is the ability to show mercy when none was shown to you.  My father was brutal to me when I deserved to be loved and cared for.  My father was one of the people who damaged my body, mind and soul so badly; I have open wounds and scars even today.  That day did not change the man my father was, it did not excuse or mitigate the pain he caused me.  I do not have an explanation nor an understanding of why he was so cruel.  All I knew was this man was broken, his soul was damaged so deeply, that nothing I could do or imagine would cause him more sorrow than he already had.  I held in my hand to mete what justice I felt my father deserved, and not a single person would judge me for it.  Instead, now when I finally had power to deny my father my presence in his life, to meet his cruelty with cruelty of my own, I chose to recognize a man so tortured by his own demons I would not add to his pain with my own.  I would never again seek his acceptance. 

I resumed visiting my father, and watched his aging decline.  When he needed a colonoscopy, I drove over an hour to his house to pick him up and take him.  He wanted me to stay the night before, almost begged me to stay the night, but heaven nor the fires of hell would allow me to sleep in the same house as my father.  My benevolence did not extend to the point of causing myself significant distress to ease my father’s anxiety.  My father did not eliminate his verbal abuse toward me entirely, but after that day it softened.  My father started to show a hostile humility toward me.  A tiger can’t change its stripes, but it instinctively knows when to lie quietly.  He would still greet me with “What the fuck are you doing here?”  But it was tempered with an underlying bit of joy to see me.  His verbal attacks on me dwindled down to nothing.  Instead, he was confused and perplexed.  He kept saying “I don’t understand you.”  A person has a lot of time to think when they are in prison, though my dad’s confinement was self-imposed. 

Dad continued to exhibit a lack of understanding about me.  I often tried to get him to elaborate about what he didn’t understand and he would just shake his head in response to my questions.  One Thanksgiving, we drove to his house to pick him up and he joined our celebration.  Dad picked up some of the folders I had written, and actually read them.  I asked him what he thought, expecting something degrading and awful.  He said “When you are a famous author, would you help me get some of my stuff published?  I have written some children’s stories.”  I don’t know what was more bizarre, my dad being impressed with something I did and expressing it to me, or a man so pervasively abusive, bitter and cruel wrote children’s stories.  I did come across some of his writings a few years later; there were some dreadful children’s stories and a single, short love story.  It was silly and awful, but in his writing lurked a shadow of the man he once was.  He wasn’t always the monster I knew him to be. 

I walked in his house one day for a visit.  My dad looked extremely happy to see me.  He greeted me with a bright smile and a big hello.  He welcomed me into the house and offered me a soda.  He didn’t know who I was, Alzheimer’s was approaching him.  I sounded the alarm to my siblings, but no one believed me, or cared to believe me for fear something might be required of them.  I started to stock dad’s freezer with frozen dinners.  I noticed he was losing weight and I thought cooking a meal was a sequence he could not perform any longer.  My dad protested me bringing the meals, insisting he could cook if he wanted to, but he wasn’t hungry.  The meals kept disappearing.  As he had in the past, dad looked at me confused and said “I just don’t get you.”  Dad looked away when I asked the same thing I always did “what don’t you get?”  He turned his head a little in my direction, and there was a far away, pained look in his eyes.  His face drew a tight, sorrowful expression.  He said “You, after all I……” he trailed off.  A tear rolled down my dad’s face.  I had never seen him shed a tear in my life.  Not when his father died, not when his mother died, never.  I said “Dad, I forgave you a long time ago, I just never told you.” 

Another tear followed in the path of the first.  The pain in his eyes grew, as did the distress I saw in his face.  “But you are happy, I don’t understand, after I……..”  More tears followed, and I replied “Yes, most of the time I am.  I had to forgive you so I could be happy.”  He made no attempt to wipe away the tears, he let them fall.  His eyes looked down to the floor.  It was then I realized the day I chose to allow my dad his illusion in his apology, commenced years of guilt, sorrow and shame to grow within my father, torturing his every waking moment.  I will never know what made him so angry, or why he took his anger out on me, I will never know why he thought forcing me to engage in demeaning sexual acts was justifiable, but I do know the kindness and humanity I showed him compounded the misery he was already in a thousand times over. 

My father was unspeakably cruel.  The pain he inflicted upon me nearly destroyed me.  I could not think of one redeeming thing to say about him when I wrote on Father’s Day.  For reasons I will never know, he became the monster in my nightmares, the devil in my hell.  Yet his actions returned to him, as they should, to consume the man who borne them.  When I saw how miserable my father was, there was a feeling of peace, for it was proof the universe is just when often is does not appear to be so.  As I watched his misery unfold over the years, I did what I could to ease his suffering.  I did not expect my kindness to create an expanded and prolific form of penance, but it did.  I did not visit my father with the expectation he would be grateful, though I did see glimmers of gratitude.  I did it because once I realized the power I have within myself, the only reason I needed to visit him was because it was simply the right thing to do.  It was about me being true to who I am, living in the love and light of the heavens, confident I have a destiny to pursue which has no room in it for bitterness. 

When my father died, I think I shed a tear or two, but the tears were not for him.  Despite what I knew my father to be, the little girl inside of me never gave up hope she would have a daddy who loved and protected her.  My father’s death meant the death of the fantasy as well.  It was an odd way to feel over the death of one’s father, I would have thought there would have been more to it.  I almost felt guilty because I didn’t feel something more about his death.  The reality was after everything my father did to me, I did not love him.  He destroyed the love a daughter has for her father, and I think he knew it on some level.  He did love me; though it was covered with rages most of his life.  In his will, I was treated with a fairness and equality he never exhibited while alive.  I believe I know who and what caused my father to hate women so deeply, and it was not my mother, though she bore the blame for his rage. 

I had come to terms with the person my father was, and the torment he was in during the last couple decades of his life.  I forgave my father his evils and he descended into Alzheimer’s believing he was a forgiven man.  Life is never easy, at least not mine is, so of course there is a twist.  When I told my father I forgave him, it was the truth, but not all of the truth.  I forgave him for the truths my mind had been able to unlock.  When I last spoke with my father, I believed the sexual abuse of me ended when I was six, because I remember him forcing me to perform oral sex on him when my mother walked in.  I didn’t credit my mother for “saving” me if you will, but I thought it ended because that’s where my memory of it did.  I would eventually unlock much greater and more horrific truths my mind was hiding from me.  I would have to find a way to forgive my father all over again. 

For quite a long while after unlocking some of my memory, I lived in a type of blissful ignorance.  I knew some of what my father had forced me to do, and reasoned it had ended because my mother had caught him.  I further reasoned my mother didn’t leave my father because at the time she walked in on him, she was pregnant with my youngest brother, Charlie.  It was the late sixties, and unskilled women with four young children did not fare well by themselves.  I was so reasonable about the whole thing I knew there were still large breeches in my memory, but that was OK, because I had it all reasoned out.  I didn’t need to remember any more about my childhood because I knew the worst of it.   I ignored the white elephant staring me down.  There’s an elephant?  What elephant, I don’t see an elephant.  Eventually, even white elephants have to take a shit, and I don’t know anyone who can ignore a pile of shit in the room that damn big.

My memory came flooding back to me unexpectedly while I was alone one evening.  It washed over me like a Tsunami, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.  My knees buckled from the weight of the grief.  I fell to a heap on the floor, sobbing, screaming until I was spent.  This wasn’t a horror movie I could walk away from, it was my childhood and though I had reasoned it away, the dam had broken and it came straight for me.  Why?  Why was I remembering all of this?  What is the point?  How could my father have done that to me?  How could he have done it for so long?  How in the living hell did I not remember a thing about it until now?  What was so special about me now, that I get to have my memory back?  I wanted the ignorant bliss back, I am a big fan of logic and reason, and men doing what my father did to me for so many years was not logical, nor was it reasonable.  I curled up in a ball and did not get out of bed for a very long time.

I was lost and angry with this new revelation.  I remembered it against my will!  An injustice to a child of this degree demands action!  But there was no child anymore, I was a grown woman.  There was no action to take; my father was fully demented by this point.  And that brings me to the twisted edge of my life.  My father slid into dementia believing I had forgiven him for all of it!  I couldn’t forgive him for years of sexual assault I didn’t know about!  I wanted a do over for my forgiveness. 

I was a witness to the pain and sorrow my father lived with every day, day in and day out for years.  I watched the burden of his shame grow with each passing season.  I pitied him.  I felt he deserved to carry this burden, but still, I pitied him.  Had I known how large his burden was, everything might have taken widely divergent paths.  I wanted to remove my kindness from my father’s life.  I wanted him to suffer more, yes, he had paid, but I wanted him to pay more dearly.  I was angry he thought I forgave him of all THAT!  I felt confused and helpless.  It is an empty feeling to want a justice that will never come.  I have learned over the years that forgiveness is not an all or nothing event, it is a process.  I have forgiven my father for the most part, some days I am more forgiving than others.  Some days I refuse to forgive him, I am mad and I want to stay that way. 

There are days I question the uncanny perceptual eye I have.  Some people think I am a psychic, but I am more like Patrick Jane on The Mentalist.  I notice tiny little shifts in the way people speak, their body language and I hear what they don’t say aloud.  I question it because I read profound destruction and torment in my father, causing him almost unbearable pain.  The confusion he never quite explained I read as his feelings of being undeserving of the kindness I gave him.  What if he was confused because he meant for me to be destroyed, and I was not?  I know it’s the part of me screaming out I’m still a failure, and I can’t do anything right.  I read my father right the first time. 

I struggled with forgiveness part two for a very long time.  I wanted the serenity I felt when I had forgiven my father the first time, but I also wanted my father to suffer far greater than what I witnessed.  I was pissed as hell he thought I forgave him of all his sins, when I only knew a small portion of them.  I could be angry the entire rest of my life and it won’t solve a thing.  It wouldn’t give me back the life I had lost, and it wouldn’t make the injured child in me any less injured.  I could scream about it all I wanted, but everywhere I turn there is a woman with her own sex abuse as a child story to tell.  I was not unique or special, this type of heinous shredding of a child’s soul happens every day, in thousands of houses over the world.  I think it is the largest source of unrecognized pain there is.  I could not bring myself to sprint for the finish line again, so until I could forgive, I accepted what was and learned to live my life with it. 

I was initially angry because I finally remembered.  The memory didn’t bring me any peace, only waves of horror.  I didn’t understand why I had to endure this memory at my age.  I didn’t see the point in making me suffer through it.  That was then, and this is now.  Now I understand I could not continue living a partial life.  Without the memory, I was void of more than just a memory.  I was void of an integral piece of who I am.  Before I remembered, I had frequent and sometimes serious depressions with significant impairments to my life.  I haven’t had one since I dealt with the full atrocity of what my father did to me.  Before I remembered, there was a constant emotional pain deep inside my soul, with suicidal thoughts always nearby, waiting for me to spring into action.  The pain is gone, and I can’t believe today I ever thought suicide was a good idea.  Before I remembered, I felt like my life was about suffering.  I know now my life was meant to be happy, suffering is an enigma. 

The human mind is a strange thing.  It hid the memory of what my father did to me far away so it wouldn’t cause me any pain.  It is what my soul did to survive.  The problem with hiding it away is the pain is still there.  You just don’t know why you feel it.  I wish now I had been able to remember sooner, so I could have been happy sooner.  Forgiveness is a process, I’m not a saint.  It would have been nice if the nightmares ended when my father died, but some things never go away whether it is a real threat, or a threat from long ago.  A while back, I had this amazing enlightenment about the whole thing.  Had I responded to my father as he expected me too, his soul would have entered transition angry and bitter, the same way he lived out his life.  Because my kindness caused my father to question the person he was, he will enter transition in a better place.  I changed the way my father’s soul would transition into the next state.  That is humbling, and profound.  Understanding the impact I had on my father’s soul helped to quell the righteous anger when I think of what he did to me.  I don’t know how long my father’s soul has been carrying this burden, but I do know in this lifetime, he returned back to the spirit with the knowledge of a better way to live your life.  I am still in awe when I think how much power simple kindness and the willingness to do what is right simply because it is the right thing to do can generate.  I didn’t know I had it in me.

If I can accomplish all that, surely I can find a way to forgive my mother.