Father - Tape 1

(Beep. Music fades in)

It’s been awhile. But I still remember quite a bit. So much as to make me worry that some of my memories are fake, but does it matter if they are? I should watch what I say; you were never fond of rhetorical questions. There were a lot of things you didn’t like that, honestly, I find myself drawn to.

For one, you tried to instill in me a hatred of the so-called what-if game. After all, what good does playing it do, you said? No single human could ever predict the events of alternative universes accurately, given all the variables involved. And in reality, all we can do is find reasons to be upset: also known as regrets, lamentations, unrealized possibilities, or dreams we hadn’t even started to consider until that moment. And you can’t change or really address any of those things. You can only be sad. Which is apparently what you decided to do when you decided to play a game that only ends that way. 

I’ve never been that good at taking your advice. It just starts with a simple thought of, I don’t know, what would I say to you if we got to talk to each other again. Even for a moment. But the game always progresses. It never stays that simple. And you didn’t warn me about that part. 

But at least your admonishment explains why this habit of mine constantly goes so poorly. Because a life in which you didn’t die, when I imagine it, always seems so complicated, even if it shouldn’t be. Even if it should something I’d should want with no hesitation. Then I look at it, and I don’t know what to think. 

What does it say about our relationship that once I hit the eighteen years old mark, it seems better that you weren’t there to change the course of my life. Or not better. More like, who I am and where I am, couldn’t have happened had you lived.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

It’s a thought I first had during college orientation after being dropped off by a mother who didn’t know to stay. Back then,  I couldn’t imagine you would have let me go to that school and be that far away from you and Mom for any period of time. You always wanted me close by. At your side, preferably.

But you wouldn’t have meant anything bad by it. Anything bad. Or I can’t imagine that you would. You weren’t controlling only scared. And that fear was for my sake.. You could see how I was: that I was clearly a product of your line, for lack of better phrasing. Grandma caught it first. Your family’s blood was in me, and that affiliation was written all over my face. And that was the problem. We carry a great sadness, is how Grandma worded it. It’s in our DNA: this destruct sequence.

But you knew how to handle it. You had managed to defuse it, but not everyone in the family had. And the only way to ensure that someone can defuse it is to teach them how. And while there are professionals for that, you could never trust anyone else to do anything. You always had to be the one to do. You would have insisted I stay just teach me yourself because that was the only way to know for sure that I knew. It was the only way to give me a chance.

(Music fades out)

In theory, that isn’t so bad. Quite the opposite. But that’s ignoring how unhappy I was in that place or how I was held back by the people I had grown up with who happily stayed. I don’t know if you would have noticed all of that. Or how. I can’t know. And that’s the exact thing you were talking about.

(Beep. New music fades in)

Mom tried to hold everything together after you died. Meanwhile, I was falling apart and wanted it to stay that way. It felt easier, and there are problems with my approach, I know, but one the other hand, her approach ran over me. It crushed me with no warning or chance to jump out of the way. 

I get it. Life had to move. But I wasn’t ready. Objectively I just wasn’t ready.

That wasn’t the only wedge that developed between me and Mom, but it was the most avoidable. Because it’s not like she doesn’t miss you or care. She does, just as much as I do. Long after the funeral and the prescribed mourning period was over, I heard her crying in the living room at night, even after she remarried. And I know it was about you. It always was.

I felt it too, that sadness, but I didn’t comfort her. I… I couldn’t bring myself to. It felt like I was repaying her in some way by just going back to bed on nights like that and saying nothing, but I don’t know anymore. Maybe I was just being spiteful. But I still don’t understand why she had to remarry.

I learned pretty quickly that people get married for a whole slew of reasons. Not just love or any other noble reason like that. Sometimes it’s just practical or the need to manufacture a feeling that really can’t come into existence that way.

I don’t know if Mom married Stepdad because by then, she was used to having a husband or thought that so much of her pain and fear could be softened by simply having another person by her side to help her walk through life.  But I mean, that’s why he did. As I got older, Stepdad was more and more honest with me, but it’s not like he ever pretended to love. He told me that he didn’t enter the union out of romantic love. He did admire Mom and hoped his three daughters would learn a thing or two about womanhood from her. But that was about it.

He wasn’t particularly mean to me, but because of all that, he didn’t think we had any reason to interact. And I think he was right. It was just hard to co-exist in that space and not expect him to be some sort of resource to me. Not a dad. But also not a lingering stranger. Something in-between

None of that is relevant for the divorce just like it wasn’t really relevant for the marriage when it happened. They made their choices. We all make our choices. And maybe we pretend there’s always more to it in a good and wonderful sense, but really, we’ll probably just be disappointed if we look too much into it.

Sometimes things just happen. 

(Music fades out. Beep.)