Guest Author“Oh father, maybe someday, when I look back I’ll be able to say you didn’t mean to be cruel…somebody hurt you, too.”
If I can let the above quote settle in my mind, without cringing because it’s a Madonna lyric, so can you.
An overwhelming number of friends and peers from my generation had absent fathers. In fact, the term “deadbeat dad” dates back only to about 1975-1980. Such a phenomenon was practically unheard of before then. What a legacy. The era that gave us sideburns, PTSD, and Disco Duck also popularized absentee-parenting.
If you’re my age, wading through the waters of your mid-40s, this comes as no surprise. Just check out Facebook.
Before abandoning social media, I found fascinating the differences between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day posts.
On Mother’s Day, people posted pictures of their moms from back when perms were as prevalent as second-hand smoke. Touching tributes detailing all the ways in which they loved these important women. Fond memories often included undying gratitude for sacrifices they’d made to ensure a happy life for their children.
Father’s Day? Not so much.
Too many ambivalent, bitter, or downright angry posts about men who left their kids behind to struggle through childhood and adolescence without financial or emotional help. Some expressed gratitude back to mom again, for being both mother and father through hard times.
Now these absent fathers, men we barely know, are growing old, dealing with regret, and dying.
Where does that leave us? We are still their children, whether we like it or not.
Years ago, friends started hearing from estranged dads, and some were thrilled to reject those bastards the way they’d themselves been rejected years earlier.
This troubled me.
We don’t have to welcome returning fathers with open arms, but what’s wrong with forgiveness? When a family member or loved one reaches out, we are obliged to reach back. Blocking a person’s mea culpa is bad karma. To quote that groovy Buddha, it’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
That means we’d become them, and who wants that?
My own dad disappeared on Christmas Day, 1984, and remained missing for over 20 years before Googling me in 2006. When he reached out, I had no choice but to practice what I preached and reach back.
I forgave him. For valuing alcohol and drugs over his children. For leaving my mother to raise us alone. For passing down unruly hair and a large forehead. I have no idea what will happen when he gets sick and passes away. It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.
My father-in-law died in March.
Mitch had been arrested and thrown in jail when my husband Marc was 14. Mitch believed because he’d attended Columbia University, and some yeshiva in Israel, he was smart enough to get away with grand larceny and conspiracy.
He was wrong.
A few years later, as Marc wound his way through high school and started college, his father was released and attempted another illegal scheme to make money. That didn’t work either. Instead of returning to prison, Mitch fled to Arizona and remained a fugitive for the rest of his life.
He snuck back home for our wedding and our sons’ bar mitzvah celebration, but the years were not kind to Mitch. When someone gets older and experiences deep regret, sometimes that guilt manifests itself in bad behavior. If you know a grumpy old man, chances are he’s made some serious mistakes along the way and that’s why he’s now impossible to be around.
Those mistakes don’t necessarily indicate he was a deadbeat dad, like ours. It could be that he regrets how he treated his loved ones, doesn’t know how to make amends, or is suffering on some other level. He’s trapped in a prison of his own design and doesn’t realize he holds the key to unlock those chains and shackles.
It’s a seriously sad and heavy scene.
That’s how Mitch died. Unbelievably cruel to his children in the last two years of his life, he lost touch with everyone and died alone.
He died while we were on a family vacation in Key West, and we couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony and think, “Of course.” It was so like him.
I took a long walk the morning after he passed, thinking about him, and all our dysfunctional dads. Mitch’s own father was abusive and cruel. Same with my father’s father. Instead of breaking the cycle, they continued it.
Leaving to us that enormous responsibility, and gift.
I breathed in their pain and suffering, and breathed out compassion and love. It seemed like the least I could do, in between rum runners.
Our sons asked about their Zayde (Yiddish for grandfather) and we thought about how to observe his passing.
“Maybe tonight at midnight, we’ll wake you up and say ‘Get dressed, we have to leave … can’t make rent this month’ just to relive a favorite memory from childhood,” Marc told them, with a sad laugh. “Or maybe I won’t make five months of payments and we can gather around to see our car repossessed.”
Both boys looked at us with wide eyes.
“Is that true, Dad? Did that happen to you?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t so bad,” Marc said. “He taught me to be a better kind of father.”
That’s not the only thing our deadbeat dads taught us. The lessons go deeper than fatherhood. They taught us to look at life with grace and humor. They taught us to shower ourselves and others with compassion and love. They taught us how to make mistakes and amends. They taught that this type of behavior ensures a life without regret.
They taught us the value of a great bad example.
Tuesday night, for Yom Kippur, we lit a yahrzeit candle for Mitch and all our absent fathers, still paying dearly for past mistakes. We, their children, have all the power. Let’s release them with our gratitude and forgiveness.
Alav ha-shalom.
Catherine Durkin Robinson co-parents twin sons, organizes families for advocacy purposes, writes syndicated columns, mentors kids, runs a few races, and is determined to see the upside of everything, including curly hair. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
