I wrote a verse in 2014 on Father’s Day, called “Fatherless,” because my biological father was out of my life before I had any memories of him. My mother was married three more times each time bringing a new father figure. Last month I found out the last one had died and left me contemplating the roll of each.
My biological father was a tormented soul. He served in the Navy in WWII and I am told he was never the same when he returned. His torment drove him alcohol which became a demon to him. He would drink, become abusive, and then take his rage out on my mother. I heard once, overheard, that her final straw was when he held a gun to my head and dared her to scream. {{Deep breath}} yeah, that was hard to hear. Thankfully, she dug down deep, and even though she was a young 25 year old with small children she left him.
I have no memory before that and he never visited us but when I was 27, I went back to Virginia to visit my Auntie, his sister. He was in the VA hospital suffering ill health from years of alcohol abuse. With my Auntie by my side, I went to see him there. I have to say, I only went out of curiosity. He appeared to be an old man with many regrets. He told a couple of innocent stories about memories he had when I was young. That was it, maybe less than an hour. Strangely enough, I don’t remember how our visit ended. Did I extend an obligatory hug? I don’t know but I doubt it, I was very protective back then.
When my mother left my bio-father, we lived in Texas. She was supporting three small children on her own and working at the Walgreen’s lunch counter in downtown Houston. It was there she met a young East Texas bull rider six years her junior. He was tall and handsome with red hair. They married in 1959; I was three and half years old.
He was not an educated man, but a hard working good ol’ country boy. He did construction work, dug ditches and worked hard to support us. He became my daddy. He held me, brushed my hair and provided lots of love and affection which was tempered by the fact he was a old-school disciplinarian – spare the rod, spoil the child. Any act of disobedience was met with a “whipping” often with a belt. I went to school many times with welt marks across my legs. Today such actions would send child protective services to the home but back then that was the way it was.
When I was fourteen, he left my mother for another woman and just like that he was gone out of my life. I saw him a few times over the years and in the last twenty or so years he would call me on my birthday as our birthdays were two days apart.
As quickly as the tall red-head left, on the rebound, my mother within six months jumped to another marriage. This man was eight years my mother’s senior. He was rough, from North Carolina and he had been in jail, supposedly for check fraud. I don’t know what his intentions were with my mother, but he was wholly inappropriate with me. He was not a father but an abuser. He moved my mother from Texas to Florida where his son lived. I married early and was removed from the situation. After only 3 years my mother left him and moved back to Texas.
Back in Texas, my mother connected with my father-in-law (correct, my husband’s father) and they married. I had always had a strained relationship with him. He was also southern Texas old-school with a bit of the alcohol demon mixed in as well. He could be sweet and caring, or sarcastic and abusive… the more alcohol the more abusive. My kids loved him and his grumpy, cantankerous ways… he was the kind of grumpy old grandpa that young boys find fascinating; they laughed and wondered over his antics.
However, I never understood why my mother tolerated this behavior, but I think she felt she could show him some sort of acceptance and love he lacked in his life. I don’t even want to get into how many run-ins I had with him. He could be inappropriate too, with other women including me. He never became physically abusive like the prior one, mostly inappropriate suggestive speech. Some of it was done in a joking good-old-boy way often in front of my mother.
To say our relationship was contentious was an understatement. I hated the way he treated my mother but my mother would defend him. Once at Father’s Day I made a comment to my mother that I didn’t have to worry about that holiday and she became upset and offended. I told her I did not consider him my father. She harshly reminded me of that statement for many years and would tell me that he really loved me… well, he had a strange way of showing it.
Now they are all gone.
A few years ago I found out that the abusive husband from North Carolina had died in 1980, just seven years after my mother left Florida. I feel nothing. He was dead to me the moment she left him. That marriage was a mistake in every way, and he was certainly not any sort of father figure.
My biological father died in 1986 just three days after his 60th birthday. He died of lung cancer in that same VA hospital I visited him in just a few years earlier. My mother called to tell me he had died. My reaction was unexpected. I cried and cried and I could not understand why. I had not known him at all except through hearing about him and I only had one memory of him. It was perplexing. After a while I became to understand that I was mourning the loss of what could have been, what might have been, but was never to be.
The last one, (my ex-father-in-law) stayed married to my mom for thirty-four years. He was stubborn, cantankerous and abusive until the end. I was there when he passed in 2009, as was my husband, my step sister, my ex-husband (now step-brother) and his wife. It was a hard watching my mom go through this loss and although I did what I could to honor her wishes and help her through this period. I bought yellow roses for his casket but I did not shed a tear.
The most touching thing that stays with me about the day he died was that as one-by-one we slowly left the room, my ex-husband stayed behind with his father. As I looked down the hallway, I saw my current husband waiting as if standing guard outside the room while my ex said his goodbyes. When my ex left the room, my husband reached out and embraced him. It was surreal watching the two men in my life, one grieving a loss and the other comforting him.
Finally, I learned last month that the man who had been my father through my childhood years had died. I had heard from him like I said off and on through the years but much more in the last 3 or 4 years. Several times when I would go to Texas to see my mom I would try to work in a way to go visit, but Texas is a big place and there was never enough time.
The past year after my mom passed away he began calling me more often. I certainly had an affection for him, he filled a void in little girls life, but it was not going to take up where we left off fifty-three years ago. When he left my mother, he abandoned me. The last year he was in a nursing home and began calling me at work, and after the calls got more and more frequent I blocked his number from my work phone.
Early this year he called me one night at 11 pm, I was already asleep and did not answer. He left a very strange message that seemed like he was confused and thought he had called someone else. After a few days I tried to call him back and got no answer. When our birthdays rolled around in September, I called his cellphone, it was disconnected. I called the nursing home and they would not tell me anything. I looked for obituaries, nothing.
Finally, I found a phone number for his younger brother. I called and left a message within the hour he called me back. He told me his brother had passed away March 30 which was only few weeks after the strange late night call.
His brother didn’t really remember me; he was nineteen years younger than his brother and three years younger than me. I thanked him for calling me back and told him that I would be forever grateful to his brother for the role he played in my life. Grateful, but no tears, no grief. Strange really and it has been on my mind the past few weeks trying to sort out these feelings as to why I had no emotional reaction to his death.
Now they are all gone. Did they shape who I am? I think it comes back to my verse so many years ago, I was – Fatherless. That is truly how I see it.
Fatherless
Celebrate your Fathers today,
Know that you are blessed
To have had a loving guiding protector,
That allowed your soul to rest.
To a girl without a Father,
Life lessons were hard learned.
Looking to fill that empty space
In a heart that always yearned.
Substitutes stepped in at times
With promises to love and protect,
But they always went their own way
and left a heart with reject.
I envied and I longed
For a Father to hold in times of need,
Offering comfort With his strong arms ~
In every word and deed.
Now I know, I always had a Father dear.
Present at every trial and turn, sending down his love;
Each time life’s journey overwhelmed,
He was watching from above.
Father’s Day, yet I have none on earth to call my own,
But in heaven I have a wondrous One.
And I will see my Abba’s face,
When my days on earth are done.
© Trish B. 2014
Link to 2014: https://emyloomwordswovenwithinmyheart.com/2014/06/15/fatherless/
Emyloom ~ Words Woven Within My Heart 