My Father

My father never understood the art of communication. I guess I can’t really say never with complete certainty, as I was too young to know what he was like before my mother died. I guess it’s possible that when my mother died, he lost his connection with the outside world, turning off all thoughts and feelings.

Or he may have always been that way. They say that extremely bright people often lack essential life skills. I don’t remember anyone ever saying that he had changed after my mother died. All I know for sure is that my father was a silent and distant man, who spent his days working and his evenings in his garage, alone with his machines and his tools.

I never knew any other way when I was young, and so did not understand that other families lived differently from ours. I never knew that in other families, fathers would ask how your day was over dinner, listen to what you had to say, and maybe help you with your homework or toss a ball after the dishes were done. I never knew that fathers could be anything more than a closed door. My father never explained or discussed anything - why he gave our cat away, why we couldn’t go to movies on a school night, what was the meaning of life.

I managed to grow up and move away. I had no concept of a caring and supportive parent, so it was not difficult for me to adjust to being alone. Whatever I needed to learn about living, I learned on my own, as it had always been.

My own life has been punctuated by tragedies. Over the number of years I have lived it hasn’t seemed that terrible, but if I said them all at once in a few sentences, you would wonder how I have survived.

It’s been easy, really. As each sorrow has healed, a veneer of scar tissue has formed over the wound to my heart. Each time there was a new hurt, the scar tissue became thicker. And the less each new hurt has been able to cut my heart. My heart still beats, it keeps me alive, but it is muffled under the layers of scars. The ability to communicate grief, even to myself, is strangled.

The scar tissue over my heart protects me from pain. But it also protects me from joy. Being unable to grieve has made me unable to rejoice.

I am my father.