A letter from dad

Son,

I'm dying for real this time. Slowly, but definitively.There are things I need to tell you, things you need to hear.

I'm sorry I was a lousy father. I loved you, and still do. I loved you as much as I could. But I was also a raging maniac other times. I'm sorry for the times I said you were a terrible son. I'm sorry for melting down in front of you, with no one to help you. I'm sorry I made physically threatening movements to you and your mother; I didn't intend to follow through on them, but you, as a child, didn't know that. I'm sorry I asked you for money, and never paid it back. I'm sorry I put myself in the hospital for using meth.

I'm sorry for the smaller, but still hurtful, things too. I'm sorry I broke so many promises to quit smoking, and exposed you to tons of secondhand smoke. I'm sorry I needed you to pay for everything. I'm sorry I paraded you around the halfway houses and institutions, not only because I was proud of you, but because I was using you and your success to legitimize my existence.

I'm sorry I didn't teach you how to be a man.

I'm sorry I use "couldn't" when I should say "wouldn't". Maybe if I had tried harder, some of these things would have happened.

I will go to my end to accept what judgment may come. But I hope, now, I can teach you a few things.

Please learn from my mistakes. I was 63 when my father died. Part of me never felt free from him. I let him, or what I thought of him, hold me back for most of my life. You will be younger when your father dies, but it's still been too damn long to wait. When I'm gone, life won't get better. I'm not saying it will get worse. But you will retain your ambivalence toward me, and by extension, your own identity, even after I'm gone, if you don't work to challenge those beliefs today.

Please find something to do with your life that both gives you pride and makes you a better person every day. My job as an engineer gave me the former, but it didn't always do the latter. I could've made it about patriotism, about the pursuit of excellence, but I ended up making it about myself, and how I was "the best engineer that ever walked through those doors". I clung to those words from my boss, and never questioned whether I really earned them, or if they actually should be meaningful for me.

Please, please, don't wait for someone to fix your life for you. I waited for decades, entertaining dreams of going back to school, going back to work. But to be honest, I was scared. I didn't want to face the reality that maybe I was unhireable, maybe I didn't have my mental illnesses under control. I chose to not try rather than fail, or accept a job with less prestige and pay.

And finally, please, try to love life. I've stayed alive despite everything because I enjoy myself. Too much sometimes, I know. But you're a goddamn party pooper. Go get laid. Try not to take yourself so seriously; you've read enough biographies to know that a good sense of humor and a willingness sometimes to leap before you look are qualities of some of the great men in history. Pull the stick out of your ass and go fight the world with said stinky stick.

Sorry, I tried to inject some humor into a pretty serious letter. Don't think it worked. Know that I love you, but didn't show it well. Decide what you needed from me, and didn't get, and go find it elsewhere. I say this not dismissively, but humbly, knowing that I failed in many ways.

Remember the good times, too. Our lives can and should be judged not by specific moments of pain, but by the sum total of experiences. It's how we learn to forgive ourselves and others. In time, I hope you can forgive me.

Love,

Dad