My father died when I was fifteen years old; an event that has been the most intense trauma I have ever faced. He had a stroke on November 7, 1966 and died two days later. Any sense of innocence was demolished. My confused and curious heart turned into a cold, hardened rock which was way beyond my comprehension. I was numb for years and didn’t really cry about his death until I was forty.  That was when my mother in law’s death made me face that fact that I hadn’t dealt with my dad’s demise.

The story line I have been running with after much evaluation, consternation and obsession about his death and how it affected me; was that he was historically disappointed in my character, lack of direction and low intelligence. I believed he died hating me and that he viewed me as an incompetent loser. I recently gave up on the idea of ever knowing if my father ever really loved me or not. It was terribly sad to come to this conclusion, but I found solace knowing that I didn’t have to keep spinning the question if he truly loved me or not. I was actually doing a good job of letting this go and believe me, I know what the experience is like to be unwilling or unable to let go of memories and thoughts that cause emotional pain.

This was all going on a productive path until my sister and her family came to visit this past December. My sister shared that she has loving memories of my dad and that she wished that I did. She said that she had photos that captured how loving a family we had. I was skeptical, but anxiously awaited for the photos to be dropped into my email.

They arrived this week and I am still in a state of shock. There are family pictures taken when I was four and my sister two that include scenes of my father and mother smiling upon the two of us children. There are pictures of him holding us in his arms and he looks joyful and relaxed; feelings that are totally antithetical to my long term belief system. I looked amazingly happy in these photos, my bucked teeth were shiny and lips curled into spontaneous laughter.

There is one photo of me laying with my dad in a grassy field with later 1950’s cars surrounding the area. The picture was taken in July of 1957 and I was six years old. He has his arm around me and I remember loving the very smell of him. I look relaxed, non-pulsed and a state I have been searching for years-safe. I am crying now as I look at this picture and I am not sure what I am supposed to or want to feel. I want to crawl inside this photo and hold my dad and never let him go.

The pictures don’t lie. It is clear that were many times where I experienced a care free, supportive and unconditional love. I am wondering why I created this script where my father hated me my whole life.

Looking back on it, he may have been sick for a long time. The TIA’s and the life killing stroke may have had other origins working on deteriorating his brain for many years. Perhaps he gradually lost his mind and then one ugly late fall date, he was struck down way before his time at age 56. I remember my mother and sister picking me up early from basketball practice; the look on her face radiated hopelessness, sadness and shock. I knew at that moment my life would never be the same again.

I remember my father doing weird and dangerous things like driving very fast on the New Jersey Turnpike in the middle of summer. He kept weaving in and out of his lane; car horns were blasting as the Four Tops sang I Can’t Help Myself on the radio. I was afraid to say anything and secretly hoped that I was imagining the whole scene.

I also remember that shortly after that he came home early from work. My mom told me that he got fired from his job because he forgot to ask permission to leave for vacation. I don’t remember exactly when she told me this. I realize now that I was living in a state of denial because my father’s physical and mental breakdown was too overwhelming for a fifteen year old boy to process. My mother had her own difficulty coping with this. She didn’t get any answers from my father’s doctor, but he had to know what was causing my father to suffer so much.

Later that fall, my dad put too much bleach in the wash that produced white streaks in my black jeans(trendy today, but very weird then). I remember him locating some black paint and a brush. He painted the white streaks black and the pants were too heavy to wear after that. My mother noticed this strange behavior, but she had no community support to help her deal with this unfolding tragedy.

The most difficult and prominent memory I have of my father is the day he became totally enraged at me. I don’t remember why he was so mad, but you could see the smoke coming out of his ears. He was like a volcano.

His never had much patience for me, but now it was non-existent. He advanced toward me in a menacing, attacking stance. Before he could strike me, I punched him in the stomach. I don’t think I was angry, I was afraid that he would hurt me and I was tired of being abused, so I initiated a preemptive blow and punched him in the stomach. I waited for him to retaliate, but he never did. He just looked at me and his facial expression said, “How could do this to me?” Instead of smacking or pummeling me in the face or other part of my body, while he was doubled over from my punch, he walked away and out of the room and out of my life forever.

He never really talked to me again after that day. He would either looked through me with a totally vacant stare or ignored my presence when I was near him. That is how we left things and shortly after that he was dead. I was fifteen, perhaps the worst age to lose a parent. Our relationship was completely severed. Unlike most boys and their fathers who had high conflict relationships, there was no opportunity to work through our differences.

So looking through these photos now, I think I understand that because of the dismal state of our relationship; the guilt of hurting him and my extreme sense of abandonment caused me to create a non-nuanced black and white story about his death. My amygdala’s fight or flight response created an infinite scanning of my surroundings to insure I was safe. This part of my brain created a narrative that my entire life with my father was negative. I was to hold on to these traumatic memories and discard pleasant ones in order to protect me from danger. I was in full blown survival mode for decades. I was unable to deal with ambiguities and I felt so all alone. How could I hit my father?  Later, learning that he was sick when this incident occurred, ramped up my self-loathing. It defined my shame.

The shame from striking my father and never having the opportunity to work through this incident with him caused many hours of beating myself up, drug abuse and being unnecessarily mean to others I deeply cared about. Having a clear story that he hated me from the time I was born until he died was the least confusing narrative to fall back on.

I also needed to hold on to the negative memories because my spirit would have been totally crushed if I allowed loving feelings about my father to enter my teenage world. It was all about being all alone in survival mode.

I look at this peaceful photo of the two of us laying in the grass together, feeling happy and protected. Then I have the memory of my dad doubled over in pain from my punch to his solar plexus. Then I see him walking away with fear, disillusion, hopelessness and condemnation of me in his eyes.

I realize that I keep returning to this memory because I so much want to have a happy ending to this story. I imagine that my father and I sit down and talk about this incident. He tells me that he was out of his mind at the time and he was all reaction and no longer possessed rational thought. His brain was rapidly losing connections that would have righted the ship. He tells me that he loves me and admires the man that I have become. I ask him to please forgive me for hitting him and he tells me that I have nothing to be sorry about, that he knows that I was only trying to protect myself. We talk about how the American institutions let him down: The medical system did not lift a finger to help him when he was sick, no organization reached out to our family for support, organized religion was only concerned that my dad didn’t have a Jewish name and the funeral process had the gravediggers working in the middle of the service. My father would say that America doesn’t care about the working man, but he knows that I do and he gives me his blessing to fight the good fight.

I will always have these horrible memories of the events leading up to his death, but I don’t need to have this one sided story any more. I am beginning to understand that we were a loving, together, bonded family at one time and then my dad became ill. I am proud and happy to embrace the warm memories.

My dad did love me and I can feel his spirit raining down. I am connected to him in these pictures as I suddenly feel his love without trying to define what this means or where it is coming from. I am open to expanding my truth. These black and white photos taken so long ago, warm my heart.

Learn to let go here.