Oh goodness PR - how the difference is important to me is a good question. I'm not sure where to start - with your question or what I came here with on my mind. Maybe I'll simply intertwine them.
I have a day off - my precious child is visiting my sister-in-law and her children in FL. We are having a cold snap and I am snuggled up in an empty, quiet Starbucks.
I just received a text from my FL brother that he has received a shipment of furniture and 6 boxes from my late father's wife. She lives right behind me. I can see her house from mine. She never mentioned a word of this to me. I know one of the piece of furniture is a desk in which I had carefully place several items that I wanted and mentioned it to her as I did so over a series of days and weeks.
I have come to see that dealing with her is much like dealing with both of my parents. She is a dreadful mix. Part of what she does in intentional and part is oblivion. All is without regard or concern of those around with a self-smug attitude that she is doing "FOR" others, acting selfless.
The other day, Friday, to be exact, I was sitting quietly and flashed back to the last days of my father's life. He was experiencing a mild delirium, in and out, making sense and not making sense, but one thing that he held to for days on end was a request from me to take him to a local toy and hobby store. He wanted a model and a puzzle. Friday, I was remembering how (unaware at the time) I longed to please him, how I longed to be able to scoop him up out of the bed, load him in my car and take him and together pour over the selection until the right one was found. I longed to please him. I longed to connect with him. I went alone, selected a model - torn because I wanted to get the Korean war tank but it was too complex for his stroke altered dexterity so I selected a WWII airplane that snapped together. There was no puzzle that was appropriate. The ones with pieces large enough for altered hand motion was juvenile in image so I left them all in the store.
But on Friday, it was not what I selected that stood out it was the longing, the never ending longing to please that returned to me.
Take that piece of puzzle and put it into the framework that was given me in the hospital days leading up to these when I learned from the Dr. that my father had used intimidation to control people, mesh it together with my experience of him in which he tolerated only those whom he could intimidate, those who would kowtow to his outrageous, demands whom he would in time reward financially.
It was only in our 30s that my brothers and I no longer gave into his increasingly crazy demands but we always did it with great sorrow but he threw us out of his life like soiled bathwater unless some particular thing came along the he thought he could control us with again.
Because I did not automatically fall in line to his intimidation, I have learned that he would say truly horrible things about me to people, that he would intentionally besmirch my character and reputation. My own father. All the while, I longed to be able to connect, to have that father "back" that I thought he had been as a child.
So here is how that relationship breaks down. The father, intentionally, intimidating his own child - as a 4 year old, a teenager and as an adult. The child, (in decreasing quantities) longing, needing to respond. As a child the need was a survival need, as a teen it slipped into a need to understand how to function in our world, to flourish, looking to my role model who had flourished, and as an adult a mere longing for connection and help in very difficult times. At all times, totally unaware that the way to "receive", "connect" was only to be a shilll, to sell my soul.
But looking back - one of the greatest pains still is that no one cares to understand how horrendous it is and it was to have a father who truly had no love for his children - ZERO. That pain is so great. It is indescribable. And those few people who seem to ask I find out really don't want to know. When I begin to explain or describe I am told, in essense, to move on.
It is not possible to MOVE ON. It takes someone, anyone listening, hearing and affirming the reality that most humans simply don't want to hear. My mother doesn't want to discuss it. My eldest brother no longer speaks to me ( I finally figured out it is due to his wife - all these almost 30 years it has been his wife) and my elder brother is in another world but
[interrupted - to be continued]
