My father was not good at showing his feelings…unless he was mad. I didn’t have a close relationship with him after I was past that “little kid” stage. I just don’t think he knew how to interact with kids over eight years old. He used to stop by my elementary school playground yard when his postal mail route took him there during my recess. He’d stand at the chainlink fence and watch us playing dodgeball until I noticed him and ran over to him. It was a happy occurrence and one of the last memories I have of much interaction with him. I expect he changed for some reason that I’ll never find out. I know he wasn’t happy, but he was an honorable man who stuck around and went to work he hated every day, and took care of paying the bills for his family until the day he died. My brother, who was much older than I was, was great at showing his feelings toward me. When I was little, he’d let his pet snake out of the cage to terrorize me and tell me it was going to bite me. Still, we actually developed a close relationship, and he wound up being more of a father figure than my Dad was. My Dad finally had a stroke that left him paralyzed on his side and unable to speak. Funny how those last years he was animated and happy to see me…and now couldn’t talk to tell me that. The stroke definitely changed him in many ways. Today was a huge torrential thunderstorm and it put me in a mood, I guess. Half inch hail completely covered the yard and the dry creek overflowed. It wasn’t what I planned on having today. When things in life don’t turn out perfect, you can’t let it defeat you. You may never fully understand why, but you can’t let it get you down.
1 Comment
Rose
7/18/2017 01:56:18 pm
Boy Greg, I understand this even though my father was caring and involved in all of my growing up years. My father-in-law was emotionally absent from his children, mainly his sons, due to mental illness and electro-shock therapy, and that did a number on their understanding of what healthy relationships involved. I’m still walking out from under the secondary emotional abuse that engendered in and from ”him.” Tomorrow night I’ll be sharing with people in a MADD support group, sharing what I wrote after the manslaughter death of Ken Vieira, and I pray the LORD uses it to bring some healing into the lives of others who’ve experienced tragic sudden loss. Making positive, healing meaning from useless tragedy is what I’ve been about for the past 8 years, and I guess if this was my “assignment”, involuntary as it’s been, I want to carry it out well to please my FATHER in Heaven. You please Him, too, I can tell, so much grace and goodness your way today!
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