Compassion Sold Separately

My favorite cousin greets me just before midnight when my flight lands. No matter how lovely she is or how many of my favorite relatives insist on living in this city, I hate it. We embark on the long drive to her house. The conversation launches into family relations, it's unavoidable. Speaking of the unavoidable, we inevitably get around to talking about my father. He is in town and the family is fairly pissed at him. 

I don't know how other families are, but in this family if you hear about an incident from more than one person....it's HUGE. If two people mention it, someone is livid and it might not even be one of the two you heard it from. We're an odd bunch, I'm just at the beginning of figuring out how this family functions and I can tell we're odd. 

The story goes like this. My Grandfather is 88, fairly forgetful about daily things, having angina attacks, uses a walker and his wife of 66 years is....I'll get to that....but you can see that he needs a hand with things, right? On top of it all he's in the process of moving from one care facility to another. My father volunteers to transport Grampa from one facility to the other with a few possessions. This will tell you how literal my father is. He picks Grampa up and drops him off. Read: Grampa waits in his room for his son to fetch him....while his son waits in the car out front. Grampa has a cell phone and is worried, but my father refuses to have a cell phone. Grampa finally wanders outside and finds his son, then goes back to his room to get some things (alone) gathers what he can balance on his walker and goes back outside to load it in the car. My father drives Grampa to the other care facility, helps him unload the things onto the walker, gets back in the car and drives off. Grampa walks his carefully balanced load to his room.

Now, I helped Grampa (carried his old war uniform while my Uncle carried the 150-200 lb safe) to his room and let me tell you, it's a LONG WALK. It's a huge facility, built like a labyrinth. Dropping a gent such as my Grampa at the door is rude. I heard about this incident from 5 people. 

Hey good news! By the time I arrived my father was already on the shit list. 

It went downhill for both of us from there. 

Bedrock

I'm flying out tonight. My Grandmother is sick and it's bad. I wasn't going to go, the whole selfish routine of not wanting to see her in this condition. I was going to wait for the services. Seems almost everyone is going this weekend though. People coming from all over the continent. So I leave in 11 hours. 

I'm making the trip to reconnect with my family, not to see my Grandmother. I know that reads poorly. Such is life. She is suffering with dementia along with numerous other illnesses. It will be torture to see her in her condition. She's my Grandmother though...she is worth it. It's likely the last time I will see her...as the medical community doesn't expect that she will see September. You know how lil' ol' ladies are though. She could be around in 2 years....she's stubborn like that. 

Let's get to why I'm here today; my birth father. It's a tangled web. In fact it's one of those tangled webs that if I did attempt to give you a grasp of it....you'd think it fiction. Coles notes anyone? My Mom was a teenage Mom. My father was a jerk. I'm a child of divorce. Easy right? Except then there is this part about fleeing across the country with my Mom because my father wanted to be that crazy fucker on the news that killed his ex-wife. I didn't see him for years and years. 

He and I have opposite personalities. Our relationship doesn't exist. I can make a whole bunch of excuses to defend him, coupled with a bunch more to defend me. Fact is, he's a jerk. There's just no way around that. He's not one of those unemployed, slimy, poverty stricken jerks though. He's a millionaire by marriage, uber clean, retired, cigar smoking fellow. 

My father believed that writing me a letter every 2-5 months, sending me a cheque routinely, and seeing me every few years equaled a relationship. No calls, no real exchange of time. The letters were about as personal as what my lawyer sends me. No wait....my lawyer cares about me more. So when my first child was born I got mouthy. I insisted that he try harder, get to know his grandchild and let the child get to know him. After all, I knew (and still know) almost nothing about my father. I tried for years to get to know him to no avail. I wanted better for my child. So I tried to open the lines of communication and relay that I didn't want money....I wanted a relationship.  

His response was to disown me. Completely disown me, 100%. He did it in writing, documented.

Add in a healthy dose of family drama now. He got to go to his siblings and parents and tell his version. It wasn't hard....I never really knew them at all. I saw them in 1987, then another time in 1998. That's it. So he got to say whatever he wanted. Time passed, people grew up (mostly me). I reconnected with the family 18 months ago. It was profound for all of us. There was laughter, hugging, drinking and tears. Since then the family has gathered around me a lot, VERY few will speak of what happened between my father and I. There are some that still believe him. He will be there when I arrive tonight. So I'm taking all the documents (photocopies) with me. They are impossible to refute. 

I've been to 3 therapists about our letter exchange, all of which are astounded that he wrote three pages of insults and abuse in response to my letter. My letter wasn't flowers and carebears, but it was not abusive or insulting. 

I will not start shit. I'm not stupid though. More than 20 of us hanging out, booze flows and the curious questions start. I've heard stories...lots of stories. It's not unusual for the dirty laundry to be aired over bottles of vodka and Crown Royal. I'm taking the evidence. He stated that it was now "chiseled in bedrock"....I won't hesitate to make him choke on that. I know I'm not over this. I've accepted that I might never be. What I'm excited about is that I love myself now, I respect my life and my choices. I'm a stronger now.....and he has no idea. 

I'm not going to stir shit up. However, I think it's poor planning to leave "check-mate" at home.