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Recently my father underwent open heart surgery. This is an excerpt from my journal that I thought might spark some interesting conversation ….
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Years ago, I learned that each moment in our lives is some kind of Choice Point. We're making decisions all the time … do I do this or that? Sometimes, the decision seems minute and unimportant and other times it's a profound, apparent life-changing decision. We are not always aware of how profoundly our decisions can effect others.
My Dad's not perfect. I've been aware of this most of my life (as a kid, I worshiped him). After my Mom died, Dad married one of the women with whom he'd had an affair. At the time, it made a warped kind of sense. He'd confided in me that he'd never been alone, and didn't want to figure out, that late in life, how to do it (he was in his 60's), and here was this woman who claimed to want him, and she was a familiar place to be. Dad rather got the shock of his life when she cut him off from sex right after the marriage, claiming she'd only said she enjoyed it, to win him. Dad, being who he is, didn't take long before he started to stray. To keep her man, my dad's wife took measures …. I won't detail them here … to assure he didn't succeed. Fast forward thirteen years.
The end result of the steps to ensure my dad's fidelity, created a slowly developed, vast rift between Dad and his kids. By the time he was in the hospital what this looked like was: his wife (I have a very hard time calling her a step-mother) treated all us kids rather like obligatory, secondary citizens. It wasn't until I was in the same hospital room with her and Dad that I really *got* how vast was that gulf between us, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Again, no need for details, but it ended with us kids having the feeling of being excluded (whether intentionally or not), with very hurt feelings as a bonus. And a couple of very ugly scenes.
All this has caused us siblings to rally 'round each other and support each other in a way we haven't done since our mom's death nearly fifteen years ago. It's pretty amazing to see how we've all set aside some of the differences between us to see the common ground. We've worked through the worst of things and now I/we have a very odd sense of peace over the whole thing. At first, I was concerned that I was “detaching” or being in denial. But, all the feelings are there, just softened by an (almost enforced) acceptance of what is. After we all got through the resentment, the love took over. It's nearly epiphanous.
And, I'm sitting here, looking back and realizing how deeply one choice can impact so many. When my Dad decided to accept the “call” of this woman, he chose her over his children. Even at the time, we all kind of looked at him and said, “Dad! What're you doin'!!??” And because she's a caustic presence (and trust me when I say I'm being polite with that term), most of us pulled away to some extent, and he drifted more toward those people who met a different standard. Okay. His choice. He's allowed to make those kinds of decisions in his life. I don't, for a minute, think he did so consciously, with an awareness of how it would look and feel fifteen years down the road. And, yet, those decisions ended up hurting those he loved. And we, in turn, nearly hurt each other … very much.
I am VERY proud of his children. We have all chosen to not reciprocate in kind … instead, we're loving him through this hard time and treating his wife with a deference she doesn't afford us, and if/when he survives this … and if it still seems worth the effort … we'll let him in on our epiphanies. That his choice to remain married to her pushed us away - and it hurt. Deeply. And we love him, anyway.
'Course … he already knows what that feels like, I'm sure. It's not like some of the choices we kids have made, made sense to him … and he loved us, anyway.
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