Mamacita says:   My father died several years ago: a long, slow, drawn-out process that left my mother and my siblings and me drained and sad, and grateful when the final ending finally ended. I loved my father, with all his faults, and charms, and whimsicalities, and more faults, and understanding, and lack of understanding, and singing, and poetry, and callousness, and sensitivity, his sense of humor, his hilarity, his faults, faults, faults, his betrayals, his loyalties, his insensitivities, and many other words, many contradicting the one before, and all absolutely true.

I’ve posted a lot in the past about my dying father: blind, both legs amputated above the knee, on kidney dialysis, eating via a stomach tube, etc. That was an accurate picture, but it wasn’t the only picture. It is also not the picture I have in my mind’s eye when I think of my father. At least, not usually.

My father – my REAL father – the father who was intact, before the diabetes devoured him, was tall, and strong, and hilarious. He was handsome – Hollywood handsome. He liked new experiences. He liked to travel. He sang. He cracked terrible jokes. He read voraciously.  He was smart – really, really smart. He would have liked to have gone to college, but it wasn’t possible.  Instead, he sent four kids through college, and continued to work day after day in a factory “so we would never have to.”  He tried hard, and he did the best he could with what he had.

Dad wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. He and all of his brothers and their father before them were quick-tempered and easy to, as Mom used to say, “set off.” My Other Sister and I had a daddy who was playful and laughing. My two younger siblings had a daddy who was cranky and yelling. Dad’s illness began long before anybody realized it, including himself, and the personality changes were just brushed aside as part of the aging process or, possibly, his true colors. Nobody actually said “true colors, ” but we all thought it.

It wasn’t until both of dad’s legs had been amputated and he was blind and bedridden and too weak to feed himself or turn over, that we all realized that the diabetes had begun to affect his mind long before it took his body.

He stayed at home and Mom took care of him. I don’t think she went anywhere for three or four years, except her hasty runs to the grocery and drugstores while Dad was at dialysis.

As I said, he was a fantastic father to his older children. With the younger kids, his various illnesses had started to affect him, and things in the house were different. Some of it wasn’t his fault, and some of it was. In this way, he was no different from any of us. Whatever may have crossed his mind from time to time, he never entertained the thought of leaving his family. I’m sure he was tempted to, as who isn’t? In fact, we KNOW he was tempted, but he had made a promise and he kept it. In my parents’ home, promises meant something.

On Father’s Day, I will think of my father with love and a few head-shakings and a lot of forgiveness and smiling. And, a few things that I haven’t forgiven yet.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. I knew all along that mean yelling daddy wasn’t really you.

In the picture, you see my father before he was struck down. That is my brother’s motorcycle, but Dad liked to take it around town of a late afternoon.

So did I, in fact. Please don’t tell Mom.

(I add to this post a little bit every Father’s Day.  If some of it seems familiar, thank you for being a loyal reader!)