My Father Had No Father.

A friend of mine shared with me a copy of the eulogy he read at his father’s recent funeral. It was a deftly written description of his elders life, love and heritage. As I read it, it crossed my mind that I may be called upon to do the same someday. I began to consider it’s content and realized that I was not as aware of my father’s, and thus my own, family history in a similar way. I’d had almost no contact with my mother’s parents. On my father’s side, it was just his mother.

My grandmother raised my father on her own. My father’s father had come to Minnesota from Canada, met my grandmother, created a child, and didn’t stick around for very long. He played no real part in my father’s life but was a very important influence. I say that because every living day of my father’s life, his father towered above him like a looming dark cloud. It seems difficult to accept given the large group of close relatives who effectively raised him in the small town "village" of Stillwater, MN. He had loving, close family ties all his life. But at the end of the day it was what he didn’t have that held great power.

Many years ago, just before she passed away, my grandmother sat across from me at a picnic table. It was a family reunion. We were in the campground dance hall and the music was loud. The atmosphere was gay but her face showed concern.

"What will he do without me?"

"Who?" I said.

"Your father, I’m worried about who will take care of him when I’m gone."

"I think he’s big now grandma. He’ll be able to take care of himself."

"His father was only here for a while. He was handsome. I made a..."

I nodded that I understood. She didn’t need to say it.

"You were the strong one Scott. Can you take care of him?"

She was near tears.

I nodded, "Yes" because I knew that’s what she wanted to hear.

Grandma was a tough cookie. She’d never revealed any weakness like that to me before. I could see that this had been on her mind as something she wanted to reconcile at this gathering. I was surprised by her attention and her plea. Clearly she had viewed herself as being the manager of my father’s life for his entire existence. And on that I would agree, he worships her. You can see it in his hoarding of her things after her death and how the mere mention of her name can silence him and force a concerted effort at holding in the pain of living without her.

When we asked about using an old blue floral couch in my father’s basement for my eldest daughters dorm room he said, "That was my mother’s couch. In a dorm room?"

With great reluctance he let it go but we never could admit to him what the disposition of it was once she moved out. It was even hard for me to toss it into the college dumpster because I knew that my father likely could somehow feel pain from it.

As a divorced man having dated a single mother with a child, I’ve gained a little insight into the regrets and guilt that single mother’s carry. They see themselves as having made poor decisions that led to their child’s plight and they have a difficult time letting that go. It can be an ever present attitude that deeply effects the kind of parent they are. I always viewed my grandmother as wickedly controlling and long hoped for my father to be free of her manipulations. Particularly after her death, I hoped that my father would feel free of her judgements and become a happy, unencumbered man.

But grandma’s family reunion concerns were unfounded because she continues to influence his every waking hour. Her lifetime of guidance has embedded itself so firmly into my father that her passing only represented the discontinuation of the use of her body. Everything else remains unchanged. My father has always loved her more than anything because in the formative years of his life, she was all he had. She had earned his loyalty.

His want to make any kind of connection with his father did lead to trips to Canada where he came to know several relatives but his father gave him only denials and disassociation. So he was never able to gain any acknowledgment or acceptance from someone who, by their mere absence, had come to mean a lot to him. My father always wanted to be the father that he never had. But with nothing to draw upon, it was like chasing a ghost in the wind. Instead, he became the mother that he did have. He worries like a mother. He cries like a mother. He’s loyal like a mother and he loves like a mother.

My father had no father, but I do. And he need not worry who will take care of me when he’s gone.