Get Off The Ground: We Shared Blue Genes

Jerry,

It’s been a few years since I first saw your obituary online. It was less than 30 words in total. It said you died on January 2, 2012, in a hospital in Redding, CA, and that you had lung cancer. You were only 69 years old. There was nothing much else descriptive. Nothing about family or friends. Just a short passage about your passing.

On the day before Father’s Day this year, over eight years later, I looked for it again. I found the listing, but when I clicked on the link, the page no longer existed. I searched for it but I couldn’t find it anywhere else.

You had died seven months before our dad, and almost a full year before our mom. I've never really thought much about how close all the deaths were, because I didn't even know about yours until a few years afterward.

The last time I saw you I was 13 and my sister Kristen was 11. I'm sure you remember that day. It was supposed to be a visitation day for you, although I don’t remember what time of the year it was. I only remember paralyzing fear from what was about to transpire. We had already told a judge that we didn't want to see you anymore and you must've been notified about that.

You came to our front door dressed in a untucked light collared shirt and blue jeans (I think). You may have also been wearing that a straw cowboy hat you wore the few times we were with you since the divorce. I do remember you held a grocery bag full of dirty carrots you said you had pulled from your garden and were for us.

Kristen and I practiced what we were going to say, but what seemed like an eternity went by before anybody said anything. She stood slightly behind me, one hand on the back of my shirt.

I'm not sure what I said, if anything. You must have sensed how we felt, because you said, "So, you don’t want to see me anymore?"

I nodded slowly. I felt Kristen pull on my shirt. Then you set the carrots down and said, "Goodbye kids."

And that was it. All I remember. We never heard from you again. At least I didn't. Decades later you and Kristen actually got together and talked. She told me she was glad that happened.

But you and I never did. And so, I never really knew you, Jerry. I only remember you as a man who was supposed to be Dad, who smoked and drank a lot. Who was either very angry at Mom, at us, or very quiet and depressed. I was always so scared of you, too, because you hit Mom, and I always worried you'd hit all of us. I could only fantasize of standing up to you, of yelling at you and hurting you for hurting Mom.

I'll never forget the fights and the pain you caused Mom. Kristen and I would sometimes huddle together in my room to wait for the fighting to stop. Or, I'd go hide in the treehouse you had built for me years earlier. I'll never forget how miserable you made us. The shitty things you did.

There were rare moments of feeling like a family, and the last Christmas we spent together was one of the happiest I'd ever seen you. You told us all you were sorry. You may have even cried a little when you said to us, "There's no place like home."

I never really knew you, though. And yet, I remember that I never seemed to be the boy you wanted either. My severe allergies and asthma hindered my limited athletic abilities at the time. I was skinny and shy and only remember feeling disappointment from you back then.

I didn't hate you then, though. I was scared and angry then, but I didn't hate you. No, that came after you and Mom divorced and we found ourselves in a new and abusive house with a man who hurt us all. Mom was just trying to find stability for us, but we had no idea he would emotionally, psychologically and sexually abuse us. That was a scary two and a half years.

I know that's not your fault, but it was compounded by the fact that we still had to see you for those years, which we never enjoyed. I never felt like you really wanted us around anyway. That you really didn't like us. You probably wouldn't have helped us even if you knew what was going on. That's why I started to hate you.

But none of that matters anymore. Not one fucking bit. Not then, and certainly not now. Because I never saw you again after that day on our porch when I was 13. You were just my birth father.

And not once after that day did you try to contact me. Not once. That's why I hated you more. Our second step-father, the one whose name we took when he adopted us a few years after he and Mom got married, he was the one we called Dad and will always call Dad. I miss him and Mom every single day.

I know I didn't try to contact you either, but you were my birth father, and I your son. Why didn't you try? What the hell happened to you in your life to make you that way? You never knew how hard it was for us until Mom married Dad. How hard it was for me at the end of high school and well into my 20's. How I had severe anxiety attacks, and how smoked and drank too much, just like you did. How miserable I made my first failed marriage. The shitty things I did.

You never saw me graduate college, to be the first in our family to do so. You never saw me move to Santa Cruz where I met the love of my life. How I traveled the world with her. How we had two daughters of our own. How I'm a father who loves his children, who cares about them deeply and who wants them to always be emotionally and physically safe. How my wife and I are raising them to be strong, smart, independent and inclusive women and people. How we're doing it all in the middle of a global pandemic.

You never knew any of that, and I never knew you. Never really knew why you struggled. Never knew why you didn't have the capacity to care for yourself, or for us. The only thing I ever really knew is that we shared blue genes, and that I overcame them, and you did not.

I am sorry you died alone, Jerry. I really am. And for the first time in my life, I forgive you. Happy Father's Day.