Dear Daddy--
I want you to know I'm really sorry about what happened. You know that-- I know you know that-- because I tell you in my dreams at least once a week and you always tell me that it doesn't matter, it's over with now, we have work to get done. Then you give me an Indian burn and laugh. So I know it's OK with you.
It's not OK with me. I knew you weren't OK when you didn't answer the phone for the second day running. I knew Mom was the only other person who really gave a damn about you, and I knew she couldn't do anything from the nursing home. I knew I should have been the f**k out of Arkansas and on my way back to West Virginia without a word to anyone other than, "I'm going."
After TWO days. NOT seven. Didn't matter what I was going to find when I got there, or what I could have done about it. What mattered was the COMING.
I knew I never should have left you alone there in the first place. I knew I should have come home when Mom had the stroke.
I told people. They told me I was wrong. I told myself that they must be right, that I was just being a dumb Aspie, that they were smarter and more normal and better than me and they knew best. I told myself I had to comply with their perceptions or pay the price, and I did not want to pay in being cast out again, losing Hubby and having to fight for the kids and then raise them alone (if I could even get custody).
I believed those things would happen.
I did not have the courage to listen to myself, and now I can't take it back or make it up or fix it. Ever. You're gone.
I'm sorry I couldn't take care of Mom. Nobody would help me-- not her sisters (like I expected it), not the Tennants (again, like I expected it), not even Hubby. Mawmaw and Grandma did what they could, but they're Mawmaw and Grandma. What they could was only so much. They listened, but they could not help with the kids or give me advice or help me get myself calmed down. You were always the one who did that. My friends tried, but they were too few and too busy and too far away.
I could have kept trying. Maybe I should have kept trying. I was overwhelmed-- three kids, all Mom's needs, pregnant, sick, hassled on all sides, afraid, and alone. I was going to drop a ball, and that ball was not going to be an unpaid bill or an expired inspection sticker or some stinky dishes or chewed-up rotors. That ball was going to be a person, and the person could very realistically get killed. Die. Because I dropped the ball.
To borrow a metaphor from Nicholas Sparks, all the balls were glass balls. And I couldn't keep them all in the air. So I chose to lay some down before one or more got broken. I think you would tell me I did the right thing. Protect the people. Always protect the people.
When I went to the ER and that stupid nurse tried to take the kids from me because I was sick and scared and autistic and alone, I got scared. I didn't want to lose my family or get anyone hurt. Everyone told me I couldn't do it, and I believed them.
They must have been right-- I tried the best I could think to try, but the people did not get protected. All the people got hurt.
I'm sorry about the mess that got made out of your will. I swear, Debbie's the one who did it, not me. No-- that's not true. I'm an equal participant. I chose to stand up to her. But, Daddy, I swear, she wanted to cast me out without a single souvenir, she wanted to take the homeplace from me and from Mom, all because I was strange and that made me bad in her eyes. Everyone else says she's just out to grub every dime she can get out of our family-- that she read your obit in the paper and smelled money and that's why she came back after not speaking to Mom for eight years. I don't think so-- I think she wanted to punish me for not being A Good Human Being in her eyes. I tried to be nice to her, but it did no good. I was strange and she didn't understand and that made me bad. I tried to explain-- she did not want to learn. Hubby says she took the information and used it to manipulate me. I don't know about that, but I do know that she didn't want to understand. I was strange and that made me bad and that was all she needed to know.
Everyone says you'd be proud of me for standing up for myself, for trying to make things go the way you and me and Mom talked about. I'm not so sure.
I'm sorry I was able to stand up when it mattered least, but not when it mattered most. It is a lot easier to stand up when people are standing behind you. They all stood behind me when it was Debbie I was fighting and things I was fighting for. When it was circumstances that I was fighting and people I was fighting for, I was all alone. More than all alone-- Hubby and the in-laws and the Tennants and society in general were all things I was up against, part of the circumstances.
I can't begrudge them that. They are what they are, and that's all they can be. It's my failure. They all tell me it's not, but it is. I know what's true.
I said something back there about being autistic. Yeah. I know. I walk and I talk and everything. Well, they've decided it's a spectrum-- there are people with all ranges of difficulties and abilities. There's Rain Man. And then there's me.
And Grandpa Ken. Very high-functioning. Very smart. Almost normal. Almost. Almost, but still different. In a lot of people's eyes, wrong.
Me, and Grandpa, and you. I never told you that I thought-- knew, actually-- that I inherited it from you. I never mentioned "Asperger's syndrome" or "autism" or "autistic spectrum" around you. I didn't WANT you to know.
Because-- it was obvious who I got it from. I always was cut right out of your ass. The temper, the loud voice, the laughter, the strange mannerisms, the tendency to show my emotions much too readily. The sense of humor that people didn't get and didn't like. The tendency to get passionate and run on at the mouth. The statement that, "I know I'm me, I know I'm decent, and f**k 'em if they can't take a joke."
The biggest difference between you and me was: I was ashamed of it and tried to hide it because I knew there was something wrong with it, and you were just you. I knew it was something wrong and as soon as I could I went to Morgantown and started digging until I found out what it was called. You went to work in the coal mines and smoked a lot of dope and danced around flapping your arms like a chicken. I was called "f**kup" and "Freak" and I hated it. You were called "Crazy Al" and "Manchild" and you loved it. I was wretched and miserable and shut out, and you were for the most part delightfully happy in your own little world.
I hated being me and you loved being you. For years I was ashamed of you, and I didn't want you to be ashamed of you too. When I got older, I realized how much wiser you were than I-- and I didn't want you to be ashamed of you too. You held, naively and innocently, a happiness and simple joy in life that I had to learn to reach out for ever so tentatively-- and I did not EVER EVER EVER want you to see yourself as "something wrong," as "a syndrome" or "a pathology," and feel about yourself the way I had felt for all of 25 years that I could remember. Your childlike happiness and simple joy, your complete and total lack of self-consciousness-- I did not EVER EVER EVER want to see you stripped of those things.
Neither did Mom. I always told you she was smarter with half a brain than a lot of people were with a whole one. I think by the end of it all, you knew I was right. You were a beautiful, joyful specimen of a man, precious to us, a real live diamond in the rough. I guess we forgot that diamonds are tough, because neither of us ever wanted to see you lose your YOU, or even see it scraped or scarred or damaged in any way.
And we never had to. From what I'm able to piece together of your last day, you got up, smoked a joint and watched Morning Joe, talked to me, went down to Wade's and had some coffee and a couple of cigarettes and a bull session, came home, balanced your checkbook, probably forgot to take your meds, laid down to take a nap before you went in to see Mom, and died.
I want you to know so many things, but mostly that I am sorry for the way things ended. And that I am GLAD, GLAD, GLAD, GLAD, GLAD for the way things went up until then. You were an awesome parent and a wonderful husband and an amazing grandfather and a fine human being. You taught me a lot. You're still teaching me things.
I miss you, Daddy. I love you.
--Boo
"While walking out one evening
not knowing where to go,
just to pass the time away
before we held our show,
I heard a little Mission band
play with all their might.
I gave my soul to Jesus
and left the show that night.
The day will soon be over
and evening will be done.
No more gems to be gathered,
so let us all press on.
When Jesus comes to claim us
and says 'It is enough,'
the diamonds will be shining
no longer in the rough."
--John Prine, "Diamonds In The Rough"
_________________
"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
Last edited by BuyerBeware on 25 Oct 2011, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
11 Oct 2011, 2:28 pm
