Bizarro Jack Tripper

My father left when I was little because he was gay. I don't know if he knew he was gay when he married my mom, or if he just didn't want to face it. I guess he tried to live the "normal" life. I'll never really know what he was thinking or feeling. My mom sometimes wonders what he thought of the premise of Three's Company, being that he was actually closeted.

About a year or so after my youngest sister was born, he left to live his life as a gay man. Three kids and a wife and a house with a screened patio and a swing set just weren't for him anymore. Responsibility wasn't his thing. My mom wasn't his thing. We weren't his thing.

He'd basically been raised by my grandmother to believe he was the best and his father and brother were trash. Rules didn't apply to him. His shit didn't stink. He was reckless and irresponsible, never paid a dime of child support. He was vain. Spoiled his mother rotten.

He acted like my mother was garbage because we ended up on welfare and food stamps when he left. Called her cheap because we drank Kool-Aid. Made fun of her car. Never mind the fact that he'd had her stop working once my little sister was born. Never mind that he never paid his $300 per month  court ordered child support. Or the fact that she got her nursing degree (her third college degree) and turned everything around in just a couple of years.

His tune changed when he got sick. He needed my mom's help and she was one of the first people he told he had AIDS. I don't know if he ever apologized to her. But my mom helped with everything despite how badly he had treated her. And she never bad-mouthed him to us the way he had. She would have been justified if she had, though.

I should probably be more angry at my dad, but I'm not. He came around a little when we were older, showed up for my weird costume birthday parties. He was good to my baby brothers (from my stepdad). When we helped him move when he was very sick, we joked around and I pushed his cowboy hat around on a dolly. Because it was SO SO heavy. We talked on the phone about getting dessert at The Ranch restaurant. We never went, he died before that could happen. I still keep that hat, even though I have no idea why he had it. I had his wedding ring and wore it every day until I lost it...I still hope to find it again someday.

My dad died Memorial Day weekend my junior year in high school. He was 42. Less than a month shy of his 43rd birthday. After a long weekend with my sobbing family, I tried to go back to school because I couldn't handle the sadness anymore. I don't think I made it through even half the day before I went home. My 3 year old brother kept asking why daddy-Dave wasn't coming back. And I'd have to explain and then I'd break down all over again.

It's been 25 years and it's still painful for me. There was never any real closure. My dad wouldn't let us see him in the hospital because he looked bad. We never got to say goodbye. He'd asked for his ashes to be scattered at Vernal Falls in Yosemite. My grandma went, got halfway to the spot, and dumped the ashes. None of us were invited to go or to help.

It's also difficult for me because I feel like my sisters just don't care. I said this to my mom the other day, and she explained that my sisters were so young when he left, that they don't really remember him as daddy. He wasn't living in the house for long when they were little. I was the one who really knew him as my daddy. I'm the one with memories of riding in the truck with him and going to the drive-in and watching movies on a mattress in the truck bed. I'm the one who remembers watching him and the neighbors help right a VW bus that tipped over in our front yard. I'm the one who hit him in the leg when he promised to come back home to live with us and didn't.

So I don't really know what the point of this was other than to get it out. To vent. To explain myself. To practice typing while blinded by tears. One or all of those things.