The True (and uncensored) Story of My Dad, Part 2

So, the readers at salon.com wanted to know what happened after Doris and I found our dad in Seattle. This is the rest of the story.

My dad, circa 1967, shortly before he left the family, and 11 years before he died

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I was in Sun Valley, Idaho when I got the phone call. It was 1978, years before cell phones, email, and the constant connection to family and friends. So when my sister, Doris, left me a message at the Sun Valley Lodge, I knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

I panicked, afraid to listen to the painful words I would surely hear from the other end of the telephone line.

"Don't tell me, Doris. Please don't tell me anything bad"

"It's not the worst one", she said.

Not the worst one.

I knew right away who she meant. I felt relief, pain, then guilt. "I'm sorry, Daddy", I whispered, lifting my eyes up towards heaven. "I'm sorry you died. I'm sorry we had only four years. And I'm sorry I think of your dying as not the worst one."

I couldn't talk. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe.

I called my oldest sister, Millie, the pastor's wife. "I want to pretend that he never came back, that he's still living somewhere else, that we never had these four years, because it's too painful."

"You can't do that", she said, then gave me advice about death and grieving, forgiveness and acceptance.

"Are you with someone you can talk to?" she asked.

"Yes, my friend Sallee. We're leaving right now. We'll be in Portland tonight."

I was surprised when I found out that Sallee didn't understand my grief. She knew the story of my dad, and didn't understand why we had to cut our vacation short. She knew how his drinking had torn our family apart. How Daddy just packed up and left us that Spring day in 1968 when I was finishing my Junior year in high school. How Mama was suddenly left with the responsibilty of 3 school age children, and had to find a job at the age of 47, after twenty-three years as a homemaker. How Doris and I found him 4 years ago - living in a hotel room in Seattle - and brought him back to Portland. She didn't understand how I could grieve, so on that day, I lost a friend as well as a father.

A one day trip home turned into two days, as Sallee drove us back to Portland in her blue 1968 VW Bug, meandering along country roads instead of taking the interstate, because she was angry with me.

For two days I thought about the past four years. First, I cursed Aunt Lilly. Cursed her and Uncle Frank for taking Uncle Onnie away. One day Uncle Frank showed up in Seattle unannounced and took Onnie back to Wisconsin with him. Didn't even say hello or goodbye to Daddy. "Now that Wayne's been reunited with his family, he doesn't need Onnie anymore", was the way they put it. "It's best that Onnie's back home with us".

Aunt Lilly and Uncle Frank didn't realize that Daddy needed to take care of Uncle Onnie. He figured he hadn't taken very good care of us, so this was his second chance. When he went to the Summerplace Nursing Home the next morning and found Onnie gone, he was devasted. I suspect that he might have started drinking again.

When Doris and I drove to Seattle in the summer of 1974, we had not talked to Daddy in over six years. We soon found out that during those years, he and Uncle Onnie worked as ranch hands in Montana, Idaho, and Washington, until Onnie became too sick to work. In each town they worked, Daddy scoured newspaper archives at the local library, looking for any news about the family he had left behind. He kept in touch with Aunt Lilly, and she sent him photograhs of us, copies of the ones Mama had sent to her. He stopped drinking before Onnie got sick and was diagnosed with alzheimers. Stopped cold turkey, he said.

He never stopped thinking about us, he said. We didn't ask him why he never called. The tears in his eyes told me he was sorry, and that those lonely days on the road were too painful to remember. So, we embraced him. And he asked us if he could visit us.

The first thing Daddy did after that day in Seattle was buy a train ticket to visit Millie and her family in California. He spent a month with them, doing odd jobs around the house, making up for lost time with his oldest child, and getting to know his 2 grandsons. The boys were mystified by this new stranger in their lives. Daddy had lost his left eye in his 20's, so he wore a glass eye, and slept with that eye open. One day while Daddy was napping in a chair, 4-year old Eric climbed onto his lap, looked at the opened glass eye and excitedly called to his mother "Mommy, I didn't know my grandpa was bionic!"

Next, Daddy and Uncle Onnie visited us in Portland. Mama was nervous, and we were unsure of how she would react around him. Would she demand an explanation? Tell him to leave us alone, like she did after he left us 6 years earlier? But when he walked in the door of her house, she took one look at the broken man, and softened.

"Mama, I'm sorry", he said. That's all he had to say.

After Uncle Frank took Onnie back to Wisconsin, Daddy decided to move to Portland for good. Doris offered to let him stay at her house, but he said 'no thank-you', he was more comfortable living downtown. He worked in the soup kitchens and chopped fire wood for rich families. One Thanksgiving he had his picture on the front page of The Oregonain, serving food to the homeless. He wanted to stay busy. He never wanted a handout.

One Christmas day Daddy took the city bus to Doris and Rod's house - took the bus because he didn't want anyone to go out of their way picking him up from downtown. He showed up with his glass eye in backwards. Rode the bus for 20 miles that way. "Mama, you need to tell Daddy his eye's in backwards", we told her. I guess they didn't have mirrors at the Gospel Mission Hotel.

Mama and Daddy became friends, but they could never live together again. We spent two Christmases together as a family before that fatal day in 1978 - when he had an aneurysm while chopping wood.

During the 2 day drive from Sun Valley I tried to think of all the good times we had with Daddy over the past 4 years. I didn't want to think about the bad times before - what good would it do?
When I finally got to Portland, I learned two things: 1) Millie had given me wonderful advice, and 2) funerals are for the living.

My family needed this time together to grieve. To remember. To be thankful that we were able to spend his final four years with him. That he had finally found peace. And so had we.
When my brother, Gary was handed the American flag that had been draped over Daddy's casket, I saw the tears streak down Mama's face. They had met and married during World War II - Daddy was an Army Sergeant serving stateside, on account of his glass eye.

Later that day, we received a box of Daddy's belongings from the Gospel Mission Hotel. All of his wordly possessions were in one box. It contained: a small white Bible my youngest sister, Connie, had given to him for his birthday when she was 5 years old; 3 Zane Grey books; the cribbage board he taught me to play on when I was 10 - his cigarette burns were still on the edge of the board; his army discharge papers; his wallet that contained his social security card and 4 photographs - photos of his 4 grandchildren. There was nothing else in his wallet.

We were about to close the box when we noticed something else. On the bottom, in a envelope, were retirement papers he had received from the City of Portland. He had just turned 60 years old before he died, and having worked over 15 years with the City in the 1950's and 1960's, was entitled to a retirement. Even though my parents were divorced, he had made sure that Mama was listed as his beneficiary. What he couldn't give to her in life, he gave to her in death.

On Febraury 5, 2009, my dad would have been 91 years old.