A Cautionary Tale

My father’s house shines hard and bright

It stands like a beacon calling me in the night

Calling and calling so cold and alone

Shinning across this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

“My Father’s House” by Bruce Springsteen

When I was eighteen years old my life was turned upside down by the separation and ultimately the divorce of my parents. I am the youngest sibling in my family and this painful event occurred when I was the last child still living at home. Divorce is so much more common place today but back then in the Catholic community in which I was raised it was shockingly unusual. Adding to the unfortunately unique quality of this life-altering event was the fact that it left me living with my mother while working with my father. This made me an unwitting conduit of inquiry and disparaging remarks from both sides of the dissolving marriage. For me it took on a significance that was greater than being the child of divorcing parents. My life became a high-wire act of loyalty between my mother and father. When my father subsequently revealed to all of us that there was another woman involved it became that much more precarious for me to navigate the devastation of my mother and the life my father was now leading. Inevitably this lead to a confrontation with my father. It was a nasty interaction which left me convinced that my father was not worth my time and created in me a determination to never speak to him again.

For more than a year we did not speak although he made several attempts to do so. I remained stubborn and resolved to isolate him out of my life. One day he surprised me by stopping by a job I was working on to ask me to come to his house for dinner. I was so taken back by his random and unexpected approach I agreed. After he left I immediately realized we would need to have a conversation about the parameters of our future interactions. I met with my father and insisted that our relationship would have to be redefined as a friendship of equality rather than a parent-child hierarchy. Upon his agreement to my terms we moved out of the cold war standoff in which we had been existing and into a relationship of bland cordiality.

Going forward for the next year or so I really did not do much with my dad. I often cancelled plans and remained available but distant. We were no longer enemies but we had not remotely returned to the closeness we once enjoyed before the divorce. Then one faithful day I went to a movie titled Field of Dreams. The story is about a father and son who argue, insult each other, and then part. Years go by and before their disagreement can be put to rest and their relationship restored the father dies. The son is left alone filled with guilt and regret until the father magically returns to a mythical baseball field built by the son in an Iowa corn field. They come together during a game of catch and the pain is lifted from both. I sat in the movie theater and watched in horror thinking about my father. I was overcome with the prospect of being in the same circumstance as the son depicted in the movie. I was also acutely aware of the reality that there was no fantasy baseball field of reconciliation in my future.

I left the theater panicked over the prospect of my father dying before we able to return to a time when we were close. I went home determined to fix all that was broken. I wrote a letter to my father which included the lyrics of the song “My Father’s House” (take a listen to understand why) and an explanation of all my newly revealed fears. I personally delivered the note to his mailbox that evening. He responded immediately upon receiving my letter with a simple statement of agreement and a commitment to never let my fears become a reality. Almost instantly our lives changed in regard to each other. By allowing my father to come down off the pedestal of super-hero on which I had unfairly placed him, I was able to see him as a human being. I was then able to accept his flaws and enjoy all that I loved about him. Concurrently, he came to the realization that I was no longer a boy to be managed but a man to be respected as equal in thought and action. Literally from that day forward we would get together several times a week; golfing, shooting pool, attending baseball and football games, lunches and dinners, we became best friends and companions. My fears were gone.

Only a handful of years later and without any warning I received a call that my father was dead. The shock and deep sadness that followed drove me to the depths of despair. His passing left more than a painful emotional scar; it produced a huge hole in my life and daily existence. I was now alone and without my best friend. It took me a long time to get over his passing but the thing that helped me the most was remembering the terror I felt leaving the theater that day and the fact that while I was sad I had avoided the daily self-flagellation of never ending regret. My father has been gone for more than twenty-five years and I still miss him but because of the deep connection we were able to forge in those last years there are many moments of joyful remembrance. The sense of loss can still be difficult at times but its jagged edges have been softened over time by the healing power of cherished memories. 

It is not mine to judge the reasons for another’s disenfranchisement from loved ones. The reasons and the motivations might be just or it could be a moment in time that is needed to recalibrate a relationship. But for those who are holding on to a grudge or feel the need to block a certain person or persons out of their life, I am expressing my tale of caution. The unquenchable nature of regret which is fueled by the inescapable knowledge of time and memories unfulfilled tortures the soul in perpetuity. I was saved from the clutches of life-long regret by the fortuitous attending of a movie. I hope that those who read my story will take a moment to internally investigate the honest origins of their separations from those they were close to in a previous time. Please take this to heart. Sadness can be placated by sweet memories but regret and its accompanying guilt has no real solution; in its cold and infinite shadow all that is left is the endurance of unending emotional pain.