Family
In My 80s, This Is What I'm Finally Doing
I'm grieving my father decades after his death.
Mel Haasch (Stocksy; Getty Images; Kutlu/TrunkArchive)
I had a difficult relationship with my father. I could never do anything right. No matter what I did, it was never enough. A report card filled with lots of Bs was no big deal. “Where are the As?” he would ask.
I graduated from college with a teaching degree and got engaged to a kind and caring man. Any parent would have been delighted for me. Not my dad. “Good thing you have a job,” he said, “because your future husband will never amount to anything!”
Years later, when I was hired as a staff writer for a major newspaper, I couldn’t wait to share the good news! “Big deal,” he said. “It’s not The New York Times.”
My mother passed away when I was six years old, leaving my dad widowed, and he never remarried. He always admired slender women. After losing 15 pounds, I thought he would give me the approval I so desperately desired, but he said, “Big deal. You could afford to lose another twenty!”
You don’t need a PhD in psychology to understand that when a parent makes you feel like a loser, it can shape your self-image in deep and often invisible ways. Their words can become an inner voice we keep hearing, even a lifetime later.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when my father died, I didn’t shed a single tear. For decades, I hardly ever thought about him, and if I did, my feelings were clouded with confusion and negativity.
Lately, at 87 — the age when my dad passed away — I think about a book I read some years ago titled Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult’s Life — For the Better by psychotherapist Dr. Jeanne Safer.
While it’s best to resolve conflicts or ambiguous feelings with our parents before they die, that doesn’t always happen. The good news, she writes, is that you can continue to gain insight posthumously to unravel the reasons for your difficult relationship with them.
Dr. Safer’s book jacket illustrates a bird flying out of an open cage, which she explained to me symbolizes freedom and liberation. And indeed, some of my friends did feel free when their parents passed away.
One woman said she no longer has to be the “perfect” daughter, and another revealed she could now divorce the husband she married just to please her parents.
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Over the years, I have come to understand why my father behaved the way he did, and this insight has resulted in a better understanding of myself.
Our parents never really leave us. They may leave this world, though they remain in our hearts and minds. In their afterlife, we can change our relationships with them – to understand them, to forgive them, even to reinvent them.
Reflecting on my difficult relationship with my father, I was relieved to no longer have to deal with a critical and unloving parent. Even so, decades after his demise, I felt the overwhelming need to resolve the hurt feelings between us.
To that end, I explored his past and learned more about a man who escaped the Holocaust, never again to see his parents and siblings. Then his wife, my mother, died soon after he came to America. I have come to realize that showing love to me – or anyone important to him – was risky business for him. He knew that a loved one could be taken away at any moment.
The parenting style of his generation was to be stingy with compliments. He would criticize rather than encourage. To add to my confusion, there was no mother to soften his demands.
Only when I put myself in his shoes, to see him as someone who suffered many losses, could I exchange anger for compassion and make peace within myself. Maybe that’s what Dr. Safer means by “death benefits.”
Now, in the last lap of life, I choose to focus on happy memories with him. I remember the bicycle he bought for my tenth birthday, when he took the day off to teach me to ride.
I tear up when I remember the day he came to see me in my fourth-grade school play. He was the only dad in an audience full of moms, and I remember how loudly he clapped when I took a bow at the end of my performance. For my 13th birthday, he purchased tickets to South Pacific, a popular Broadway show he knew I loved, even though it was a financial burden for him. And although he disliked the man I married, he did express happiness at my wedding.
There’s not a lot of time left in my life, and with tissues at my side, I must try to resolve any problematic issues I have with loved ones who are still alive. For that, I must honestly say I have work to do.
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