Tonight I spoke to my daughter via text and in a few minutes I was tearful and close to sobbing. I know that some of you would like to not hear that again from me, join the club along with my husband. I am so much aligned with your preference to tune me out if you need to. This story is bigger than cancer of the this or that. I now know that it moved from here to there but then who is surprised? Not I. God is not surprised either. Neither is my mother. Ironically a woman who is having a hard time walking and refuses to be carried about. I guess I am a lot like my mom after all. Yes, I have a mom. I just don't include her in my every conversation and if anything I am surely not a mother's boy. But I digress.
I had the opportunity to apologize to my daughter for not being there when she needed me, for not showing up all those times when my ego was bigger than my soul and asked her to forgive me knowing fully that she already had long long ago. Even though it is my struggle as a father not to just follow along and behave as though nothing has happened in the same way that my father and mother did to me. God I hope she doesn't read this. I love her so. It was and remained a legacy of parenting without knowing how to parent and this is what my daughter framed it as: You were a good dad considering you had no one to model after. It is not in quotes in case she reads this and comes back to me and says: dad that is not what I said. But I am doing my best to recall exactly what she said to me. All I know is that in that moment I was healed and the pain of the growths of cancer on my body felt relieved. For some of you that certainly may seem strange and I get it because at one time I would have thought it a bit strange as well. Not today.
My brother came by today and hooked up the surround sound in our home in about three or four hours. I served as his assistant and I have not felt that close to him for a long time. What a miracle it is to do things together and to be in harmony and in crazy stupid silliness. I don't think we quiet knew that plan was not ours but God's plan for us. Here he provided the chance for me to talk to my brother without sitting down when in reality we are both hyper and both of us are in a place of high anxiety. Me with my cancer and him with his own inner cancer. I won't speak for him yet after doing all the work and doing our high fives we collaborated and knew that this was the most joy and abandoned boy like behavior in a long while. What a great man he is. What simple compassion.
In a conversation over pizza my partner asks my brother about our dad. Touchy subject for me but not for my brother at least not in pubic. In jest my brother shared that our dad likely had a number of mistresses and that he likely had kids "all over the place" to which my husband laughed with amusement but all I could think about was that none of us knew my father and that we were dogging him and laughing about a man that was a father like me and that I look just like him. It cut me like a knife and I decided to ask that we forgive him and move on. Then the question was if he called what would my brother say and that bit me to the core. I raised my hand and stated that I would know what to say but my husband did not ask me and was soon gong to dismiss my opinion. I raised my hand again and I said. If my dad called me I would start out by saying: "I forgive you". and then I would let him say what he needed to say. I would open the door for him dead or alive to be forgiven and if he can hear me I want so say, I forgive you, just like my daughters forgave me for all my mistakes and all the times I wasn't there to tie their bows.
I won't ever be able to cure myself of the mistakes or erase the mistakes or take them back. I won't be able to forget the mistakes nor will I ever make them up to my children. I will do what I can which is to be the best dad I can be now. In the meantime no one has the right to find delight in the fact that I was abandoned by my dad or him as a demonic person or a bad guy with a black hat. He is my father and if your daddy was there every day and drank for glasses of wine or had an affair with another man I really don't care. What care about is how you felt about the father who asked you to not play with dolls and suspect that maybe he wanted to be the one with the dolls, maybe hiding dolls in his office dresser. Maybe high heels. The truth is that we need to look at the peoeple in our own family before we get into a dialog about every one elses famil and then withhold informaion to look better. There is no not dysfunctional family It is just the ones hiding the fact tht their siblings are nuns and some are priests and some of hiding the fact hat maybe a priest tried to get under our wives or our son' s pants. Potentiallh all of us can be fuck ups when we are trying to hard to find the dirt others.
I say today all bets are off and that all bets are off. What is left is forgiviness I write this in my orange sweater and my fancy blue undies. All the bets are off. All I give a fuck about is wheter I connect with people in India in September. Bon Vogage.
Coach Eliorr
I had the opportunity to apologize to my daughter for not being there when she needed me, for not showing up all those times when my ego was bigger than my soul and asked her to forgive me knowing fully that she already had long long ago. Even though it is my struggle as a father not to just follow along and behave as though nothing has happened in the same way that my father and mother did to me. God I hope she doesn't read this. I love her so. It was and remained a legacy of parenting without knowing how to parent and this is what my daughter framed it as: You were a good dad considering you had no one to model after. It is not in quotes in case she reads this and comes back to me and says: dad that is not what I said. But I am doing my best to recall exactly what she said to me. All I know is that in that moment I was healed and the pain of the growths of cancer on my body felt relieved. For some of you that certainly may seem strange and I get it because at one time I would have thought it a bit strange as well. Not today.
My brother came by today and hooked up the surround sound in our home in about three or four hours. I served as his assistant and I have not felt that close to him for a long time. What a miracle it is to do things together and to be in harmony and in crazy stupid silliness. I don't think we quiet knew that plan was not ours but God's plan for us. Here he provided the chance for me to talk to my brother without sitting down when in reality we are both hyper and both of us are in a place of high anxiety. Me with my cancer and him with his own inner cancer. I won't speak for him yet after doing all the work and doing our high fives we collaborated and knew that this was the most joy and abandoned boy like behavior in a long while. What a great man he is. What simple compassion.
In a conversation over pizza my partner asks my brother about our dad. Touchy subject for me but not for my brother at least not in pubic. In jest my brother shared that our dad likely had a number of mistresses and that he likely had kids "all over the place" to which my husband laughed with amusement but all I could think about was that none of us knew my father and that we were dogging him and laughing about a man that was a father like me and that I look just like him. It cut me like a knife and I decided to ask that we forgive him and move on. Then the question was if he called what would my brother say and that bit me to the core. I raised my hand and stated that I would know what to say but my husband did not ask me and was soon gong to dismiss my opinion. I raised my hand again and I said. If my dad called me I would start out by saying: "I forgive you". and then I would let him say what he needed to say. I would open the door for him dead or alive to be forgiven and if he can hear me I want so say, I forgive you, just like my daughters forgave me for all my mistakes and all the times I wasn't there to tie their bows.
I won't ever be able to cure myself of the mistakes or erase the mistakes or take them back. I won't be able to forget the mistakes nor will I ever make them up to my children. I will do what I can which is to be the best dad I can be now. In the meantime no one has the right to find delight in the fact that I was abandoned by my dad or him as a demonic person or a bad guy with a black hat. He is my father and if your daddy was there every day and drank for glasses of wine or had an affair with another man I really don't care. What care about is how you felt about the father who asked you to not play with dolls and suspect that maybe he wanted to be the one with the dolls, maybe hiding dolls in his office dresser. Maybe high heels. The truth is that we need to look at the peoeple in our own family before we get into a dialog about every one elses famil and then withhold informaion to look better. There is no not dysfunctional family It is just the ones hiding the fact tht their siblings are nuns and some are priests and some of hiding the fact hat maybe a priest tried to get under our wives or our son' s pants. Potentiallh all of us can be fuck ups when we are trying to hard to find the dirt others.
I say today all bets are off and that all bets are off. What is left is forgiviness I write this in my orange sweater and my fancy blue undies. All the bets are off. All I give a fuck about is wheter I connect with people in India in September. Bon Vogage.
Coach Eliorr
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