How Far Down The Rabbit Hole Do I Want To Journey?

Monday, May 5, 2014

My father’s birthday is tomorrow.  He will be seventy-two years old.  I don’t know if I will ever see him again in this life given our seeming permanent estrangement.  And given the fact that I am a bit skeptical that his conception of the ‘afterlife’ is indeed correct I am not sure I will see him again in the ‘afterlife’ either.  Thus I might not see him again…ever.  I feel a lot of grief about this.   It’s just one aspect of the grief I am working through these days.  I would prefer to feel I have a close, supportive relationship with my father.  But not all of us are so lucky.  I feel fortunate to have simply survived my own childhood relatively unscathed.  Besides a ‘touch’ of PTSD symptoms I am quite healthy.  Cue the laugh track now.

Being an intelligent person can be seen as a real gift.  It can also be seen as a genuine curse.  How so?  Well I think it safe to say that I have an equally profound imagination.  I can see the multiple perspectives on a topic.  I can conceive of all sorts of explanations to make sense of a phenomenon.   Such inquisitiveness makes for a good scientist.  Being able to offer multiple theories to explain something we experience in the world at large could make me the life of a party attended by science geeks.  I don’t typically frequent such parties…but at least I know I could probably be entertaining in such a scene.

I am still experiencing my ‘Year One’ of the calendar.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that I am still in the first 365 days of my healing journey since my most recent conscious journey in the direction of greater health began last June.  A year ago I was about to embark on a wonderful trip to Germany.  The trip would ultimately reawaken the grief I had been carrying around all my life which I had never fully dealt with.  At least I am dealing with it now…better late than never as they say.  As I noted recently it can be especially difficult the first year after you lose something dear to you.  I am grieving the death of my relationship with my father before his actual bodily death.  And yet all the while I find myself reaching and struggling to better understand the man he became and how that man, in the role of my own biological father, affected the man I became.  I wonder how deep down the rabbit hole of inquiry I ought to go.  Let me explain further.

As I have noted in previous entries of my blog I have wondered about the influences that molded the man my father became.  I have never been able to comprehend what I perceive to be his seeming fairly well veiled subtle racism, his apparent belief in the value of militarism as a primary means of solving conflict on the geopolitical scale of nation states, his ability to burst into such anger that it frightens me and what I believe is a bitterness he carries about other disappointments in his life.  I can empathize regarding his pain and sorrow derived from disappointment because I too know all too much disappointment in my own life.  Indeed, I feel I have experienced enough sorrow, trauma and loss to last not one but many lifetimes.  Like many men in American culture I find my father to have an unfortunate tendency to be unable to express his feelings in a mature way.  Such is life in our American culture.  I look around and feel our society in this nation is inevitably rotting as the foul fruits of greed, apathy and deceit accumulate.  How long can we as a species keep doing the same dysfunctional things and hoping, rather miraculously and ironically, for a nonetheless good outcome?  I am digressing.

Here is what is on my mind today: the world as it was in August, 1941.  Assuming my father was full-term when he was born in May, 1942 he would have been conceived in August, 1941.  Despite the fact that I did well throughout my education my knowledge of European history could be improved upon…especially considering my immediate connection to Europe via my mother’s family.  It’s my understanding that Hitler was near the height of his ascendancy over Europe in the summer of 1941.  I intend to do a little bit of searching through the archives of history to learn more about the history of World War II.  I want to understand the history of that time better.  Why?  Because I want to understand my father better.  How do these two things interconnect you ask?  Allow me to explain further.

The influences that mold us don’t just begin the moment we are birthed out of our mother’s womb and into the startlingly vivid world.  No, we are affected by our mother’s health throughout the time we are in her womb and growing.  And obviously her health might be affected by her own life circumstances while she is pregnant.  And so I have wondered the following: Did my father’s mother experience an unusual and unhealthy amount of stress at some point during the time she was pregnant with my father?  As a woman of German heritage living in a small community in the Arkansas River Valley I assume her knowledge of events unfolding beyond her community let alone beyond her state and nation would have been relatively minimal…especially considering the media of the time.  My grandmother was also not a very educated woman when measured by the standards of the present day.  Nor did she enjoy the type of quality of life that people today might not even consider privilege; I remember she kept her teeth in a cup on the kitchen counter.  Dental care and accessibility in rural Arkansas of the early decades of the twentieth century left something to be desired.  I don’t know when she lost all of them.  I imagine she had lost them all by the time she was the age I am now.

Anyhow, I cannot help but wonder what my grandmother knew of the events of the war in Europe while she was pregnant with my father.  Considering her pregnancy took place near the time of the height of Hitler’s power in Europe my grandmother may very well have felt a heightened degree of anxiety.  Such has been the experience of other groups of American citizens when their nations of origin have engaged in war and thereby harmed the lives and futures of other entire nations.  Think here of the Japanese in California who were interned against their wills during World War II due to a fear (understandable really) that they might act on behalf of imperial Japan to harm the United States inside its borders. 

The American South is not exactly known for being a bastion of tolerance and kindness…even in the year 2014.  It was all the more backwards in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and so on.  Americans of German heritage were not a large percentage of the population in rural Arkansas.  Essentially I can’t help but wonder if my grandmother might have experienced some unfortunate stress if she was perceived as ‘the enemy’ by other members of the community by virtue of her German heritage.  Could such unfortunate stress have impacted her pregnancy in such a way that it proved harmful to the child within her who later would be my own father?  Because I know that a healthy pre-natal environment is vital to the development of a healthy child I cannot help but wonder if my own father’s dysfunctional tendencies has some link back all the way to the time he was inside his own mother.

……

I wrote everything above on Sunday, May 4^th with the intention to post it on the 5^th.  So now it’s Monday evening and I just finished working a full day at the Allina Health Hospice Foundation.  When I first went back to work in March I felt positively blindsided by the energetic demands of working full time.  I found it difficult to get to work on time simply because it had been so long since I had to actually keep such a diligent schedule.  When I began my current position I was relieved that I would only be needed an average of sixteen hours per week.  I have found it much easier to transition back into the working world by easing into it on a part-time basis.  But it appears I will soon have a new position that would allow me to work up to forty hours per week.  I am excited by the prospect but I still feel a little reticent to jump completely back into full-time work even if the opportunity presents itself.  But at least the quality of my life seems to be continuing to improve.

As I suspected when I first wrote yesterday I am feeling deep grief due to my father’s birthday being tomorrow.  Two years of struggle have led me to the point I am at now…I finally have given up expecting much from my father any more in his remaining earthly life.  I can’t help but feel a deep sadness as I reflect on our estrangement.  I cannot change him and I will no longer try to do so.

It’s such a beautiful day full of sunshine today that it makes my omnipresent grief all the more bittersweet.  I want to smile and enjoy my recently cleaned teeth but all I immediately feel within my heart is deep sadness.

I am so incredibly grateful I will not be working tomorrow as I will not feel any pressure to put a smile on my face on a day when I suspect I will feel an immense amount of sadness.

I am so happy to have clear vision now.  And I am so enmeshed in my deep grief.  But I am wading through it…one day at a time.