The last two nights I have been quite troubled in my dreams. Part of this could be the result of jet lag and that foggy troubled sleep you feel when adjusting to the other side of the world. Part is probably the result of watching Dear Zachary. Regardless I felt bothered enough to write down a few thoughts in a Letter to My Father. I am not sure whether I'll ever send it to him; it might always be a letter never sent but there is value at least in writing them down.
One small fact or detail to set the stage for the letter : I haven't spoken to my father (or mother) since 1998; I have since then seen them only once at my Grandfather's funeral in June of 2007.
- First you are my Father and I am your son. This is a relationship as fundamental as our existence, and predates our lives here. I honor and acknowledge that.
- You are approaching the end of your days with a rapidity that increases with each passing year; your time here grows shorter with a quickening.
- Like all organizations that are self perpetuating as the family grows and the son reaches maturity he leaves his parent, finds a wife and forms his own family. And he protects his own family with a responsibility that is supreme above all other. This has been my primary motivation in having no contact with you.
- I believe that your myopia around your accusations of me and most of your immediate family is severe. You demonstrate by your actions that you are unable to see yourself, or at least unable to acknowledge your culpability and responsibilities in these matters. If you have been willing to do this to your own son, your own family then who knows the damage you could do to my family and therefore I protect them by keeping you and mother at a distance.
- Your accusations regarding Stacey and myself towards my own siblings are false; they did not happen. They are refuted by both myself and Stacey as well as those that you say we attacked. Again due to your myopia I don't expect you to be able to accept this. But this is at least the first and fundamental condition for ever having any contact with you again in this life. I must hear you admit that these events did not happen. That you (and mother) were wrong, that you fabricated these events, that you are responsible.
- When the entire relationship as a family, me as a son and you as my parents, was destroyed it was unravelling to my entire sense of self. I felt the fabric of my entire childhood come undone; as if the very foundation under my feet fell away and I was lost with out a rooted place in this world. I remember a surreal feeling as if I was floating off kilter in vertigo as if my life had come apart; the kind of unreality that makes you question if the sky is blue, if gravity exits and am I even here and was I ever there. As a matter of protection to my own psyche I have honestly considered you already gone; I consider you in the past tense. The pain thinking of things otherwise is sometimes too much to bear.
mbg