Hey Richard, fuck your father's Day

Love, me

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Richard,

You still draw breath into your lungs. Your heart still beats between those sturdy broad shoulders and above that paunchy round belly that always belied your brawny millworker strength. You still exist on this mortal plane. Yet, I am an orphan of many, many years now. Richard- I wish I could call you Dad, but you have abandoned your post for so long that you're more of a stranger to me than family. I lost the best part of you in 2003 when my mother died in that boating accident. I almost lost you and my sister Angie that day as well. That boat wreck redefined my entire life, and also my entire relationship with you.

Not immediately. I mean, I was already married and out of the house, but I moved back in with you for a whole month afterwards to help you heal. Cook you food and force you to eat it. To keep you company, clean your house up and help you with Mom's final arrangements. You were so fucking destroyed. Remember? I had to take care of it all. I figured out the casket, the flowers, the dress mom would wear. I called her friends who didn't know, and I jumped onto her computer to alert the online ones as well. I helped you figure out your financial situation and made calls to banks and credit card companies at your request. I was devastated at having to be the one to tell you that Mom had left you with enormous credit card bills from her severe shopping addiction. It tore me up to have to add any extra pain to the suffering you were already experiencing. That we were experiencing. I did everything that I could to buffer the bad news, but your grief was already so raw and the betrayal so deep that it broke you a little. I saw it in your eyes and it broke me a little as well. I was terrified to see you in the condition that you were in and I did my very best to numb down my own pain in order to not bring you down any further. I ate every one of Mom's leftover Vicodin and Darvocet and finished a few bottles of vodka just to grind out all of what needed to be done without buckling under the weight of my own miserable pain.

I could see your desperation and your loneliness. I was so scared that you were going to follow Mom into the grave, especially when you stopped by my work after I had moved back to my own house and you told me that you had started going out to taverns simply out of loneliness. That struck me so deeply, because I knew you hated those places. How many times did you rail against the men who had to run to the bar after work instead of going home to their families? I knew exactly how desperately lonely you must be if you had sunk to that level, and I despaired. I agonized. I didn't want to lose another parent so soon after losing my mother, even though you and I had been at odds for most of my life. I could just see it in the set of your face, your posture. You had given up.

When you told me six months after Mom died that you had found someone you were talking to in a widowers chat room, I set aside my petty hurt at seeing my mom replaced so soon and I sought out the joy within the situation. I knew you weren't built to be alone in this world. You had been a matched pair with our mother for far too long, and the heartbreaking reminders of her were etched into every single fiber of your life. I gave you the grace of never letting one single note of doubt about you dating someone so quickly escape my lips. When other relatives privately voiced their dismay with the situation, I quietly and quickly set them straight and told them that you had my full throated approval because you were so lonely I was afraid you would simply waste away by yourself.

Then Jaynee showed up. She moved here from Michigan, having recently lost a husband herself, bringing her 13 year old daughter in tow with her. The first time I met her, I did my very best to try and put both of them at ease, even though I had some small selfish, mostly just sad reservations about seeing another woman moving into my mother's house. I got weird icy vibes right off the bat. You know how you can just tell someone isn't a fan of you? She put those vibes out big time, and you stood there smiling like a jackass and twiddling your thumbs while your new girlfriend pulled out the subtle digs and threw shade on your own daughters. I told myself maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I wasn't as forgiving or accepting as I thought. Maybe the problem lay with me because I was anxious and sad about my mom. I resolved to go out of my way to be nice to both of them.

The next time I came to your house, I noticed some things immediately. Our family portrait that had hung by the front door for as long as I could remember was gone. Just removed from the wall. I could still see the white outline of the frame against the age darkened drywall. She hadn't even replaced it with a different picture. Simply taken ours down. Why the fuck would you agree to that, Richard? Sure, it was “her” house now, but you were so eager to let her erase us that it cut me deeply inside. Next, I saw that my wedding pictures had been moved all the way to the back of the shelf and pictures of her daughter and her family were immediately in front, blocking mine from even being seen. It hurt, Richard. It still stings even now, thinking about it almost 25 goddamn years after it happened. Still, I held my tongue. It was her house now, and I had to accept it.

Then, Christmas came and one of your presents from Ron and I was the Harry Potter box set DVDs. I was so excited to give it to you because you implausibly loved those movies so fucking much that it tickled me. It was such an unexpected and decidedly soft interest that it made me smile just thinking about the contrast with your usual fare. The gruff bearded old redneck sitting in his armchair and enjoying the kids movies about a magical wizarding school. It was delicious in its contradiction. But when you opened it? Awkwardness ascended upon the room. Because in Jaynee's world, Harry Potter was evil. Satanic. Encouraged children to dabble in witchcraft. You apologized and gave the DVDs back to us on the spot. My heart died a little more in that moment.

Then you guys announced your marriage, and you gathered all of us children together to make a plan and designate responsibilities for planning it. I was happy to be included. After all that, you ended up skipping town and eloping without even a heads up in advance. Hey, your life, your rights and all that. But it was still selfish and fucked up and it deprived the family from having an occasion that might have united us in some small way. Then, that bitch you married immediately had a yard sale without giving us a heads up and she sold every single fucking thing of my mother's without any consideration at all for her children. I was never given any chance to go through her things before they were sold at a discount rate to strangers. There were so many cherished things I would have liked to have of my mother's. We lived exactly eleven miles away and you never even considered me once. I'll never forgive you for letting that happen, Richard. The China cabinet that my mother had always promised me would someday be mine was gifted to my sister and moved to her apartment without anyone even asking if I wanted it. At least it stayed in the family.

Not long after that, I found out that you and your wife were talking shit behind my back, saying that it was probably my gambling addiction that caused Mom to have such ridiculous credit card bills. Surmising that she had gotten cash advances to help me pay off my bills. Fuck you forever for that shit, Richard. You knew Mom had a shopping problem. She had gotten you into financial problems before with her irresponsible addict behaviors. To the tune of $20,000 the time before. Fuck you and fuck your wife for taking a personal heartache of mine and trying to wrap it into my addiction to make me culpable for something that wasn’t mine.

You have failed me in my life so many different ways. When I tried to tell you about your “adopted son” who raped me in the playhouse you built for me, you called me a liar. Because we had been arguing right before that admission, and you said I just wanted to cause trouble. I heard you say that exact thing to my mother as I cried on my bed, curled into a ball under the covers. The acoustics were always great in that hallway. I never spoke about the rape ever again until I was an adult. When I brought that up to you in recent years, you told me you didn't even fucking remember it. Really great, Richard. It's good to know that one of the most painfully defining moments of my life was so forgettable to you. You still call that man your adopted son because your own children never were good enough for you. Just like you call Jaynee's daughter your only daughter. At least now you do, since the two of you scurrilous fucks killed my big sister Angie.

Yeah you thought I wasn't gonna go there huh Richard? Well fuck you. You and your disgusting wife with your maga bullshit and your anti vaccine madness, convinced my developmentally disabled sister not to get the vaccine. Not to wear a mask. Then you all fucking got sick (surprise, surprise), including your wife's elderly mother who was fortunate to survive. My sister Angie was not. She died an ugly fucking death, Richard. A death I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Because of YOU, Richard. Because you and your hateful fucking wife and her hateful fucking daughter didn't give one single shit about her. They treated her like garbage. Don't even try and deny it because everyone who was ever around Angie and Molly at the same time saw it. Molly thought that Angie's disabilities made her lesser than, and your wife and yourself were just fucking fine with it. Angie didn't even want to move to Michigan with you bastards and you forced it on her. Said she needed someone to watch over her and that our grandma was getting too old to do it. Well you sure did a bang up job, didn't you Richard? And after all of this? You and your evil, stupid maga cow of a wife are STILL anti vaccine nutjobs and still proudly riding that Trump train. You miserable motherfuckers make me so sick. You have traded in everything decent and good and loving in your life for your petty grievances and your disgusting patriarchal Christian nationalist bullshit.

But hey, the wheel always fucking turns, doesn't it Richard? I heard the other day that your wife and your daughter are embroiled currently in a court trial over whether or not they engaged in elderly abuse of your wife's mother and also whether or not you guys stole a whole garage full of tools and guns and sold them on Craigslist or gave them away as if they were yours. Spoiler alert: I know the fucking answer to that question. I've spoken to relatives of hers who verify that it was, indeed, the situation. Not only that, but YOU, Richard, YOU are under scrutiny for having stolen and sold her late husband's guns. Apparently whatever selfish scoundrel disease your wife is afflicted by is communicable. I'm shocked, but not as shocked as you imagine, probably. You see, I have already had a front row seat to the way you two treat any relatives who you seem to think are less worthy than yourselves. That's already been firmly established. Not much further of a leap from there to stealing a dead old man's guns and tools from his wife's garage at the same time you're allowing her to be abused and neglected in her own home. Oh yeah, I know about that as well, Richard. How her other daughter and her grandchildren had to drive up in a blizzard to rescue her from you guys. How she was afraid for her life and locked herself in a closet to call for help.

Yeah, Richard. I know ALL your dirty shit and I've got to say I'm appalled. But also, relieved in a certain way, I guess. Because I have spent all my goddamn life trying to prove to you that I'm good enough and being rebuffed. I was almost never good enough for you, unless you're talking about year one through six of elementary before I was broken and when I could still provide you with those all straight A report cards you loved to brag on so much. Those spelling bee trophies that you felt were rightfully part yours because you helped me drill lists of spelling bee words for hours every night. When I lost those, I wasn't good enough for your love and I never would be again. But goddamn, I still tried. All those years, so desperately trying to find a way to connect with you, to find common ground where there was so little to be found. And it was never enough for you. I see now that not only would it never have been enough, but also that you are nothing as good as I thought you were. In fact, it seems as though your capacity for cruelty is only outweighed by your absolute apathy in the face of another's cruelty. You allowed not only your own disabled daughter to be abused by those two women, but you stood by and watched as they abused their own mother/grandmother. And you tacitly engaged in it as well when you made the choice to take from her what wasn't yours to take. I cannot believe I ever feared you finding out how flawed I am, because for all the fucked up things I have ever done, I have never intentionally harmed my children or my family and I have certainly never stolen from an elderly person. You, sadly, cannot say the same.

I suppose it shouldn't shock me because I witnessed what you did to my adopted brother all those years ago. Timothy was already desperately broken when we got him and you just couldn't handle it. He was horribly abused, sexually physically, emotionally. You never gave him any leeway where that was concerned. You were always on his ass, to the point that it made me vastly uncomfortable at times. Most of Tim's problems can be directly attributed to his early childhood abuse but you didn't care enough to learn about that shit. You knew about it, because you related that awful traumatic list of abuses suffered by my brother to my sister and I in graphic detail that was incredibly disturbing for children as young as we were. Editing your stories and anecdotes to age appropriate levels of detail was never your strong suit, was it? Those descriptions still lurk right below the surface of my mind because they disturbed me so greatly. You, speaking to us of Tim's birth mother's boyfriend who stubbed out his cigarettes on tiny helpless infant Timothy’s body in vivid gruesome terms. Telling us that he was brutally sexually abused. You were absolutely aware of all those things, yet you still rolled your eyes at the notion that my brother might have lifelong psychological damage from those things. That he might require more care than simple discipline and guidance in his life. You had a list of attributes you expected from a son, and when Tim couldn't perform the dance that you had choreographed for him, he was shunted to the sidelines. You figured that your money and your provisions of food and shelter could fix everything that was wrong with him, and when it couldn't? You fucking bailed. Not physically, but in every other way possible.

You abused our brother right in front of us, Richard. I still sometimes have bad dreams of the time I came home and found you making him crawl like a snake on his belly for “stealing” some pocket change from the counter. You made him do that for at least half an hour, even in front of my friend Sandra who was staying the night. Until he had carpet burns on his belly and his nose because you made him press his nose down into those dirty brown fibers as he crawled. You remember that, Richard? Or have you “forgotten” that as well? What you were unaware of until just now is the fact that I was the one who took that change off the counter. Yeah, me. I was a fucking coward. But not because I'm inherently a fearful or morally challenged person, but because you were so fucking terrifying in your incandescent rage about that small handful of change that I was scared stiff. By being so goddamned scary, you literally created an environment where telling the truth was difficult to impossible. I was just a kid. My cowardice pales in comparison to your culpability in the situation. You let every single one of us down in so many ways.

I don't know why I'm writing this to you today, except that reading all of the good dad tributes on Father's Day always fills me with a poison that I cannot draw from my heart easily. I feel more orphaned on Father's Day than any other. Make no mistake: This isn't a plea for acceptance or a gambit for reunification, this is a reckoning, Richard. This is me telling you that I have moved on. My heart hasn't fully healed and probably never will, but I refuse to waste any more of my finite time on this earth worrying about your opinion or wistfully wringing my hands hoping that one fine day you'll see the light. I don't need you to do that, Richard, because I have finally seen it for my own self.

I see it every time I look in the faces of my children, and know without any doubts that I would never treat either of them the way you have treated your children. I see it when I look in the mirror and love the face I see staring back at me, knowing that I am worthy despite my shortcomings and faults. I see it when I hear about the criminal drama in your life, and I realize that you have ended up surrounded by people who will ultimately treat you the same way that you have seen fit to treat others. May your years be long, Richard. May you live to see the fruition of all the seeds you've ever planted, and may you have all the days that you deserve, Richard. So mote it be.

😻 bpnwc

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