Real Stuff Happens Too

Where to begin? Do I even want to discuss this? I dunno. If I'm to take this blog thing seriously (and by that meaning I want to use it as a place to talk about not only the silly and hopefully funny things that happen in my life but also the issues that have more weight and significance. That's not to say that having a fireplace mantle fall on my foot on stage in front of the entire elementary school wasn't a significant time in my life but you get the idea), then I have to talk about this too.

Last week my father-in-law, Amy's dad Bob Davis, died after a short battle with lung cancer. He was 69 years old. Amy and her dad had a much different relationship than what I had with my dad. Her parents divorced when she was 13 and it wasn't what you'd call a good break-up. Not that any of them are really. He had a drinking problem and their contact was sporadic at times before he got himself cleaned up. He became a "friend of Bill's" and had been sober for over 20 years. By the time I came into the picture, he was living with Carol (one of the best people I've ever met by the way. She literally saved his life by befriending him and letting him move into her house. They remained close friends and companions right up until the end), a family court judge and no-nonsense woman of the highest order. It was the stable environment of her house that allowed Amy and her dad to mend their fractured relationship. Carol played a huge role in helping them get things back on track.

What I found hard was that it didn't seem like Amy and her dad ever really talked things out. It was like those years were swept under the rug. They may be mentioned in passing but only briefly and with the understanding that they were not going to discuss them further. I found it infinitely frustrating during our visits since I knew that no one was actually going to say anything that would start a real conversation. I understand it, since that wasn't really the purpose of visiting her father: the investigatory breakdown of her childhood memories and his role in her development, but I still wanted them to have a better relationship and I felt strongly that difficult conversations might help facilitate that.

I'm also colossally full of shit too. I have to admit to looking back on my own relationship with my parents with rose-colored glasses. After my mom died I would go to the apartment in Malden to visit with my dad. We'd sit in the kitchen (my dad always sat in the kitchen watching a little 13 inch TV) and play cribbage. I'd ask him questions about his life growing up in South Boston or how he met mom or whatever. I got some information that I didn't know about him and mom but for the most part, it was just an exercise in trying to get to know him at a different level. When he died I felt better about how I had made an effort to know who he was since I didn't really have the maturity to do that same thing with my mom at the time. I don't know why but I just never talked to her about stuff that really mattered to me. Maybe because I wasn't sure what actually mattered yet.

In the years since their deaths I've been asking my aunts and uncles about their relationships with my parents since they saw knew them as friends, or as a sister or a brother. It's been great fun and enlightening but unfortunately they are a dwindling resource. My Aunt Mary was an amazing person and I used to love to visit with her in her kitchen (much like my dad ... hmmm, they were brother and sister ... maybe that's an O'Malley trait? Sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and shootin' the shit?). When she died, she took a lot of good stories with her. My Aunt Sissy passed away this summer and that's a loss with which I still have yet to come to terms. She was an amazing story teller and loved to talk about her little sister Eileen (my mom). My Uncle Don is another one that I'm worried about. He's been in failing health lately and I'm doing the typical "not-thinking-about-it-so-it-can't-be-happening" defense mechanism. He is another one who can tell a good story and he's told me stuff about my dad that allowed me to view my dad in another light.

This is what I mean about being full of shit though. I never really got into deep philosophical discussions about life and our family with my parents, I got most of that from other people and their perspectives. My sisters were a good source for that matter. We all grew up in the same house but have our own memories and angles on how things were. Sometimes I'm shocked to find that my view is different from the way one of them remembers the same event. It's been helpful but again, it's not something that we do that often or with any real goal in mind. I'm not even sure what it is I'm looking for with regard to my need for information about my parents. I guess it's just to know them better as people since I didn't know how to do that when they were actually around.

Amy is an only child. She doesn't have siblings to help her validate what she experienced. She just has herself and she admits to not knowing what that experience was. She says there are major gaps in her memory of her childhood and subsequently it affected how her and her dad got along. Watching her and her mother work on their communication over time has been interesting. Again, like my own parents, I'm not sure they have been able to talk to one another as adults until fairly recently. I often wonder what it would be like if my parents were still around. I wonder if we'd have the close relationship that I didn't even realize I wanted and needed until it was too late. They were just my parents y'know? I was in my mid-twenties when they died and now that I'm (gulp) 40 I find myself missing them more and more. I want to talk to them. Bob's death brought all of these thoughts to the forefront again. I'm really good at ignoring shit that is bothering me. Sorry if this post is kind of rambling but I'm just writing this as I'm thinking about it. This is all first-draft stuff that I don't want to edit and re-edit until it's all cohesive. It needs to be messy and raw because that's what it feels like right now.