About The Funk...

Observational Spittle from the mind of a man of color in his 40s, without the color added (most times). Come in, laugh, and you may learn something...

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Saturday, July 13, 2013

The Years That Were Alive May Be Dead

"The Living Years", one of my favorite songs, is currently playing on one of my favorite 80's internet stations.

It always affected me, because my father and myself never truly had a strong relationship...actually, for the first 22 years of it or so, it sort of sucked liked a baby on a pair of 44DD's.

My dad is in a nursing home, a victim of some f'd up brain degeneration that has robbed him of his hearing, speech, and reasoning.  He is still "Dad", but I haven't had a decent conversation with him in about 16 years.

In hindsight, I have only had one good conversation with the man in the 16,058 days that the Good Lord has allowed me to breathe on this planet.

It was when my wife to be first went to my hometown together.  My mom, seeing that her son didn't have a decent suit, took me shopping for one.  While my future spouse and my mother were checking out what suit would fit my formally 210 lb fame (late night trips to White Castle are a bitch), my dad, who I at 27 finally saw me as a grown man, put his arm around me and told me...a joke.

Now, to this day, I cannot remember what the joke was...but the punchline involved some pigs and the use of the infamous "N" word that got a certain cook fired.

But it was the first time that I actually enjoyed hanging out with my dad...as that no one saw the health issues that would rob him of his body and part of his mind.

These days, my dad is best described as...well...a bitter human being.  He has his good days, but I know that he didn't intend to spend his remaining days amongst people whom he never truly trusted (ergo Caucasians...primarily those of the Jewish faith).

W/o getting into too many details, I am a big believer in Karma, and, well, I feel that part of the reason that my father finds himself in this state is due to the choices he made in life.

However, he is still my dad.  I spent a good deal of 2012 traveling the roads btw the midwest and the East coast trying to help him any way I can.  There are advantages of being chronically unemployed, especially when it comes to having free time.

I now have been a father myself for 11 years and change, and as they say, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.  Now my dad was not an encourager...in a lot of ways, a lot of my flaws came from being berated for the first 2 decades plus of my life.  From being referred to as an asshole, to being ripped for not fighting back against a mugger who took a watch that I received after I graduated from Intermediate school, I never quite measured up to him.  It affected relationships, both platonic and otherwise, causing my hard to control need to being liked for years.  It still affect me, even tho today I cover most of it with my snarky "look, like me as is or get the f off the boat" attitude.

Now, I am guilty of making some of those same mistakes; not so much in that I try to crush my oldest kid's will - sadly the temper is the culprit of most things (as well as a propensity to swear at my child to stop me from killing him).

Now, most times I tell him that he is a brilliant, handsome, good natured kid, and a fantastic brother to his younger sib, who got the double whammy of Autism and DS (the little one is actually an inspiration to the 2nd book I was working on b4 my attention got diverted by my musical choices this evening). But, the kid pisses me off as much as I have bowel movements, which is regularly (God I hope y'all got that joke).  But I have also told him that he is the smartest dumb kid I know, due to the mind-numbing things he does.

Yeah, I know...he's 11.

Yet, I've been yelled out cuz I've said many a time that children r, well, stupid.

I know this.  I was a kid.  I was stupid. I once lifted a very expensive gold necklace from my mom's collection to give to an 8th grade crush.

Stupid.

I took a "pik" (I am hoping non minorities don't have to look that up) and used it to chop up my bunk beds cuz I had nothing to do.

Stupid.

Comes with growing up.

But the "apple" that I am went with what I thought was right...pop's was the law...even if those laws at time were somewhat flawed.

Last night, I took the kid to go see a $200 million sci fi flick that i know I didn't have the money for.  But my boy, who has no friends, social skills, is cripplingly shy, and emotionally immature, actually wanted to hang with his evil taskmaster dad.

So we saw a cool flick.  Did it once b4 by ourselves with the "Star Trek" reboot a few years back.

I wonder at times if he will remember times like this.

So there's the song "The Living Years."

My dad and I can no longer have a conversation that I can feel comfortable that all things were understood.  I don't know if it is because of his condition, or that he is so angry at how his life had turned out (his fault, bad luck, or both) that he didn't want to hear anything ANYONE had to say.

I have accepted that perhaps we will never be able to cross the chasm that our adversarial relationship has caused.

U'd think that I would of tried to avoid creating my own, right?

I fear Karma...I've done some royally jacked up things.

But I fear more what my oldest kid may say after my "Living Years" have passed.

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