Dad, Elvis & Divorce

This picture is of me and my father.  I was 10 when he died.  My parents had already been divorced for 3 years and we found out through a phone call.  At the funeral I sat by my cousin Lenny, not in the front row.  This may have been the beginning of my long history of hanging out with bad boys & looking for love in all the wrong places.  He held out a plastic flower for me to smell and I laughed.  I felt guilty about that for a long time.

Before the funeral, my mother realized that my sister’s good shoes were in her classroom at school and she made me go to the school and get them.  I wanted to be invisible and she was making me go on stage.  I was horrified that there was a basket of flowers in the funeral parlor from my classmates, which meant everyone knew.  It is an interesting glimpse into childish thoughts and it reminds me that I should not assume I understand what’s going on in my daughter’s brain. 

My father’s head was seeping some kind of liquid.  My mother was touching him and it was one of the kindest things I ever saw her do.  She put things in his pockets.  My sister was carried out of the funeral in hysterics and I wanted to be her, didn’t understand why I wasn’t more like her.  Penny was not a thinker, she was a doer.  

They closed the casket in front of everyone and it was hideous.  Even as a child, I realized the finality & knew it was the last time I would see him.  I wanted to open it back up and climb in.  When we got home my step-sister told me I didn’t really love him because I didn’t cry.  I never stopped hating her after that.

I think that because my mother was nicer to my father’s dead body than she ever was when he was alive, I associate caring & tenderness with bodies & caskets.  I have a morbid fascination with death & funerals. 

However, I don’t like Father’s Day and I hate weddings.   I was married in Vegas at the Elvis Chapel and avoided the need for an escort down the aisle.  I am jealous that other girls have their fathers well into adulthood. 

I normally have a very sympathetic soul, but this issue can make me wicked.  Tell me a story of how disturbing it was to lose your father at the age of 70 (he was 95) and I am like Carrie, setting buildings on fire with my mind control.  I know that’s not fair, it just is.  It may be even worse to lose your parents at an old age, as you never learned how to do it any other way.

If you are divorced and no longer like your ex-husband, don’t talk bad about him.  Girls need their fathers.  So do boys.  Our culture denigrates the father and sanctifies the mother.  Why?  The idea that anyone should have to hand over their children, not be allowed to live with them any longer, plus foot the bill — it doesn’t make sense to me. 

There are good people on both sides of the story, it shouldn’t always be men who are made out to be the bad guy.  Children are the gift.  Being forced to live apart from your children is a life sentence.

I was born on Father’s Day and will always be a daddy’s girl.

And I do realize the utterly inane paradox that I do not appreciate that my mother is still alive.  She does not meet the definition of “mother” that a normal person envisions.