My father, Edward, was an alcoholic.
He died at age 71 after recurring hospitalizations and illness, having a litany of medical problems caused by drinking and exacerbated by neglecting his health. He seemed to be uninterested in wellness, and alcoholism contributed to his denial that anything could be wrong.
He drank heavily for thirty years, maybe more, and in the end, the drinking caused damage to the veins in his oesophagus, which is what finally killed him.
His last hospital stay lasted over a month, and at the end, he just began to bleed out. My mother witnessed his gruesome death by exsanguination.
I wasn’t there when he died.
I wasn’t at his bedside offering comfort or holding his hand as he passed. I was on vacation with my husband, in France, literally and figuratively far removed from the mess and chaos that characterized his death as well as his life.
I won’t excuse myself; I knew when we left that he was sick and in the hospital. But I didn’t consider changing our plans.
For one, I didn’t think he would die; he had gone down this road before, checking into the hospital whenever his health turned really bad, but somehow he always got “well.”
But that was only one reason for my absence, and not the most important one.
The truth is that the chaos his drinking brought to my life cut into me a deep and painful wound.
As much as I learned to love him, I don’t think I ever really developed a true feeling of caring for my father.
To anyone who has never ridden the rollercoaster of life with an alcoholic, this sounds like cold, harsh evidence of the inexcusable poor morals of modern people.
“Wasn’t even there when her father was dying! On vacation! In France! What kind of daughter does that?”
I know, it is shameful. But I also believe with equally forceful conviction that an alcoholic parent’s inconsistent offering of love and the ongoing confusion about the parent’s true nature leaves embedded in the child a very real ambivalence and even animosity that does not simply disappear.
Why would I have suddenly wanted to be close to him in death, when closeness to him evaded me in life?
I feel I never truly knew my father. His drinking created two Dads, the disgusting drunk and the smart, clever, and sensitive man.
When I was younger, I often hoped that the “good dad” would prevail — that he would stop drinking and be normal.
When I was younger, I would plead with him to stop drinking. I would hope I was an incentive to bring him back to the straight path.
As a little girl, I had hoped he would quit and that he loved me enough to do it. I remember feeling a sense of pride and love as he promised me, more than once, that he would stop, he would try, and this time he meant it.
But as time wore on and the excessive and unstoppable drinking failed to stop or even lessen, I realized this would not change.
It felt at some level that I had failed, that he would have stopped if he loved me enough.
Of course, I know now that his drinking didn’t preclude loving me, but in the mind of a child, it felt like some sort of fatal rejection — a failure to be good enough to be able to garner consistent loving care from your parent. There is no productive way to handle such a feeling.
Much later, as an adult, I began to develop a love for him.
Though he never quit drinking, I was sufficiently far from the disorder and destruction of his drinking life that I no longer hated him as I had when I was growing up. And hate him I did.
It had disgusted me when I would catch him in the morning sneaking swigs of vodka straight from a liter bottle he tried to conceal in the crevice between the refrigerator and the kitchen wall.
I was embarrassed by his poor work ethic; he didn’t hold a full-time job and often called in “sick.”
I had no compassion for him after hearing one too many times, the appalling sounds of him vomiting into the toilet when hungover, although he also suffered from other real health issues that would have warranted genuine sympathy.
His sloppy dressing made me want to hide from him when out together in public, and our problems with money because of his work ashamed me deeply.
I didn’t want friends to see this part of my life and I rarely invited them over as others would.
I wanted to kill him when he meanly ordered my mother around during their vicious fights, and later I fought with him myself, arguing nonsensically about stupid, unimportant subjects late into the night, him drunk and enjoying it.
At times — frequently, in fact — we all hoped he would die and erase the problems he was causing.
There seemed to be no end to them and no way to get him to quit drinking, no matter what help was offered, or what ultimatums were issued.
His drinking landed him in detox and in jail, but even that couldn’t get him to quit. Only death, apparently, could stop him.
I often think of my father and miss him, despite all this.
I appreciated his great qualities, such as his craftiness, resourcefulness, and his endless stream of jokes, both good and bad.
He was often amusing, and he could be extremely loving and affectionate. His family admired him and his carefree nature, enjoying his charisma and smarts.
But his drinking ruined his life and caused immeasurable damage to those who loved him.
I used to try to laugh away the deep embarrassment and shame I felt about him, but now I rarely hide behind the defence of humour, for there is nothing funny about life and family devastated by an alcoholic.
