What happened when I told my father was a completely different story than what happens in this song. First off, I never had a chance to tell my mother. She was diagnosed with cancer when I was in college. This was the same time I started to realize I was gay. I kept putting off discussing this with her until she got better, but unfortunately, she never got better. My sister told me they had discussed it shortly before she died (my sister knew about me at the time) and my mother had no problems with it as long as I was happy. And I believe she meant that. My mother was an amazing person. I always had looked up to her, and I am very happy to think I ended up much like her.
My father and I were never very close. Even though we all lived in the same house, my father kept to himself quite a bit. He had built a small room in the back of the garage that was his workshop. He was an electrical genius. When I was in grade school, he built our first computer. The computer was the size of 2 refrigerators and had no memory. Every time you turned the computer on (or even worse, the lights flickered) you would have to type your program in. And yes, it only ran 1 program at a time. But every night after work, he would eat his dinner and then retire to his workshop. That was his life.
When my mother died, my father tried to be a lot closer to my sister and I. He was busy buying us stuff (a new car for each of us), giving us monthly allowances, paying for braces for my sister and contacts for me, etc. We spent a lot of time together during this period. And for the first time ever, my father and I started actually talking about things. About this time, I had started dating a guy. My father was becoming very good about asking me questions but leaving the pronouns to be very sexually vague. "Are you seeing anybody?" "Do you like THEM?" "Do THEY treat you good?" "How long have you been seeing THEM?"
This period didn't last very long though. Within a year of my mother dying, my father met a new woman. It was a very strange relationship for all of us, just for the fact that this woman he was now dating had shared an office with my mother for many years. She is a very nice person, but it was just strange that I had known her for many years already. But once they started dating, the closeness with my father started to disappear again. Only this time, he wasn't disappearing into his workshop, he was disappearing into her life.
Shortly after he was seriously dating this woman, I had started seeing a new guy, Mark, and we were getting ready to move in together. So I had decided for my father's 47th birthday, that I would write him a long letter about myself. In this letter, I told him about Mark and that for the first time in a long time, I was very happy and felt like my life was going great. I also told him that since he came from what I considered to be a very redneck and probably homophobic family, I understood if he didn't accept this, but he would always be my father. I chickened out from giving him this card personally. I left the card on his pillow right before I left his house. The next day, I got the email from him.
The email was a good email. :) He told me that he always suspected and had no problems with it. He said he was very glad I had somebody in my life, because he knew how much happiness he had with the new girlfriend. He also mentioned that even though they had never discussed it, he was pretty sure my mother would have had no problems with it either. He said the only thing that mattered was that I was happy with my life, and he would support me 100% with my decision. (Not that it was a decision.)
My father died about 7 years after that email. Our relationship was a very rocky one the last few years of his life. He had married the girlfriend, only to get divorced from her about 5 years later. He lived with his father for a while, but that just didn't work out. He bought a house close to his father and once again, he retreated into his workshop (new house). When he died, Mark and I had broken up and moved on with our lives. But Mark was very kind and escorted me to the funeral. But with all of the ups and downs I experienced with my father, I am very proud to say, I AM HIS SON, and HE IS MY FATHER!
2 comments:
Craig, thank you for sharing your story. I'm so glad you are able to be proud to be your father's son and that he cared more about your happiness than old prejudices.
Thanks, Becky. I was never close to my father until after my mother passed away. I will be the first to admit I was a mama's boy growing up. My mother meant everything to me.
In those few short years between their deaths, I started to finally understand my father better. And I think we got along pretty good during those years.
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