Father and Son...Close Strangers.

              I am at a critical junction in my life where after all these years in which I have been in a strange relationship with my Father.  In these past four years since my Mother has passed; I find myself in a dilemma in which I am finally at a juncture in which I have grown, and finally it is a time to move forward with life. I find myself watching this 82 year old stranger whom really is an enigma with his children. I in all my 49 years find myself seeing him for the individual he really is...he is a frightened child whom has always been taught to stay silent and keep his feelings to himself. In my years growing up he was always the man to whom provided for his family except in the matters that mattered most which was emotion.  I remember being furious as my mother lied on her bed at home in her final hours with hospice, he was like that young child that was among grown adults who stayed in the background with a quizzical look of bewilderment and fear. I listened as my sister said beautiful and heartbreaking words to her best friend on going home and watched as my Father was completely lost with the conception of losing his wife of almost 50 years. He is a man without the verbal communication skills too express his true emotions to anyone let alone his family. I remember his Father as a very somber and domineering man whom my Father tried desperately to get approval from and it played over into his own relationship with myself. I found myself trying to seek approval from a man whom lacked that same aspect from his own flesh and blood. It was a very long and emotionally draining relationship between Father and son. His lack of emotion can leave some to resent him or dislike, and in truth I find myself pitying him in an almost excruciatingly way. I have watched this man become accustomed to the empty bed after almost a year of preparing my Mother's bath robe alongside him on her side of their bed at his bedtime, after her death in 2011. I watch his eyes mist as he looked at her photo I recently pulled out, it was of them at my christening in 1966. He  has said recently that he was not good enough at times for my Mother and I can her his heart crumble with the words as he looks at me. I am at loss of words at those moments and I find myself weeping inside.  It is hard now as I prepare to leave and say farewell to our living together and I see him trying  not to show any emotion.  I try to explain to my sister that he is frightened and my friends see in him the frightened individual he really is. He will not let anyone see the grown man as a weak...or in truer words ,to see the man he is as human. I remember when my Mother was sick with her first round of chemo years ago...I came home from work and it was late and my Father was behind her stroking her back and telling her he was there and watched as he picked her up under the arms and kissed her on the head and brought her into the room...I wished family members had seen that one moment of true emotion that he let out in such a powerful way...this was the first and last time I ever saw my Father kiss my Mother. Family has been very powerful for some but with ours it was very separate and strained at times. I am at fault and my Father , both of us with addiction we strained what was with both our siblings. In ways that made my Father and I equal but very far apart within the family unit.
In other words our family where strangers to each other...I myself rebelled and had such jealousy to my sister that it ruined any chance of a normal and consistent relationship.
             So now it comes time for Father and son to move in different directions and I see the face of that man in the room as his wife passed. He will never tell me or my sister of his fears and trying to get my sister understand is hard because she is busy with her family and does not see him as much as myself...she talks with him daily but he is a pro at his masking his emotions to all. As I get ready for this move I have pipe dreams of playing catch or fishing with a man whom never did those things...oh yes we did the Indian Guides and our Pinewood Derby's and some close things like that...but the negative outweighed the good in such dramatic proportions that it is lost in the story of man and son. I see the man as a wounded soul from long ago whom married a woman whom was unknowing of the wounded individual until too late and the children whom withdrew in different directions that led to a family with separate lives. I know he is afraid and my friends Pat and Mary-Kate see him as the man I describe when they are over every couple weeks...he will never be the gleam in his granddaughter's eye the way my Mother was, or the best friend to his daughter the way our Mother was to her so unconditionally, and he will not be the Father I saw in Robert Reed on the Brady Bunch...but he will be a close stranger whom I will always call Dad.