Honor Thy Father

I've noticed that Africans are big on revering the dead. I mean, they take out huge notices
in newspapers honoring a beloved family member with poetry, scripture and heartfelt sentiment on the 10th, 15th, even 20th anniversary of their death. It's really quite impressive. After a decade or so, I'd be inclined to just light a candle and save a few bucks, but that's just me.

My father died 5 years ago today, and I'm gonna take some time here to talk about Lewis Jones. I started thinking about him early this morning, as I was getting ready for work. Some CNN International anchor said it was August 14, 2008. It reminded me of where I was 5 years ago. Physically and emotionally.

Physically, I was at the hospital in Sikeston, Missouri for most of that day, having flown in from DC a few days earlier. We all kinda knew that at 86, after several mild strokes and an ongoing battle with prostate cancer, this was probably the last go-round for Lewis Jones.

Emotionally, I had just entered the most psychologically and spiritually paralyzing period of my entire life. In August of 2003, my family was still reeling from my brother David's suicide when we had to prepare for Daddy's death. At one point, when I wound up alone in the hospital room with my father, I told him I loved him. It was the only time I ever spoke those words to him. Sure, he was in a teensy bit of a coma at the time, but at least I got them out while he still had a pulse.

If you've been reading this blog regularly, you could probably do a bit of amateur sleuthing and conclude that my rather disjointed, ambivalent approach to relationships has a lot to do with my relationship with my father. In short, I've spent a lifetime chasing men who were not available to me. Oh sure, they were there, in the sense that they weren't invisible, but otherwise, they made very little attempt to respond to my overtures.

The only difference between those men and my father is that the more they ignored me, the more I HAD TO HAVE THEM. Where my father was concerned, not so much. You see, by about age six, I had accepted the cold, hard reality that Lewis Jones was incapable of affection, interaction, or even basic communication with his children. Daddy LOVED playing with and cooing at babies and toddlers, but as soon as a child was able to form sentences, he had no idea what to do with them. It's like he literally turned to stone.

Now, don't think this is going to turn into some "Daddy Dearest" tell-all posting, because Lewis Jones never beat any of us with a wire hanger or otherwise abused us physically. And I think we all give him credit for sticking around, for 2 reasons. First, my mother was crazy as a betsy bug (I'll write more about why later), and second, he had all those damn kids and only a piece of a minimum wage job, and little education.....he could have just turned tail and ran, like so many other men did.

But Daddy stayed. He got up every morning, went to work lifting bags of grain onto barges, came home exhausted every night and covered with grain dust, plopped down in front of the TV to watch Walter Cronkite in his trusted recliner, went to bed, and then got up the next morning to do it all over again. Though I wondered why he never talked to us or tried to interact with us, even as a little girl I was able to respect the fact that he never left us.

I've written before about the moment I gave up any vague notion of ever being "Daddy's Little Girl." It was the day I left for freshman year at Northwestern University, in September of 1979. My mother and brother Fred were driving me from Cairo to Evanston, and the rest of my siblings had helped pack my meager belongings into the station wagon outside. All that was left was to say goodbye to my father, who was in his trusted recliner watching TV. I stood at the foot of that recliner to say goobye, I wanted him to get up and give me a hug. He said goodbye, but he didn't get up out of that recliner. So I turned and walked out the door, and I cried half the way to Evanston.

Years later, I realized that was the day I began to uncork all of my bottled-up longing for male acknowledgement and started spewing it over the most unreceptive men I could find. That's what felt normal. Hell, I wouldn't have had a clue how to act with a man who was actually interested in my attention. I mean, what would we have talked about....me??????????

See, that's the beauty of being 46, and living through 5 years of loss, and grief, and coming out on the other side. I've learned that "me" is actually a pretty fascinating subject! I know who I am now, and I know that I deserve to have someone think I'm worth getting up out of that recliner for. I know that I deserve to be loved and supported and nurtured. I know that I am strong enough to wait until the right man comes along.

And you know what? On this, the fifth anniversary of Lewis Jones' death, I know he loved me. I know he didn't know how to show it, but I know he did. And I know he heard me say I loved him on the day he died.

Only now I know I actually meant it.