Waiting for My Dad to Die: A Guest Post
Today’s writer wishes to remain anonymous.
© 2009 Ulrich Joho, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio
I had been waiting for my father to die for three years. That may sound cruel; he was nothing more than an old man with dementia living in a nursing home to the outside world. But to me he was a living lie, an evil, a tear in my soul.
My younger daughter, once a bright little girl, started changing before our eyes into a stranger. I know many parents experience this as their children grow, but what she became was frightening. First came the cutting, drugs, the towering rages full of hate toward us, the suicide attempts, and being put on life support, her father and I just holding each other as we watched the machine breath for her. She spent her teen years in and out of psych units, therapy and drugs. We read everything we could and began to suspect that sexual abuse had occurred, but when we asked she would only say” I have to wait before I can talk about it”.
Three years ago we suffered a loss so great it brought us to our knees. A man we loved as a son was killed. It was his death that unlocked the truth for our daughter. She hit bottom with her grief and very early one morning confessed to her father that grandpa had molested her from the age of 3 to 8. He had told her he loved her and this was how to show special love. My husband held her, but told her she had to tell me. She was fearful, wondering if I would hate her, scream at her and tell her she was a liar. She spoke words that tore deep inside my soul “Grandpa molested me and Grandma knew it”. I actually was not surprised, I had begun to suspect it was him; my father had been exposing himself to children and had been speaking of sexual acts including “I always enjoyed raping my daughters”. I held out my arms and we held each other.
I asked my daughter for permission to speak with my brothers and sisters about this and she gave it to me. And then I found out about the other lies-others in my family had been molested. Family member were present when the police had come with complaints but he was a fine upstanding man so it must be lies, some spoke of my mother begging them not to pursue this. One incident was 58 years ago. My sister said it didn’t happen to me, she watched out for me but who watched out for our daughters. In the beginning they all had stories but a few days later that changed and I was told it never happened,” He couldn’t defend himself because of the dementia, and mom was dead so why raise hurtful subjects”. One of my sisters told me to forgive and forget and we would be fine. That I had to respect him because he was my father. Our family was divided, those whose daughters were molested or had been molested themselves and those who denied it could have ever happened and that we were lying.
And so I waited for him to die. It took three years. Three years where I still paid his bills, did his taxes, made the decisions for his daily living but I never saw him once because with his mental sate he could never answer my questions. My sisters wanted me to give up the legal guardianship (my extended family had been eager for me to take this on years before) I had but I would not, it was the only power I had over him. During those Three years I found out charges would not be brought because of the dementia. And then he died. I was the one to plan the funeral. I picked the minister and kept it simple. No singing, no glorification of the body. I made some family members angry. One half of the family sat upfront and wept. The other half (the ones who came) sat a few rows back in silence. I know both sides were in pain. Questions could never be asked no answers would ever be acceptable. For a few weeks some family members wrote face book posts of “how I miss my daddy.” Having read this post the young women painfully realized that the hopes of a loving extended family supporting them would never be a reality.
I went to the funeral for one reason, so I could attest to my daughter that her Grandfather was really dead and buried. For weeks after the funeral she had nightmares of him reaching out to grab her and She would call in tears asking “was I sure he was dead”. I would assure her that I saw his dead body and he could never touch her again. So now he is dead but his legacy will be with us for a long time, for the rest of our lives. I see my daughter take two steps forward but then I feel him reach out and pull her back a step. We continue to deal with the pain of betrayal and the feelings that we should have known and stopped it. My Husband made a remark to me shortly after we found out. It was “I want to blame you and put this squarely on you because he was your father. And it would be so easy to do. But that would not be true”. I thank God he had the strength to not blame me and yet I continue to blame myself for not knowing. My faith reassures me that while we were denied justice on Earth, my Father did have to stand before his God. I have the unending hope that my daughter will feel joy in her life someday and that this can become a distant memory for us all and I pray the legacy of abuse has ended in our family.
