Dear Abby:
I'm upset at my ailing old father.
Stop yelling. Let me explain.
First, the facts: he's in his eighties, is married, lives thousands of miles away from me, is legally blind, until recently did work (at a supermarket), and most recently fell at home and broke his hip. He is out of the hospital with a replacement joint and is convalescing at a rehabilitation center. I have two siblings. One of them is going to visit with him and my mother very shortly. On a recent call, my father, from his sickbed, informed me that he would be needing several hundred dollars a month from me and my siblings (combined)--for me, an affordable sum--because he could no longer work. My mother has not worked in many years though I believe she'd have been able to for most of that time.
Second, my immediate dilemma: should I go visit him? I have pressing business matters right now--no, really, I do. I'm not making that up.
Now, the background--and the reason I am upset. Or the reason I have been upset.
Without belaboring too much my distant past, let's just say that my parents provided a home in the suburbs that was unwelcoming enough for me, who by any stretch of the imagination should have been college-bound at the time, to leave first when I was seventeen and then, after having failed at leaving and a brief Harry-Potteresque residence in an unfinished space under a stairwell in their new home, to leave for good and forever when I had just turned eighteen with less than a thousand dollars to may name for some place I and my girlfriend at the time referred to as "out West".
That all worked out for me I guess. I have a business, a decent income, I am happily married with two wonderful children, one of them is in college, and my paintings are occasionally shown at galleries. My Dad says he is proud of me.
So here is the rub. My parents did little and nothing for me as a teenager. Of course I was difficult. I did things I would never want my teens to do (as who has not?). But they--I feel (and others who know the story agree)--had pretty much abandoned me, except for providing a crash pad and a chance to eat, by the time I was fourteen. (Example: I had a run-in with the cops when I was that age, during which I was victimized by same, and by the next day my parents had not only done nothing at all to address the event, they allowed me to go back out hitch-hiking).
As for the notion of college, there was virtually no conversation about it and certainly no offer of support from them (even at state schools which, as everyone knows, were, in the 1970s, cheap like penny candy).
Much, much more recently, through the twin wonders of social networking and email, I became embroiled in a very ugly exchange of "thoughts and feelings" between my brother, who initiated the episode with a spate of birther-worthy hate-speech, and my parents, whom my brother for no discernable good purpose cc'd during a heated email exchange in which he and I were both quite upset at one another mainly due to political differences. I had referenced some negative things about the family--and I suppose he wanted to wound me and them, and that began the emails between me and my mother and father.
In these emails I was, for the first time in perhaps thirty-five or forty years, very frank with them about my opinion of both their parenting skills and their--for lack of a better phrase I suppose--"belief system", which I hold to have been supported by a quite unwarranted self-satisfaction at how they have operated towards me for several decades. The emails were by turns bitter and defensive on their parts, and unusually frank and unsparing on mine.
We had left it as such until I got a call from my sister (a born-again Christian to whom I never speak) telling me that our father had fallen and was in the hospital.
I have spoken to him a few times. I now have a dilemma. I cannot say I especially want to go see him. But I cannot seem to avoid the very strong notion that, unless I do, I will deeply regret it.
Abby, what should I do?
Stop shouting. I know you're exhorting me to buy tickets. I may. I may, but I'm not sure I shall.
Signed,
Upset
