Full Reversal, Part 3

One of my Dad’s characteristics when we were growing up was his emotional distance. Sure, we’d see him laugh and, oh boy, get annoyed or angry. But the first time I saw my father cry was when I was 21, and he told us that Mom’s lung cancer surgery did not go well. I remember how shocked I was that he was even capable of crying. He always seemed to have those spigots disconnected. Maybe he didn’t have tear ducts, I thought, thinking he was impossible to read.

Now, more than 30 years later, staying in that assisted living/nursing home facility, my Dad is an open book.

My first full day there with him, I saw my father cry more than in the previous 52 years of my life. Dad cried when my step-sister and I finally got him to realize he didn’t have to have a job. Dad cried when he talked to my brother. Dad cried when Sally and another step-sister, Sara, came to see him.

Dad confessed that when he saw his father cry a lot near the end of his life, he didn’t think much of it. “I thought it was so weak,” Dad said. “No, Dad,” I said. “It’s a sign of strength that you can let your emotions go. You have to let 'em go.”

The letting go was important because it showed everyone a side of him they doubt existed. Before she left for home, my sister Barb had told him, “You’ve been like a pineapple. All prickly and rough on the outside, but real sweet on the inside.” I kept driving home the importance of people seeing that sweet side a lot more than the prickly side. Anne and Sara both said they had never seen this tender side of him. “He’s like a lost little boy,” said Sara with tears in her eyes.

I think it goes back to my father’s childhood. He grew up in rural Arkansas during the Great Depression and had two parents who were not the warmest people in the world. His father – 44 when Dad was born – lost, then gained back, all he had three times in his life. His mother was a school teacher and principal who didn’t show him a lot of affection. Dad was shipped off to a school in Memphis when he was 13 by parents who wanted to give him a good education, but forgot about the emotional needs of an adolescent. Consequently, Dad formed an emotional wall around himself, rarely letting anyone in. Of course my mother, then Sally were able to scale that wall, and while he didn’t show it a lot, my siblings and I knew we were allowed inside the wall, too. But no one was inside the wall all the time; not us, not Mom and not Sally.

Now with the walls down, Dad is vulnerable to all that surrounds him. Like Sara said, he truly is like a lost little boy, one who needs his parents. Those parents are younger than he is, but they love him dearly and will help guide him through uncharted waters.