Category: Heart Ponderings

(*Update: This post had been unpub­lished while I worked to gain some per­spec­tive. I have done so. I am in a dif­fer­ent place. I am repub­lish­ing for pur­pos­es of hon­est con­ti­nu­ity.) I’m inclined to be more def­i­nite on my update of 2017-03-18. I’m not the ‘right’ man.

“A man can­not con­vince a woman that he is the right man, he must instead sim­ply be the right man and give her the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­vince herself.”

“Why, bless me, if I haven’t gone and left out the whole point,” said the Chief Voice. “That you have, that you have,” roared the Oth­er Voic­es with great enthu­si­asm. “No one couldn’t have left it out clean­er and bet­ter. Keep it up, Chief, keep it up.”

Many friends have read and processed and giv­en feed­back on my pre­vi­ous arti­cle, “All Chances Gone. No Bea­gle Pup­py”. They have also extend­ed to me much love and sup­port, for which I am very grateful.

I too have read and reread, edit­ed a bit here and there as some­thing such as this, put out there for pub­lic con­sump­tion should be painstak­ing­ly authored. I have reread and processed, and tak­en into account much of the feed­back and advice, and even exhor­ta­tions I have received from others.

I do after all, ponder.

I came to the con­clu­sion that I was still being manip­u­lat­ed and con­trolled… by my own fears. Was I fright­ened of a emo­tion­al bug­bear blown out of all pro­por­tion over the years even if that bug­bear may prove, in fact, to be real­is­tic in some ways?

I was giv­ing him too much pow­er… where he has none.

I was let­ting fear be jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not doing what I tru­ly wished to do, for­go­ing two oppor­tu­ni­ties, one of which will nev­er come again, and the oth­er which may nev­er be offered to me again.

The first oppor­tu­ni­ty is that of being able to say ‘good­bye’ and tell my father that I loved him in every way left open to me, and those ways fierce­ly. Per­haps it is self­ish, and I don’t know if I have a need or not yet, but I would very much not like to real­ize down the road that I have need for this clo­sure. I acknowl­edge that time might damp­en some feel­ings and allow oth­er feel­ings to have pri­ma­cy and with those, find only regret at hav­ing made a mistake.

The sec­ond is to see fam­i­ly that I dear­ly love and have had lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty to be close to. The lack of close­ness was my own fault. I was so with­drawn into a shell of pro­tec­tion that I self-denied myself one of the best gifts I have and ever will have been giv­en. The asso­ci­a­tion was too strong. Again, I think this was dri­ven by a sort of fear. I spoke of regrets above. This regret already exists and is far greater than I antic­i­pate the oth­er might ever be if I again let those fears con­trol me.

Time march­es relent­less­ly onward and I have already lost much oppor­tu­ni­ty as now age and dis­ease, and its thiev­ing nature may have already robbed (No, my hurt and fool­ish­ness did the rob­bing, alas.) me of what I most desire. I could eas­i­ly spend a lot of effort and hatred toward myself for this fool­ish­ness, but it is point­less and I must act on the les­son of giv­ing the grace I give oth­ers to myself.

I don’t know about Bea­gle Pup­pies. That sce­nario, with time and tem­per­ance, seems less like­ly, but I do acknowl­edge it is still a pos­si­ble real­i­ty. I hon­est­ly don’t how to han­dle it if those fears are real­ized. I only know that I can­not let those fears dic­tate what I do.

I had for a few days tried to pass the respon­si­bil­i­ty for how I han­dled those fears off onto the shoul­ders of my father. That is non­sense. He can do noth­ing to me, then or now, and he can­not ‘make’ me fear­ful. Only I have that respon­si­bil­i­ty. It’s past time I owned that. Anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for self-grace in that I think that try­ing to pass the respon­si­bil­i­ty was an inevitable part of the process, but that grace only has mean­ing if I also admit it was wrong and chose to do that which is right.

I could wish that Bea­gle Pup­pies played no role. Such lament is use­less, self-indul­gent, and waste­ful. I could lament that Bea­gle Pup­pies ‑ever- played a role, ‑ever- were a ‘thing’, but lamen­ta­tions do not alter. Lament only hin­ders one from pro­gress­ing for­ward if main­tained longer than is appro­pri­ate and healthy.

I will, from this point rede­fine Bea­gle Pup­py to mean only some­thing that I very much love. I will dis­card that oth­er def­i­n­i­tion in a box of use­less things des­tined for even­tu­al anni­hi­la­tion in fur­nace infer­no. There is one Bea­gle Pup­py like no oth­er. He slum­bers on the apex of his dwelling… when he’s not patrolling the skies over France, keep­ing them safe from the men­ace of Man­fred Albrecht Frei­herr von Richthofen. He admirably serves as per­pet­u­al short­stop and nev­er lets a ground ball past in for­mal and pick­up-games. He did once make a failed bid to forcibly replace Char­lie Brown as team man­ag­er, but we will speak only of his suc­cess­es here.

I had more loved images than would make sense in-line in a post already push­ing those lim­its, so here are the remainder:

A fol­low-up arti­cle has been added here: Fac­ing Fears — My Father’s Passing

All the chances I might have had to final­ly fig­ure out how to for­give and recon­nect with my father, and hope­ful­ly, lead him back to a sav­ing rela­tion­ship with Christ from his jad­ed athe­ism end­ed five days ago.

A rel­a­tive searched out my con­tact infor­ma­tion and let me know last night that my father was dis­cov­ered by police on a request­ed well­ness check. They esti­mate he passed away four days previous.

A lot of mixed emo­tions. There is remorse for my fail­ure and inabil­i­ty; remorse for times when I became right­eous­ly angry at his (con­tin­u­ing) mis­treat­ment of my moth­er, my sis­ter, and myself. There is regret that he seemed a text­book Sociopath that might have nev­er been reached by any efforts of for­give­ness and reach­ing out. There is prayer that God gives grace to those who may have their free will com­pro­mised, through no fault of their own, by men­tal damage/illness. The remorse is most­ly qui­et remorse and it may grow more intense as God works on my heart, but I can’t see how I could have done any­thing much dif­fer­ent than I did.

I am glad that he is no longer able to affect my moth­er and myself. My sis­ter has been beyond his grasp since pass­ing away at the begin­ning of 2005. Glad, but I did not wish him dead. I wished him all the life it took to come back to God in humil­i­ty as a sup­pli­cant, and then, per­haps, a life remain­der of qui­et peace. Not the false peace of a sociopath unable to know of trou­ble­some things, but of one who knows, knows he is for­giv­en through no act of his own, and who is able to accept that for­give­ness and wrap it around him­self like a com­fort­ing blanket.

If there were to be a funer­al ser­vice as near­by as Kear­ney, Nebras­ka, and had I a sur­feit of time and mon­ey, I would very much like to attend, and tell him that I loved him in every way that was left open to me and that I hope that in spite of my fail­ure to reach him that he is some­how cov­ered under Grace.

My moth­er sug­gest­ed that I should attend for anoth­er rea­son, and one which, even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of would make me chose not to attend even were I able. She sug­gest­ed that I might get a Bea­gle Pup­py, and since I am try­ing to find a way to pay for Nurs­ing School, that it would be a very won­der­ful bless­ing to have a Bea­gle Pup­py. I can­not stom­ach the idea of one more con­trol­ling manip­u­la­tion, one more car­rot and stick, one more act of twist­ed­ness being done to me.

Briefly, as a child, per­haps 6 years old I had been giv­en a copy of the Amer­i­can Ken­nel Club’s Dog Breeds Book because I was nuts about anything/everything ‘dog’. I loved its bright yel­low cov­er (my favorite colour then) and all the black and white pho­tos of dif­fer­ent breeds. I had poured over it like oth­er boys pour over base­ball cards mem­o­riz­ing stats, or in this case, char­ac­ter­is­tics, clas­si­fi­ca­tions, tem­pera­ments, groom­ing needs, and so on. I had paper-clipped pages for dif­fer­ent breeds and hon­est­ly, I would have liked to have all of them, or even just one of them. There was one at the time that stood out among the rest and that might have met my father’s strin­gent require­ments of an accept­able dog. It was­n’t Ben­ji, Ben­ji after all being a shel­ter dog of mys­te­ri­ous her­itage. It was­n’t my present day loves, Shih-Tzus (I don’t think we’d yet dog­gy-sat me mum’s boss’ Roxy and knew Shih-Tzu joy) and Bor­der Col­lies (They weren’t even rec­og­nized by the AKC at the time and more’s the pity they ever were). It was­n’t a Samoyed or an Alaskan Mala­mutes like my beloved (ok, she belonged to my sis­ter Alli­son, but she lived with me for sev­er­al years) Nik­ki. The page I came back to over and over; the page with two paper­clips and a third big one on the few full-colour pages in the cen­ter, was the Bea­gle. I want­ed this small scrap­py smart trim lit­tle dog who just looked like it had a heart burst­ing with love for a lit­tle boy. Con­stant “Bea­gle Pup­py” desire fol­lowed but gained no trac­tion with my par­ents… or rather with my Dad who must con­trol everything.

May­haps not so briefly. My par­ents were active in the church I had grown up in as bible-study lead­ers, youth min­istry helpers, and as dri­vers for the church van. It hap­pened that the youth group decid­ed to go on an out­ing to the almost-bet­ter-than-Dis­ney­land-way-bet­ter-than-Six-Flags Knot­t’s Berry Farm. It also hap­pened that the day of the trip was my 8^th or 9^th birth­day. When we reached the park I was giv­en the ‘choice’ of going around the day with my father, or with my moth­er. How can you make a wrong choice when there’s no real choice at all. My moth­er made such things fun and excit­ing. My dad com­plained and groused about the price of food which he would nev­er have pur­chased any­ways. Mum would get small treats when she could but as she real­ly did­n’t have much of ‘her own mon­ey’ (her nurse’s salary was tak­en and con­trolled by my father), even those occa­sions were rare. He crit­i­cized and belit­tled every­thing. He con­de­scend­ed upon every­one, espe­cial­ly inter­na­tion­al work­ers and vis­i­tors. There was no fun with my Dad, no joy. He refused to ride any roller-coast­ers (some of the best were at KBF, The Corkscrew, Mon­te­zooma’s Revenge, etc), and my mum was a roller-coast­er-nut. I went with my mum. Lat­er in the day we recon­vened at a cov­ered pic­nic area and there was a sur­prise birth­day cake and par­ty wait­ing. It could not have pos­si­bly been a more per­fect day and would have stood in my child­hood as one of maybe 3 or 4 actu­al hap­py mem­o­ries (Meet­ing Benji(Benjean) and her train­er was one, a cer­tain Day at Ange­les Crest Chris­t­ian Camp was another).

It’s not. It’s not one of those. It was one of the oth­er kind of days of which there were so many, and this the one that still hurts the most. As we were leav­ing the park and get­ting back in the van and I was nurs­ing the fire­ball can­dies (They had to last. When­ev­er would they come again?) my moth­er had dis­obeyed my father and bought for me, my father took me aside. He pulled out his wal­let and from that took a clip­ping from the clas­si­fied sec­tion of the L.A. Times. I still remem­ber the smudged newsprint attempt at includ­ing a pho­to of a lit­ter of Bea­gle pup­pies and their mum… a lit­tle hard to make out in pure black & white process. My dad told me that he had planned, if I were to come with him for the day, for us to leave the park while oth­ers were enjoy­ing the rides and attrac­tions and to go and pick out a pup­py from the lit­ter, but as I had went with my mom, I would be get­ting no pup­py. Not today. Not ever. I don’t remem­ber how I react­ed beyond sit­ting at the back of the bus for the long trip back to cen­tral LA with a for­got­ten fire­ball burn­ing a hole through my cheek as I nei­ther felt nor tast­ed it, cry­ing, being embar­rassed and think­ing that I just did­n’t want to con­tin­ue. I ‑think- it was around this time that I tried and failed to com­mit sui­cide with my dad’s .22 auto that I had no idea how to charge or un-safe. I could­n’t bear the thought of my ‘mis­take’ and that it would have ‘for­ev­er’ effects. To chil­dren, ‘for­ev­er’ means ‘ever after’, not ‘until cir­cum­stances one day change’. I did­n’t think in terms of ‘unfair’ because I had nev­er known ‘fair’. I had had so much fun with my mum, and I should have had fun with my mum, but I did­n’t real­ize I was unwit­ting­ly mak­ing or break­ing some Faus­t­ian bar­gain at the time. I did­n’t want to be alone with my father, not before, not that day, not ever, and because of it my ‘mis­take’, there would nev­er be a pup­py to replace Ras­cal and Sam­son who had both passed away long before I even got to real­ly know them. I would nev­er have a pup­py. I don’t remem­ber any­thing after that until my moth­er moved us out of his house. It’s all blanked out. I think I shut down. I think I was crushed beyond car­ing about any­thing at all.

Could he real­ly be that twist­ed so as to do it again? Could he put some stip­u­la­tion in his will where I would be ‘reward­ed’ for mak­ing the ‘right’ wrong deci­sion and pun­ished for mak­ing the ‘wrong’ right deci­sion. Nobody could pos­si­bly do some­thing that heinous, could they?

I don’t want a Bea­gle Pup­py. I don’t ever want a Bea­gle Pup­py from him. I don’t want to miss his funer­al, but I very much wish I had been able to miss that birth­day at Knotts Berry Farm.

The answer is, “Yes, he could.”. Mon­ey has always been his go-to method to con­trol and hurt or bless (not altru­is­ti­cal­ly, but for the returns it brought him) peo­ple in his life.

My answer is, “No, I can­not. I Will not.” Today I would say, “I Shan’t.” but it just does­n’t seem as appro­pri­ate here. I will find some oth­er way, like every­one else, to take care of Nurs­ing School and oth­er need­ful things, and the hard­er it is, the it will be all the wor­thi­er for the difficulty.

I hope he’s been grant­ed grace and under­stand­ing for the dif­fi­cul­ties of his own child­hood and for the men­tal derangement(s) he suffered.

I feel free. Free­dom that being half a nation away could nev­er bring. Free of that nag­ging wor­ry that he could still find some way to hurt my moth­er or less like­ly, myself. I would­n’t have trad­ed his life for that free­dom, but the equa­tion was not of my making.

I sup­pose I am final­ly free to change my last name to some­thing that does­n’t hurt because now doing so won’t hurt him. I won­der at even both­er­ing to wait, but I know it was in the hopes of reach­ing him for Christ. Would that I could embrace the won­der­ful Cepel­ness that was a small part of my life, my Uncle Al and Aunt Car­ol and all their kids and their kid’s kid­dos, and a fair bit of good Cepel­ness back in Nebras­ka, but put togeth­er, all rep­re­sent a drop of joy in an ocean of hurt.