My father is currently in a nursing home in Salem, VA suffering from advanced Multiple Sclerosis, which has left him unable to walk, clothe or feed himself, and the majority of the time, unable to speak clearly. Because I have so many feelings I need to express, and because I am unable to do so privately, I feel that writing it in my blog will allow both me and my posterity to view it and understand and remember.
Dear Dad,
It’s been some time since we really had a chance to talk. Essentially, the last time you were really strong enough to communicate clearly was just after my mission, around the time you condemned me for being an unworthy son. Again. Age, it seems, brings wisdom, if one works at it. Age, hopefully, has brought me wisdom concerning our relationship. If not age, then experience as a father myself certainly has qualified me to at least step to the plate.
I had the opportunity the other day to discuss our lack of a relationship with an older co-worker. I then, the very next day, had the opportunity to return to the Nashville Temple for the first time in some time. There, in the celestial room, I was brought to a remembrance of the conversation I had participated in the day before. Obviously, when you’re a young man who has never experience fatherhood, it’s easy to jump to conclusions. Further, it’s easy to expect perfection from your parents, when you yourself have no such hope. I acknowledge that I had unrealistic expectations of perfection from both you and Mom.
I have come to the realization over the past few months, after a spiritual reawakening and a desire to become the father, and the man, our Father in Heaven expects me to be, that the mistakes you made throughout your life, not just where Tammy and I were concerned, but in general, were due to pure ignorance in most cases. The problem is, that as an attorney, you could never really admit when you didn’t know something. It’s a trait I picked up from you, unfortunately, that I am still in the process of eliminating. To be fair, even if you had been able to admit to it, I don’t know that I would have been able to accept it from you. After all, in my mind, you knew everything. I worry that sometimes, in your mind, you felt you did know everything about the specific subject we were discussing, but I digress.
Looking back on my childhood, I realize now that you were depressed even then. Your seeming inability to get out of bed and go to work were not just laziness. I don’t believe you were a lazy person, I believe you were seriously depressed. Had you been born 30 years later, as Tammy was, you would have been diagnosed and treated. That depression certainly had an impact on everyone around you. The situation in which you currently find yourself is indicative of that impact. You have isolated yourself, at least 100 miles from everyone who loves you. There is no real reason for the isolation, that I know of, other than depression. You have found yourself in the bottom of a pit of depression, and it’s easier to stay there than to fight to get out.
When I spoke with my co-worker, he expressed his admiration for my self-confidence, and my desire to make other people happy. After telling him of some of the difficult times we had, he was surprised that I ended up so confident. I realized from that conversation that you outwardly expressed confidence in me and bragged on me to other people, and that’s where my sense of self-worth came from. I wish to express my gratitude for that. It has helped me become who I am today. But there is still that nagging insecurity that comes from being told that I was wrong behind closed doors. That insecurity that comes from being told that, despite my having served an honorable mission, and focusing on my education as we are to do, that I was an ungrateful son, and a failure. I believe, with all of my heart, that it was the depression talking when you said those hurtful things.
But here’s the blessing of all of this: the rough times we had as I grew to be a teenager and older helped me to understand things now that I never could have. I remember, these 15 years later, that when I was emotionally broken as a flunked out student at BYU and at my rock-bottom, it was you who drove thousands of miles to come get me. I remember that it was you who stood by me for the next 2 years as I continued to struggle with honesty and with who I was to be. And it was you who went with me, on that glorious day, to the Washington Temple to receive my own endowment and the blessings there associated with it.
I have come to the realization that you were just a confused, lost father struggling to do what was right, as you thought. You just got it a little bit wrong with Mom and Tammy and I. You used to always tell me that Tammy couldn’t love others because she didn’t love herself. I think, in many ways, that was an introspective statement. I think you felt abandoned by your family. You tried to do what was right from a spiritual standpoint, and you just got ridiculed and mocked by your brothers and sisters. You tried to lead your home as a patriarch, but you just took it too far sometimes. I know how that feels, because as a father, I have made similar mistakes. My mistakes were more along the lines of apathy, rather than abuse; call it spiritual neglect, if you will. But I’m trying to change that. Oh, how I wish that you could know me as a father now. Oh, how I wish, that you had been strong enough to fight your disease, rather than to lie down and let it destroy you physically and mentally. Oh, how I truly desire for you to be able to pass on to the other side, so you can see these things with your spiritual eyes.
I forgive you, Dad, for the mistakes you made. I ask for your forgiveness for the multitude I made. Hugh Nibley said that there are really only two things that humans can do that angels can’t: forgive and repent. That takes care of both of them. I love you, Dad, not in spite of your imperfections. I love you because of them. I’ve never stopped loving you as my father, even when I haven’t liked you very much. That continues today. I hope we’ll be able to reunite on the other side to say what needs to be said then.
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