# A Parenting Lesson I Learned From My Father, Who Is Now Dying



## alanmt (Dec 20, 2012)

*A Parenting Lesson I Learned From My Father Who Is Now Dying

*I have spent much of the last two weeks in Helena, ninety miles south of my home in Great Falls, Montana, at the hospital with my father, who is terminally ill. I go for a few days, and then I return home for a few days to work and spend time with my family. Every time I come home, my three-year-old daughter Sophia runs into my arms and gives me the tightest hug.  Then she looks at my face and says with relief "You came back!" Those are the best moments in my life just now.

Last week, I spoke with the palliative care nurse for the first time. Her job is too comfort the dying and their families. She asked me about my father, and I told her how generous and social he was, and the difference he made in people's lives.  When I was in Boy Scouts, another boy's dad approached me after a meeting and asked if I was Ike's son, and I said yes.  He said that when he had moved to Helena some years earlier to start a new business, none of the banks would loan him money. They turned him down and often were not polite.  Then he saw my father, who was a loan officer.  Dad took time to get to know this man, and ultimately, he approved a loan for him (This was back in the day when banks trusted their employees to determine whether money should be loaned, rather than relying on formulas and credit scores).  This guy was so thrilled that someone trusted him that he felt he had a duty to my father as well as himself to make his business profitable, and he did so.  He paid off his loan early and was a successful businessman when I met him.

It was a great story, and it made me feel proud of my dad when that man told it to me and when I relayed it to the palliative care nurse.  Funny thing is, I have heard almost identical versions of the same story from other people over the years.  My dad was a bit of a banking maverick, but he trusted people and he inspired those who he trusted. I also told the nurse of my father's love for horse racing and when she spoke with him, he said that racing horses was the one thing that brought him the greatest joy in his life. She commented later that she was a bit surprised. Most elderly dying people say that their children or  grandchildren have brought them the most joy.

I wasn't surprised. My dad wasn't a good father.  Not that he was a bad one.  He didn't abuse us. We had everything kids needed. He loved us quite a bit, there was never any doubt of that.  But he just wasn't that interested in us. 

My father had some intense interests: Football. Basketball. Horse Racing. Hunting, when he was younger. Wheeling and dealing. Running his bar and restaurant, when he owned it.  But nothing else really interested him in the least. And when he was not interested in something, he didn't have anything to do with it.  He was a big athlete in high school - allstate team in football and basketball, state champion in pole-vaulting. If I had been a football player or a basketball player, he would have come to every game and cheered me on vigorously.  But I was a tiny kid - a premie who didn't catch up to normal size until my early twenties. I was an actor.  He didn't come to see any of my plays.  I was a gymnast, one of the best in my state at the pommel horse. He came to two of my gymnastics meets my whole time in high school.

I have always liked to play games.  When I was a kid, my family played pinochle together, although dad gradually lost interest in that.  When I was twelve or thirteen, I bought a horse racing game in which the players bid on horses, and then conducted six races for large purses and the winner is the one who has the most money at the end. I was very excited, because I knew my father loved horse racing - he owned several race horses by then - and I was sure he would enjoy the game and play it with me and my sisters.  He agreed to play, but barely paid attention, distracted by the football game on the television.  He bid the minimum amount for each horse, and he had us move his horse pieces around the track for him. After two of the six races, he wandered off to make a phone call, and when he came back twenty minutes later, he sat on the couch and watched the football game. And that was that.

After law school, I settled into adulthood here in Great Falls, ninety miles away from my childhood home.  In the twenty-four years I have lived here, he has visited me three times.  Once for my first wedding.  Once randomly to drop something off at my house.  I didn't think much of it for the first dozen years or so.  He actually came to Great Falls often, during the spring and summer - the horse racing season - and he usually gave me a call and let me know he would be at the track, and invited me to join him.  I did on many occasions.  And he often invited me and my family down to visit him in Helena.  He liked being around his family.  But only on his terms, at his house. But, as I have written about before, one day a half dozen years ago I saw a friend in the grocery store, with his father - his father who lived back east but came out to Montana several times a year to spend a week or so with his son and his son's family.  They were buying meat and other food for a barbecue. It made me instantly angry and jealous. My dad never did that.  He never said "I want to come up and hang out with you for a few days." He never said after a day at the races "Let's get some steaks and barbecue at your place".  

And it got worse after I entered into my second marriage, to a guy. Dad had a very hard time accepting the relationship. He reassured me that he loved me, but told me that my guy was not welcome at his house.  But after a few years, he had a change in heart and invited me down for a birthday barbecue and made sure to tell me to bring John. He was never comfortable with my marriage, but he pretended to be because he loved me. And a few months after our daughter was born, he made his third trip to our house, to see his new granddaughter.

These events helped me come to peace with my relationship with my father, by accepting him with his parental shortcomings. There is a way that the literature on down syndrome consoles parents of a down syndrome child, who love their new child but are nevertheless grieving because of their child's condition and needs and the loss of their hope for a healthy "normal" child.  The parents are advised that all of their friends are going on a journey to Italy, and it's going to be beautiful and exciting and wonderful, but parents of down syndrome children don't get to go.  Parents of down children do get a trip of their own - to Holland.  It is quieter, less exciting, and not where they thought they were going.  But if they stop wishing that they were going to Italy like everyone else, thay will see that Holland has its own beauty and its own rewards.  That metaphor resonated with me, because I don't get to have the interested, active father that so many other people I know have.  And it helped me adjust my expectations of my father to the way he is, and to be happy with our relationship. And so I stopped resenting him. 

I couldn't have changed him.  He didn't want to change.  He liked what he liked, and he did what he wanted.  But it was a bit hurtful at times. So I have resolved to be a better parent than he is, not just by emulating the things he has done right, but by not doing the things he has done wrong.  

My little girl loves tea parties and wants to have them all day long. She puts on her princess dresses (two or three at once) and jewelry, and brings out her tea set and plate after plate of toy pastries and other goodies and we chatter and pretend to drink tea and eat plastic food. This kind of thing is so not my deal. But you would never know it by watching me.  Whether my little girl is doing something I love to do with her or something I don't, I throw myself into it with the same happy enthusiasm.  Yes, I will let her pretend she is a monster and chase me around the chair a hundred times. Yes, we can visit a car lot because she thinks cars are cool. Yes, I will paint my toenails pink just like hers, so we can match. (Gah!) And whether she joins band, does sports, is a debater or an artist or a girl scout, I will be there.  Holland is cool and all, but, by God, I am taking _my_ daughter to Italy.

For right now, though, I am spending as much time as I can with my dad.  Over the past month, I have spent many more hours at his bedside than he has at my house here in Great Falls in the last twenty-four years.  But that's okay. He needs me. He does better when I am there. So I am happy to give him what he had a hard time giving me.


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## terrib (Dec 20, 2012)

Oh Alan, Alan, Alan....how can one respond to such a moving and powerful story....seems to me you've learned more from your father than you think. Learning, as you so smartly put it, is what to do and what not to do. Seems like you've got it down, my friend. In your words I hear no envy, anger, or resentment...only the love of a son that has found peace. May God bless you, Alan, pink toenails and all....


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## moderan (Dec 20, 2012)

Sir...
Firstly, I am sorry about your father. I lost mine some years ago.
I am proud of you. That's a mighty lesson, hard-learned, and one not many do learn and implement. Your daughter is lucky.


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## terrib (Dec 20, 2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AIrDSGyqSw

 A song for you Alan and for every one of us who have had a similar story.

 I went home last month and saw my father for the first time in three years. He was blowing the leaves off the driveway when I drove in. Of course he didn't turn off the blower until he was finished. I came to him and hugged him, of course he didn't hug back, he never does. I told him he looked thin and he mumbled something through the pipe between his teeth. I said his garden looked good and we exchanged small talk. I tired to tell him something that happened in church and his response was, "I can't believe you believe that shit." After about fifteen minutes he announced he had to go to the store. I don't remember what I said if anything. I just watched him drive away.


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## Bilston Blue (Dec 20, 2012)

I'm not the sort of chap to be moved by things I read, Alan, but that moved me, even got me a little moist in one eye (just the corner, and only one mind). 

It's good you can learn from your how your dad was, and that you've found some peace with the relationship between the two of you. I can relate to much of what's in your story. I haven't seen much of my dad for more than twenty years, mainly due to the fact he works nine months out of the year in a different country, and even at 37 I still miss him when he's not around.

I've visited Holland albeit many years ago, and it's a beautiful country, truly wonderful in places. The tulip fields, the canals in Amsterdam and the architecture, and Italy has its ugly parts, too. :blackeye:

Thanks for sharing this piece of your life, it's not always easy to talk so truthfully about oneself.

PS. Any tips for preventing all the glitter coming off my daughter's Rapunzel dress? It gets everywhere. At least her Tiana dress doesn't have glitter. :thumbr:


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## alanmt (Dec 20, 2012)

Thanks for reading, folks.    It was just something I needed to write right now.  

Thank you for your kind words, terri, but I don't think I quite live up to them.  Ohmygosh about your own dad. Let's hug it out!

Appreciate your condolences, moderan. What are you doing here in the nonfiction section?  Thanks for bringing tentacles! My newest poem is about them.

Ah, BB, are you sure it wasn't just a dust mote? You're welcome.  And sorry to tell you this, but glitter is from the devil and there is no known remedy. It always comes off, and sticks to everything, and it is impossible to see on your own face even though it is instantly recognizable to every person who sees you, especially those with whom you have serious business and those looking for any excuse to poke good-natured fun at you.


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## Gumby (Dec 20, 2012)

Dear God, that was a pleasure to read. I'm not ashamed to admit, it had me tearing up, too. Well done, Alan_, well done._


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## moderan (Dec 20, 2012)

alanmt said:


> Thanks for reading, folks.    It was just something I needed to write right now.
> 
> Appreciate your condolences, moderan. What are you doing here in the nonfiction section?  Thanks for bringing tentacles! My newest poem is about them.



I gets around. Besides, it had your byline.


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## alanmt (Dec 20, 2012)

Thank you, gumby!


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## ClosetWriter (Dec 21, 2012)

Alan,

I lost my father three years ago to cancer. I stood by his side as he took his last breath. It was not until after he passed that I realized how great a father he was. I only saw him, when he was alive, for what he didn’t provide me; that wasn’t fair – I know that now.

I feel as though I am more qualified than most to give advice. I feel this way because time is not on my side. A year ago a doctor told me that she couldn’t guarantee that I would live two years (right now I feel fine). After being told this, I became withdrawn, and felt insignificant. I was constantly depressed. Then I thought about my dad.

My dad always looked at the bright side (an eternal optimist). Although he wasn’t perfect, as none of us are, he never dwelt on the negative – because of this approach he always seemed happy. I thought about it, and decided that I would try to do the same. Since I have been doing this, I have never been happier. Whenever someone does me wrong, or something doesn’t go my way – I let it go, and move on. I have come to realize that happiness never comes from someone else; it comes from within.

I am telling you this, Alan, because if horse racing made your dad happy, and he engrossed himself in it, he was a wise man. Don’t judge your father too harshly. Sometimes we look at things completely wrong. Sometimes we hold on to things that do us no good.

Since I have changed my approach to living life I have realized that every day is a gift. It took me getting cancer, and being told that my life would be cut short, before I started to look for something more from life. I separate myself from negativity, and it is not always easy to do, but it makes life much easier. It makes it much more enjoyable. Most importantly – it makes the time I have left irrelevant. It is irrelevant because I don’t have to look ahead for something to make me happy – I am happy all the time. You can’t help being happy when you eliminate the negative.

I wish you the best Alan – Merry Christmas.

~Dave


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## alanmt (Dec 22, 2012)

closetwriter - thanks for sharing your story. I wish you the best and longest life your health struggles will allow. Both of our stories are about learning from our dad.  Make no mistake, I learned many positive things from him.  But this story is about how I learned negatively - to not follow his example - in one area that is very important. How I came to accept one of his human frailties while resolving to avoid it. I resolved my unhappiness with him years ago, but I wrote this because his illness and the questions of the palliative care nurse got me thinking about it again.

I loved that my dad loved horseracing.  In many ways, but largely because of his participation in this sport, his last 12 years of his life were the happiest and most fulfilling for him, in spite of ever worsening health problems, including diabetes, heart surgeries, and amputations. He was never so alive as when he was at the track watching his horses run.

But it wasn't like he was choosing between being a good father and being a good horseman. A man can do both, and do both well. My father was a good man. But he was not a wise one. A wise man recognizes that doing what makes him happy is very important, but also that we as human beings have other responsibilities on this earth in addition to making ourselves happy - responsibilities to our nation and to humanity and our community and perhaps most importantly, obligations to our loved ones, our parents, ours spouse, our children and grandchildren, and our other family and friends. We have an especially strong responsibility to those in our care and those who we brought into this world - our children.  And a wise person recognizes that working to be a better person in spite of one's all too human failings ought to be a lifelong project.  

And so the message of my story is this: I am proud of the good my father has done for others, and I love him in spite of his failings. But where I have seen those failings hurt me or others, I have resolved not to emulate them, but rather to work hard to be different and better.

Thank you again for your kind words.


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## nerot (Dec 22, 2012)

Alanmt-



> But it wasn't like he was choosing between being a good father and being  a good horseman. A man can do both, and do both well. My father was a  good man. But he was not a wise one. A wise man recognizes that doing  what makes him happy is very important, but also that we as human beings  have other responsibilities on this earth in addition to making  ourselves happy - responsibilities to our nation and to humanity and our  community and perhaps most importantly, obligations to our loved ones,  our parents, ours spouse, our children and grandchildren, and our other  family and friends. We have an especially strong responsibility to those  in our care and those who we brought into this world - our children.   And a wise person recognizes that working to be a better person in spite  of one's all too human failings ought to be a lifelong project.
> 
> And so the message of my story is this: I am proud of the good my father  has done for others, and I love him in spite of his failings. But where  I have seen those failings hurt me or others, I have resolved not to  emulate them, but rather to work hard to be different and better.



This is so true and your entire story is moving.  Honestly, I think it should be published somewhere so that others can read and learn from it as I have.  I feel very blessed having read it myself.

Thank you.


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## alanmt (Dec 23, 2012)

Nerot -you are very welcome! and thank you for readind, commenting and complimenting.  really, the response has been moving.

I think the piece might need some editing to be publishable. I kind of just threw myself out on the page here.


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## dolphinlee (Dec 24, 2012)

Alanmt

this is a well rounded story with a good start, good middle and good end. 

As this is in the non fiction section I am assuming that you are also asking for comments on the writing. If you are read on. If you are not then ignore what is below. 

Apart from a few gramatical errors what you have written is great. 

There are some parts that I would have written slightly differently. That doesn't mean I'm right - only that I'm different. 


I have spent much of the last two weeks in Helena, ninety miles south of my home in Great Falls, Montana, at the hospital with my father, who is terminally ill. 

There is nothing wrong with the sentence however I would change the end slightly. 

with my terminally ill father. 

I go for a few days, and then I return home for a few days to work and spend time with my family. 

I would change the second few to couple of.

Every time I come home, my three-year-old daughter Sophia runs into my arms and gives me the tightest hug. 

I would use each instead of every - for me it has more emphasis. 

Then she looks at my face and says with relief "You came back!" Those are the best moments in my life just now.

Last week, I spoke with the palliative care nurse for the first time. Her job is too (sp) comfort the dying and their families. She asked me about my father, and I told her how generous and social he was, and the difference he made in people's lives. When I was in Boy Scouts, another boy's dad approached me after a meeting and asked if I was Ike's son, and I said yes. He said that when he had moved to Helena some years earlier to start a new business, none of the banks would loan him money. 

They turned him down and often were not polite. 

I would change the last bit to "were often impolite."

Then he saw my father, who was a loan officer. Dad took time to get to know this man, and ultimately, he approved a loan for him (This was back in the day when banks trusted their employees to determine whether money should be loaned, rather than relying on formulas and credit scores). This guy was so thrilled that someone trusted him that he felt he had a duty to my father as well as himself to make his business profitable, and he did so. He paid off his loan early and was a successful businessman when I met him.

It was a great story, and it made me feel proud of my dad when that man told it to me and when I relayed it to the palliative care nurse. Funny thing is, I have heard almost identical versions of the same story from other people over the years. My dad was a bit of a banking maverick, but he trusted people and he inspired those who (whom) he trusted. I also told the nurse of my father's love for horse racing and when she spoke with him, he said that racing horses was the one thing that brought him the greatest joy in his life. She commented later that she was a bit surprised. Most elderly dying people say that their children or grandchildren have brought them the most joy.

I wasn't surprised. My dad wasn't a good father. Not that he was a bad one. He didn't abuse us. We had everything kids needed. He loved us quite a bit, (I’m not sure I like “quite a bit”) there was never any doubt of that. But he just wasn't that interested in us. 

My father had some intense interests: Football. Basketball. Horse Racing. Hunting, when he was younger. Wheeling and dealing. Running his bar and restaurant, when he owned it. 

grammar - football, basketball, horse racing, hunting (when he was younger), wheeling and dealing and running his restaurant and bar when he owned one. 

But nothing else really interested him in the least. 

I find this sentence a little awkward because it is saying the same thing twice. I would simplify it to 

But nothing else really interested him.

And when he was not (i would add “really”to match the emphasis in the previous sentence) interested in something, he didn't have anything to do with it. He was a big athlete in high school - allstate team in football and basketball, (I would add add “and”) state champion in pole-vaulting. If I had been a football player or a basketball player, he would have come to every game and cheered me on vigorously. But I was a tiny kid - a premie who didn't catch up to normal size until my early twenties. I was an actor. He didn't come to see any of my plays. I was a gymnast, one of the best in my state at the pommel horse. He came to two of my gymnastics meets my whole time in high school.


After law school, I settled into adulthood here in Great Falls, ninety miles away from my childhood home. In the twenty-four years I have lived here, he has visited me three times. Once I would (add “was”)for my first wedding. Once (I would add “was to”)randomly to drop something off at my house. I didn't think much of it for the first dozen years or so. He actually came to Great Falls often, during the spring and summer - the horse racing season - and he usually gave me a call and let me know he would be at the track, and invited me to join him. I did on many occasions. And he often invited me and my family down to visit him in Helena. He liked being around his family. But only on his terms, at his house. (I would make the last two sentences one) But, as I have written about before, (If this is a stand-alone piece this does not fit)  one day a half dozen years ago I saw a friend in the grocery store, with his father- his father who lived back east but came out to Montana several times a year to spend a week or so with his son and his son's family. They were buying meat and other food for a barbecue. It made me instantly angry and jealous. My dad never did that. He never said "I want to come up and hang out with you for a few days." He never said after a day at the races "Let's get some steaks and barbecue at your place". 

And it got worse after I entered into my second marriage, to a guy. Dad had a very hard time accepting the relationship. He reassured me that he loved me, but told me that my guy was not welcome at his house. But after a few years, he had a change in heart and invited me down for a birthday barbecue and made sure to tell me to bring John. He was never comfortable with my marriage, but he pretended to be because he loved me. And a few months after our daughter was born, he made his third trip to our house, to see his new granddaughter.

These events helped me come to peace with my relationship with my father, by accepting him with his parental shortcomings. (I think the previous sentence belongs with the last paragraph. The next sentence is a perfect way to start a new paragraph) There is a way that the literature on down syndrome consoles parents of a down syndrome child, who (I would change who to They also make it a new sentence) love their new child but are nevertheless grieving because of their child's condition, and needs and the loss of their hope for a healthy "normal" child. The parents are advised that all of their friends are going on a journey to Italy, and it's going to be beautiful and exciting and wonderful, but parents of down syndrome children don't get to go. Parents of down children do get a trip of their own - to Holland. It is quieter, less exciting, and not where they thought they were going. But if they stop wishing that they were going to Italy like everyone else, thay (sp) will see that Holland has its own beauty and its own rewards. 

I am having difficulty with the flow of this paragraph from The parents ……rewards.

That metaphor resonated with me, because I don't get to have the interested, active father that so many other people I know have. And it helped me adjust my expectations of my father to the way he is, and to be happy with our relationship. And so I stopped resenting him. 

I couldn't have changed him. He didn't want to change. He liked what he liked, and he did what he wanted. But it was a bit (only a bit?) hurtful at times. So I have resolved to be a better parent than he is, not just by emulating the things he has done right, but by not doing the things he has done wrong. 

My little girl loves tea parties and wants to have them all day long. She puts on her princess dresses (two or three at once) and jewelry, and brings out her tea set and plate after plate of toy pastries and other goodies and we chatter and pretend to drink tea and eat plastic food. This kind of thing is so not my deal. But you would never know it by watching me. Whether my little girl is doing something I love to do with her or something I don't, I throw myself into it with the same happy enthusiasm. Yes, I will let her pretend she is a monster and chase me around the chair a hundred times. Yes, we can visit a car lot because she thinks cars are cool. Yes, I will paint my toenails pink just like hers, so we can match. (Gah!) And whether she joins band, does sports, is a debater or an artist or a girl scout, I will be there. Holland is cool and all, but, by God, I am taking _my_ daughter to Italy.

This paragraph is absolutely brilliant.

For right now, though, I am spending as much time as I can with my dad. Over the past month, I have spent many more hours at his bedside than he has at my house here (here is not necessary) in Great Falls in the last twenty-four years. But that's okay. He needs me. He does better when I am there. So I am happy to give him what he had a hard time giving me.


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