My Father

I lost my father. Years ago. When somehow we got distanced and disconnected from each other. My mom used to say my dad and I had very similar personalities and that's why we didn't get along. I wonder if she used to say that because of my brother (the favorite). I guess she wanted my brother to be like her. I lost my father in the complicated life of adults. It was things here and there and then one day it was something that felt like a nuclear war. I was 11 years old at the time and that was, perhaps, the first step towards an awkward and feeble relationship between a father and a daughter. 

It seems like our silence was our small war. We talked through my mom. I went to college and our distance seemed to grow larger. At the same time, I developed some of the same likes my dad had. I was into architecture, punctuality, music, nature. Reading and writing. There was an external calm within me that was a mirror imagine of that man I learned to be distanced from. 

I am not sure what happened with the several days that came between the frightened 11 year-old girl and the independent woman I became. In 2009, my father decided to visit us and a spark of hope started to emerge. I guess being home sick influenced me into the deceitful forgetting of the days with no memories and a voided father figure. I had already lost my mother. It was time to try and find my father. it didn't matter if I had to walk all the steps by myself. 

His visits to the United States were nice and for the most part pleasant. It was a good time to pretend without pretending. I used to get excited and cling to his nice gestures. But the bad ones were there too. His clinginess to my brother. His silences, his way of making me feel like I wasn't acknowledged. The present sense he did not really love me. A sense that I was not good enough for him because when your aim is perfection, it is not easy to fulfill the mold. And my father was a man of measurements and rules. He was an engineer by trade and anything short of perfection was just not acceptable. 

We managed to go places when he visited and I do have some good memories. Some good photos to hold onto. But we never removed the mask. We did do remove the mask when my mom passed away and then in 2013 when he was visiting and his behavior was erratic. My tolerance had/s been diminishing as I get older and I finally lost my cool. 

My mask fell. Among the numerous verbal recollections that I mentioned to make things even, I told him I was not a little child anymore. And just like that, I vomited all my anger in form of words towards my dad. I don't know if he saw it coming, but he got the message and when asked to leave if not happy, he (not surprisingly) gave me my apartment keys back and left. 

The keys were resting at the living room table when I left my room and the apartment was again in silence. And silence again reigned over days and days. two years went by when I received the news he was seriously sick. A relative emailed or called, my memory fails me. It was devastating. It was like if they had told me he was dead. People have these ways of dealing with a tragedy. Go see him before it is too late, they started telling me. I was reluctant. I had no idea what his reaction was going to be. Plus, I wasn't going to travel to Brazil in order to clean the air between us so that when he died I would feel good about doing the right thing. 

Fuck the right thing. I was going to do what I felt like. And I felt like not going and I didn't until I was ready. In March of 2016, we went to see my dad. Both of us, my brother and I. It was heartbreaking to see the man that had raised us in that state of affairs. Drying out. Bulging eyes. Bright memory. Unable to swallow his food properly. Alert brain, he was the main witness of his decaying body. His journey into that state lasted until this past January 31st. Because the disease was progressive, he just got worse and worse. 

I last saw him in person back in 2017 - at the end of that year. His suffering broke my heart. The suffering of a family member has the power to teach you about your own mortality and to scar you for life. Despite our differences, I didn't want my dad to die such a terrible death. It is not up to me to judge whether or not he deserved what happened to him. I don't even think "deserving" is a good term under any circumstances. But he did pay a high price. 

What makes me sad is the wasted life he had. He was 67 years-old and could have been a very accomplished, happy man. But also who am I to judge what was happiness for him? I don't know. I don't think I really knew my father. I knew the shell. 

I was looking at our pictures the other day and the way I want to think of him as much as possible is the way he made others laugh and how funny he was at times by just being himself. The straight face comic type. That was my dad (at times) and that is enough.