Father's Day

My father died 15 years ago. We never reconciled.

He was a domestic tyrant and never showed any love towards me. But I still sought his love against all odds. Many years later, the wound has not healed.

He was his mother’s preferred son, a spoiled child, my Swiss German paternal grandmother had eyes for him only and kept him in a cocoon. So when my father married my mother, he probably saw in her a substitute for his mother and expected her exclusive attention. Which he got for a few years.

But not having children was not an option at the time. No pill and, God forbid, no easily available abortion. So, too soon, they had children, three of them including me the eldest. I now think he saw his children as an inconvenience disturbing the cosy relationship he had enjoyed with my mother for too short a period.

Family life was not his thing. He did all the right things, took us on vacation to the seashore each year, fed us, worked hard to bring money home. But he would hardly ever hug or kiss us. And he found faults with us all the time. Whatever we did, it was never good enough.

I still tried for a long time to win his affection. But also unconsciously made up my mind that if he didn’t love me, something must be wrong with me. Being gay and knowing I was different from a very young age didn’t help even if it was something I kept to myself.

As I grew up I rebelled of course and his antagonism towards me reached new levels. He never hit me or my siblings. We sometimes wished he had. His resentment stung us more and the pain was longer lasting.

We were not allowed to have friends from school at home. We were not allowed to play music on “his” stereo which was locked with a key he kept. We were not allowed to touch anything he owned which was almost everything in the house. His “things” were his and his only. And later, an adult and a doctor, I was not allowed to use the car that he hardly ever drove when I visited during holidays.

The few times we had visitors, family or friends, he was charming and everyone complimented us for having such a funny, loving father. The moment the last guest passed the door his face would change and become downcast. He would look angry and start making nasty remarks until we all started crying.  No one outside our family ever suspected his Janus two-faced personality and when I mentioned that he was maybe not exactly the congenial person they thought he was, I was met with incredulity and accusation of being ungrateful.

It reached a high one day as I was visiting from Réunion island as I did every three years. He had made my mother cry once too often so I argued in a violent way with him. He went upstairs, brought a riffle and threatened to shoot me. I called my brother who drove me to a hotel in Paris for the rest of my stay.

My mother was chronically depressed. For many reasons: having had a rough life leaving school early so she could raise her four sisters and brothers when her own violent father died, my grandmother being useless a running a family, having to leave the country she was born in and considered hers. And also because my father kept criticizing her whatever she did. There were specks of dust she had left on the furnitures, the dish she had prepared was not as good as the last time. Or it was cold. Or too hot.  She had spent too much time visiting the few friends she had. She looked too happy.

Being a devout catholic, she never considered leaving him or worse, divorcing him. We blamed her for lacking the courage to do so even if she admitted sometimes he had made our lives miserable. But she said she was happy to have a husband who didn’t drink, spent money on women or beat her (like her father with her mother) and who was hardworking and had offered us a roof that we owned. We couldn’t help think, my sister and I, that we would have liked him to be less picture perfect and more affectionate even if it meant him having a mistress… Somehow, she loved him to the end basking in the memories of the too short first years of their marriage before they had children.

One episode stayed with me. I was back home after two month at the Officer’s training school before being sent for a year to Tahiti. I was wearing my new Navy officer uniform and my mother was beaming with pride. I took her to the church for mass so she could show her lady friends her newly promoted son. My father sat sulking and said: “You’ve been in the army for two months and you already are an officer. I’ve been in the army for 30 years and I’ve never been one”.

Having such a toxic upbringing left traces. Not being loved by the one person I wanted to be loved is probably the reason I was incapable of long lasting relationships. Somehow, I thought I was not worth being loved so I made myself unloved.

Low self esteem drove my sister to suicide when she was in her 40’s. The last few years of her life, she accused him of abuse without being specific on the kind of abuse. I don’t think it was sexual. But it led her to escape from the family house as soon as she could by marrying an older man with means which whom she was unhappy most of the time and kept cheating on. 

My younger brother understood my father better and never opposed him directly so he would be safe from his wrath. He did well in life and has been happily married with the same woman for 30 years. 

And here I am, on another Father’s Day. Reading on social media about the celebrations, cards, the flowers and the chocolate or the regrets of having lost too early a beloved father.

And I am still wondering what I did wrong so mine wouldn't love me.

June 21st, 2020