Father-Daughter Relationship

I wasn't able to fully reflect on my relationship with my Dad while he was alive because of the nagging feeling of incompleteness and uncertainty resulting from his traumatic brain injury.  I lost him 23 years ago, yet he lingered on with bits and pieces of his personality and from inside his Earthly body, with his voice but mostly no words. How does a daughter relate to a father not in the role of a father?  I couldn't come to him for advice.  I couldn't expect him to be proud of me anymore.  

Really, the only thing I could do, and I did do thanks be to God, is relate to him through his grandchildren when my daughter and son were born.  I know it brought him great joy to be a grandfather.  I know he loved seeing the babies, then toddlers, then preschoolers, and finally big kids visiting him, even if all he really ever did was collect snacks to gift to them every time we'd visit.  

He tried having them watch "cartoons" but I had to nip that in the bud as his discernment of what constituted appropriate children's television was off, not to mention his complete inability to appreciate that I may have standards that he ought to respect.

Thanks to my mom, we also shared meals together.  These were generally short and without conversation with my dad.  But nonetheless, it was time spent together.

The first 14 years after his accident, I was in the desert so to speak.  Although I got married just four years after his accident, we spent the following 10 years trying to have children before we were finally blessed with our two bundles of joy.  During those 14 years, I had to brace myself to always have my dad ask when we were going to have children, and why we didn't yet have children.  It was nauseating and I dreaded seeing my dad because I knew that was the only thing he'd want to "talk about".  

Then again, during those years, he also tried to relearn how to read again. So each visit, I would sit with him and go through the alphabet.  Over time, he began to copy sentences from children's books into a Word Document on his computer, and when I'd visit, he'd have me read what he wrote aloud.  This must have made him feel like he could still "write" since I was reading mostly legible, real words. 

He knew he couldn't communicate orally with most people.  His aphasia was so severe that even my mom would sometimes be at a loss as to what he wanted to get across.  Americans assumed he spoke Polish and it was difficult to explain what aphasia looks like in a bilingual patient.

Before his accident, I feel as though I was in a good, albeit neutral place with my Dad.  I had been a typical teenager, rebellious and misunderstood by my parents.  Probably more so considering I grew up not knowing about my autism.  Probably more so considering I was a child immigrant being raised in a culture my parents could not explain to me.  

But when I showed my parents my delayed entry card demonstrating I had enlisted in the Army, my Dad was visibly proud.  I carried that feeling of validation with me all my life.  For this one decision, my Dad approved of me.  It made all my stupid teenage antics fade away, because I had done something good for a change, something that my Dad was proud of me for.  

One year later, while I was away in the Army, my dad had his accident.  I had a premonition dream the night after his accident.  I was awoken from it with a phone call from my mom telling me he was in the hospital, in an induced coma.  I was already scheduled to fly home to visit and introduce Oscar to my family, so I did that within a week or two.  When I got back, I sprang into action to request a family hardship discharge, which took 3 months to receive.  

Looking back, it was my mom thinking of my constant complaining about how much I hated the Army that allowed me to get out when I did.  She had me write a letter expressing how my language skills would be needed for her to take over family affairs.  And while I did indeed translate documents here and there, really it was probably not much more than most immigrant children do for their parents.  It didn't take my mom long to get up to speed and run the household on her own.  But by then, I had been granted my discharge and came back to live close to home.

Before his accident, my dad did not understand me.  No one did.  I was autistic and I didn't know it, and neither did they.  I wasn't very close to anyone really, by today's standards.  I'm only now realizing that my emotional needs growing up were neglected, because my parents were not taught much emotional intelligence.  Their emotional needs were not met, so they didn't know how to do that, or that they weren't doing it.  

But before the troublesome teenage years, I loved my tatus.  I had him and my mom all to myself for nearly 9 years, except that my dad was gone from my life for 4 years when he immigrated before we did.  He kept in touch by letters and occasional phone calls.  He'd send funky photographs and have us guess what it was, or just to show off that when we'd join him, we'd have a house phone.  

When we arrived in New York and were reunited with my Dad, for a short time, I guess I was a daddy's little girl.  I was super polite, quiet, obedient.  We played Legos together.  He liked to take me and my mom on little field trips to show us this new country in which we had arrived.   He worked hard to move us quickly from the apartment in Bladensburg to one in Silver Spring, and then another year later, to purchase a house all the way in Fredericksburg, Virginia, so that we could live in a safe neighborhood and so I could go to good schools.  

But because he worked so hard, such long hours, and then with such a terrible commute, I didn't really see much of him, and there was no such thing as "papi and me" time back then.  At least not in my household.  We grew distant because as I entered adolescence in a foreign culture, my parents did not expect the challenges that would bring.  I felt blamed for my difficulties, for my rebellion, for my questioning of authority.  I needed to be talked to.  I needed to be asked what I was feeling and how I was doing.  I needed to be assured that our faith was something that was a continuation of what we all knew from the old country, so that I could hang onto it when tough times came.  But my parents didn't know that.

Before our separation, I only have two memories with my dad from Poland.  One may have been a created memory from a photograph.  I was about 3 and we were visiting a cousin of his on their farm.  I was shy, but he wanted me to come sit on his lap as he crouched in front of a car - maluch.  I was cuddled up against him as the photo was taken.  I remember being there, in his embrace, safe from the prying eyes of people I did not know who were taking our picture.

Then, I remember overhearing my parents talking, about a year later, in the foyer.  I was already supposed to be asleep.  I got out of bed and found my parents saying goodbye by the front door.  I protested my dad's leaving.  My mom picked me up, and I reached to pull on my dad's brown woolen scarf in my childish attempt to get him to stay.  No one had talked to me about the fact that he was leaving on a long work trip.  No one thought it would be prudent to let me know that my father was not merely abandoning me, not even bothering to tell me that he was leaving.  They just figured I'd go about my day with whatever explanation they'd give me, acting like it didn't matter that my dad was no longer in my daily life.

I must have felt protected and provided for by my dad on some level even back then, because while I don't recall specific memories with him other than these two, I clearly had a positive attitude towards him, and I missed him when he left and I looked forward to meeting him again when I was 8.

I doubt that I subconsciously felt fear of abandonment already from the age of six weeks, when I was baptized but he didn't come to my baptism.  I only found out about this at the age of 40.  But maybe?

My baptism when I was 6 weeks old.

Leaving the country when I was 4 years old.

Focused on work but not my changing needs in adolescence. 

Then our blessed reconciliation just in the nick of time, when I joined the Army at the age of 19.

His accident which left him with a severe traumatic brain injury and me without a father figure, at the age of 20.

And finally, his earthly death when I was 43, five days after my last conversation with him (during which time we said "I love you" as we had recently started doing), about 6 weeks after the last time I saw him when I visited for Father's Day.  Sadly, I did not take any photos on that visit.  Perhaps I was getting weary of taking random photos each visit.  But already earlier this year, I had started to feel that each visit could be our last.  I had a surreal sense of saying goodbye without really saying it.  

I knew he could go at any time. But really, this is true for all of us.  No one knows the hour nor the day (Matthew 24:36).

And so, my relationship with my father has come to an end.  About a month or two before he passed away, I started a daily morning and evening prayer rule.  I included a prayer for my parents in it, from a book by Jesuits.  The first time I prayed that prayer after his death, the following words hit me hard: "may they die the death of the just, may they pass quickly to their heavenly home".  I had been praying for a happy death for him leading right up to his passing, including the night before and that morning even!  

I take comfort in knowing that, and in the continued prayers of my children and myself for the repose of his soul.  I thank God for making me Catholic, where we believe in Purgatory, where we believe there is always hope, there are things the Lord can do even after death.  Truly, death is not the end of our relationship with God, even if it is the end of our relationship with others.  

In a way, because I continue to pray for my dad even now, we continue to have a relationship of sorts.  In a way, our relationship now can become more pure, more unadulterated by circumstances, hurts, habits, and hang-ups.  And eventually, I pray, the tables will turn, and having entered heavenly glory, my Dad will then pray for me :)