Board 8 > I kind of want to take a minute to talk about my dad

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's not a whole lot of people irl I really feel like I can talk about this with, so I might as well try here.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to say and now that I'm actually trying to say it, the words aren't really there.

My full name is John Villarose VI (that's the 6th). My family legacy is important to me, even if it isn't much of one. I've always been really proud of being the 6th, like I'm carrying the torch or something. It makes me really want to have another child to name John VII. Hell, it almost feels like I owe it to the five Johns before me.

My parents divorced when I was 5 and my sister was 1. I only know a handful of the details, but apparently my dad had been with another woman, which I was resentful for, but he went on to stay with the other woman for the next 10 years, which was longer than he was with my mom, so I can't hold it against him anymore; he really did love her.

My dad's parents never liked the other woman (and I'd be lying if I said it didn't at least have something to do with the fact that she was Vietnamese) but they made up eventually. I hate that I didn't keep contact with her, but I was 15 at the time, and didn't really know how to go about that, and now I just sort of feel like it's too late. I think I heard she's remarried now, and I don't really want to bring all this back on her.

Most of my childhood I would see my dad every Tuesday night for like 3 hours and then every other weekend. I remember there were times I just outright didn't want to see him, and looking back now, I feel horrible about it.

He died when I was 15. I had stayed with him the previous weekend, and then he died sometime Monday night of a heart attack. And I still kind of blame myself because he had mentioned that weekend about discomfort he was having. That wasn't all to uncommon for him though, he had high blood pressure and diabetes, and had mentioned more than a few times pains he had had because of it in the past, but he was poor and didn't really have the money to take care of himself like he needed to.

His dad survived three fucking heart attacks AND open-heart surgery. His mom had one and survived too. But he died alone in his tiny third-floor apartment.

For his funeral, my mom wanted me to write something about him. I had written a short story about my dog dying in middle school (that was powerful enough I actually made my 8th grade English teacher cry in the middle of class when I read it aloud). I couldn't do it for him though. I don't know why; I just couldn't bring myself to it, and I felt like I was disappointing everyone, which just made me feel worse.

I'll try to break this up into another post
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tag
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I'm always really bad at talking with people about this stuff because the experience of being around blood relatives much while growing up is very foreign to me. So I typically have not posted in threads of a familial nature. But I want you to know I am at least reading this and hoping others will have kind, wise words for you. I will pray for the best.
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This ones going to hit me
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At the funeral, I had to stand there and welcome each person. One by one, each would walk by (most of the people I never even knew) and say "Sorry for your loss." There is not a single phrase I hate more than that. They're generic filler words. My dad didn't have very many people in his life. For all the people that showed up, where the fuck were they when he needed help. Even I wasn't there for him like I should've been.

One of my clearest memories of him was during a car ride one day. I had played sports as a kid, and I was terrible at them, and I hated it. So that one day I was talking to him about it, and I told him I only really played them because I didn't want to disappoint him. And he was heartbroken, not because I didn't want to play sports, but because he thought he was making me do something that made me unhappy, and that wasn't what I ever wanted. He was just a big sports star when he was in school, and I guess he wanted that for me.

There's so much I wish I had bonded with him over. In the last 8 years since he died, I've found myself getting more and more like him. I remember him being a huge Lost fan, and he would watch Inuyasha on Adult Swim every night after I went to bed. Toward the end of his life he got addicted to World of Warcraft. He essentially became a huge nerd, just like me, and I was too young to appreciate it.

Some of my favorite memories as a kid were back when I would visit him on weekends at his trailer (before he had to downgrade to the shitty third floor apartment).

I remember watching movies with him every night, often on Disney Channel (where they would have a movie at 8pm every night).

I remember him once and a while coming back from the grocery store and tossing us pints of Ben and Jerry's out of the blue, just for the hell of it.

I remember when his cable got shut off one weekend, so we spent all weekend playing Royal Rumbles on WWE Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain.

I remember one Christmas when I so badly wanted this Pokemon battle stadium toy but I didn't think I'd get it because he didn't have much money for Christmas presents (we would typically only get like one or two from him) but he surprised me with it anyway).

I remember every year on Easter we would get a DVD in our Easter basket at his house that we'd watch that day. It's a big part of the reason I went on to be so proud of my DVD collection (which is now around like 4-500).

I remember getting him Kiss' Kissology Vol. 2 for Christmas one year and him losing his fucking mind because he was such a diehard Kiss fan. We spent like all weekend watching live Kiss videos and the excellent film Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

And now I'm just so worried about whether I'd be making him proud (and I don't really feel like I would) and I'm horrified over how similar to him I've become and how my health has been heading that same way. I'm worried I won't be able to have a son to pass on his legacy. I've lost pretty much any relationship I had with his parents because after he died they seemed to just gradually care less and less about me and my sister (despite the fact that they're really close with his sister and her kids).

Goddamn, I miss him.
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Yo I don't have much to say but I had a similar relationship with my dad. I used to see him on the weekends and I hated it.

When I was 15 I decided I didn't want to see him anymore, he was too mean, and my mom said I didn't have to.

When I finally got back in touch, he lectured me about how dependent I was on my parents, and he used the phrase "When I was 18 I didn't talk to either of my parents for 3 years"

I think it was his way of saying father son relationships are always uncomfortable to the son. Not wanting to see your dad on the weekends is natural, particularly for a teenager.
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Man I don't have much to say to that.

You do seem to be a pretty solid dude, though, so from what little I know of your life you don't seem like somebody that would be a disappointment to their dad?
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You are making him proud.
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There's always hope in the future, and from what I know I think you have done plenty already to make him proud.
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As someone else who had a hometown legend of an athlete as a father: yeah, that can be hard to deal with sometimes. It's super-gratifying when it's something you enjoy, and it's super-disappointing when you're just over it.

There was a moment my senior year of basketball when I only got to play forty-six seconds on Senior Night, and I knew I wouldn't play anymore that season anyway; I only wanted to play football that year and we had just completed a basketball practice that was borderline abusive in how hard we were pushed that day, but my dad had a lot of pressure to play in this last chance of mine to play...so I played, but I also got fed up. I snapped at my dad after Senior Night and asked if he blamed me if I didn't wanna play anymore, and the tone of his voice when he said no said more to me than just the word. He was supporting me so much for something I used to enjoy so much, but he wasn't accepting I was over it until that moment. I quietly finished the season on the bench, keeping to myself.

Dad's still alive and I saw him today so I can apologize anytime, I just dunno how to say it anymore and am not always sure I really should. =/



Anyway, to finish this back on topic:

Johnbobb posted...

This as much as anything confirms your dad was a pretty good guy who would love his son under any circumstance if he can be proud of wings dead-ass sitting on the base of the stove.
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