"Moonie"

 I need to clarify  why I am posting this. I had posted earlier but temporarily took it down as a result of a request by a family member. I am now re-posting it as an attempt to honor the man that was my father. I did not post this to "out" my dad's illness though if I am doing that, then so be it. Mental illness is far too misunderstood and should not be made to hide in the shadows nor cause shame or embarrassment to family members. 

Additionally, I do not feel I am betraying my Father's privacy as anyone who had met and interacted with my father for more than a passing moment would know there was something different about him. I believe to understand why I see my Father, and both of my parents for that matter, as having achieved greatness, you must know and understand what they lived with and overcame. "The kids" unlike most families were my parents least concern and challenge. For my siblings I hope you can understand why I need to say these things....

Martin

  

 "Moonie"

          I remember as a young boy having a fight with my mother because I was angry that my dad never came to St. Bon’s  like the other kids dads did for hockey or skating. He never  helped me with my homework. He didn't take me fishing. He wasn't like the other kids dads.  I remember clearly her taking me by the hand, dragging me upstairs and going into my bedroom, closing the door and telling me in an angry but hushed voice that He couldn’t go to those things because he was "retarded."  Now understand while I appreciate that this is an ugly word, it was not chosen out of ignorance. My mother was trying to explain to a young 10 year old boy why, and how, his father was different.  She used a word in common usage in those days.  It was not a word viewed as a necessarily negative or pejorative term in 1971/72 sensitivities.  I remember not really knowing what the word meant exactly. I did, however, within the next few years figure it out pretty quick watching other kids in the neighborhood. 

          I watched many times as kids in the neighborhood would throw rocks at one of other kids in the neighborhood who was known to be "retarded".  I remember seeing the fear in "Tommy X's " eyes as he ran up the street crying while being chased by kids five and six years younger than he was.   I hated it.  I wanted to stop them. But I didn’t want to attract attention to myself, so I said nothing.  In fact, I said nothing for a long time.  I stayed silent for maybe 10-12 years or so...  I never spoke to my friends, or anyone for that matter, about my father. I bit my tongue when the kids in the neighborhood called him “Moonie” and made fun of him.  I simply did not speak about my dad.  I was afraid of being labeled by association.

          I later shared with some of my friends my dad’s “condition”,  but only with the very closest of my friends, and only when they began to spend a lot of time at the house and suspected on their own that something wasn’t exactly right. The truth is though, they never really knew or understood what "retarded" (the word I used not knowing any better then) meant in terms of what my father could or couldn’t do. And it wasn't information I would share or explore with them.  Most never realized that my dad couldn’t read or write, couldn’t tell the difference between 150 dollars and 22 million,  (just that one was bigger than the other), or couldn't understand half of the things me and my friends discussed daily.  

 

          So I spent the first 10 years of my life not knowing anything about my father, and I spent the next 10 years or so ashamed and embarrassed of my father, and the next few years admitting to ownership of my father but refusing to acknowledge, or admit to the problems he had to cope with or try and manage.  So it’s no small wonder that I never really understood him, because I spent over half of my life trying to pretend he wasn’t there...  because I felt to a certain point that he wasn’t there for me, as a typical father should be for a child.

But age does funny things to us all.

It recently  took my father from me.  And just prior to that.. age allowed me to look back and examine my father and who, and what,  he is/was.... from an adult perspective of a father myself.

      My dad was unable to read and write. He raised, with the help of my mother, a strong, stubborn but determined woman, four children who are all well educated with certificates, degrees, diplomas and a  Masters degree among them.  In a house that was filled with kids and only a single and limited income,  he clothed and fed four kids,  he loved and cared for those kids,  he helped raise them so that none of them ended up on the wrong side of the tracks (though some of us may have danced on the railings once or twice.) He never had man-toys, or even spare change in his pockets most times -  it all went to the house and family.   He never in all of his married life got drunk,  hit his wife or kids (Unless directed to spank by my mother and trust me if he had to then one of us deserved it! - And even then played the game.. he pretended to spank hard, and we pretended to be hurt and contrite,  and then, duty satisfied, we went on our way again!)

          He took care of my mother when she got sick with Multiple-Sclerosis ,  and more importantly when she stayed sick, and became a quadriplegic, and needed alot of special care and attention, he stayed. He did whatever had to be done, whatever my mother directed or asked of him.

      My father,  the retarded “Moonie” did what we expect of all good fathers.  He did it with no education, he did it with bad nerves, he did it taking what ever pills he was told to take no matter what they did to him,  he did it working double and split shifts and overtime for extra cash, and he did it all without even having the capacity to explain or understand what it was he was doing. And he did it without real complaint (grumbling does not count..  I grumble... we ALL grumble sometimes..)

          My father was as complete  a father as any child could hope to have and he did it while suffering from.. Hebephrenic schizophrenia (sometimes refered to as disorganized schizophrenia - he only finally diagnosed well after he retired).   And while I may have spent the first part of my life hiding in shame and embarrassment who my dad was, and how he struggled,  make no mistake I will spend the rest of my life happily sharing who he was and what a great dad I had,  and how he overcome all of his challenges to simply do what a “normal dad” is supposed to do.

I want to leave you with something that my brother wrote a few years ago. I think it captures poignantly some of what I am trying to say. (I apologize Pat I did a little editing.)

For my Archer

My father is a good and simple man.

He and I could probably not be more different.  He worked with his hands all his life, while I've always relied on my brain.  He can't read or write, while I've attended universities, studied programming, etc.  He is often quiet and when he does speak slurs his words (he's hard of hearing) such that even I after all these years still have trouble understanding him, although I speak two languages and am known for my verbosity .

Whenever we sit together in a room, we have almost nothing to say to each other.  He'll ask me how work is going, but beyond telling him I enjoy my job or that I got a raise, there is little more that I could explain to him that he'd understand.  I don't know that he's ever set eyes on a computer monitor.  When people ask him what I do he just tells them I work with "pewders" and that I'm doing well, making good money at it, and that I'm a really smart boy.

Needless perhaps to say, a man such as my father is grossly underestimated by most people who meet him.  In this day and age it's all about how much money you make, how many letters come after your name on your business card, how many Armani suits are in your closet, and whether your "beamer" is a standard or automatic?   *shaking head*   At times I am sure that none of us growing up in the house really understood him.   I'm not saying I'm quite sure I do, but sometimes as we sit quietly in his living room, not knowing what to say to each other,  because we really have nothing in common to talk about, I look at him, I look at our relationship, I look at my youth, at my fathers relationship with my mother, and there, in the silence, a certain wordless wisdom makes so much sense to me, and I realize that for all my education, all my learning, all my "sophistication", there are just some things in this world, some very beautiful things, that remain simple and precious,  and that all of human evolution has never changed or improved upon.  Things I believe he understands, though he'd never be able to express it.

He stood by my mother all through her descent into being a quadriplegic.  He changed his work hours and worked whatever shifts were necessary to allow him to care for her at home and still bring home what little money he could muster in order to support his family.  He understands things like loyalty and commitment.

I overheard a heated argument between my parents once when I was young.  My mother asked my father if he'd ever hit her, the way his father, whom he idolized to an extent, had done with his mother.  Mom knew he never would, and I think I heard his heart break when she even suggested it, there in the middle of an explosive debate.  I hear people talk about "cycles of abuse" and I shake my head.  You don't hit people you love.  Pretty simple when you think about it.  "Moonie", as some of the neighbors dubbed him, figured it out. We never feared our father.

He has always made it plain to me that whatever happens, there will always be a roof over my head and a bed for me to lie in.  I can always come back.  He reminds me of this almost every time I visit him.  He understands family.  My sisters failed to understand quite why he didn't want to sell the house after Mom died, or why, in spite of the fact that he's only there about 3 days a week now, he still refuses.  It's not about him.  It's about being a father and making sure his children always have the security of knowing there is that refuge if they need it.

After one of my sisters broke up with her on-again-off-again boyfriend once, he came to the house looking to speak with her.  My father met him at the door and lied to him, insisting my sister wasn't home.  He told the boy, "there's two ways you can go back down those front steps: you can walk, or I can throw you."  When my sister  heard later from her (on-again) boyfriend what my Dad had said, she expressed to me how pissed off about it she was.  'He doesn't understand!  He (the boyfriend)  just wanted to  try to sort things out.  See, Dad just doesn't understand these things.'  I looked at her and said, 'I think he understands perfectly.  Someone broke his daughter's heart, and he wasn't going to afford him an opportunity to do it again.  He understands that he loves you.  What more is there for him to get?'

Many times in my life I've done things that my sisters insisted would not meet with Dad's approval, especially because he was so "old-fashioned".  But Dad would forgive any one of us for anything.  We were all 'prodigal sons and daughters', no matter what we did.  He knows what it is to truly love someone, and what it means to support them in a time of crisis.

He cheats a little on his diet sometimes when he thinks he can get away with it.  (He's diabetic.)  My sister’s  knew, of course, and thinks him foolish for believing he can slip it past her.  What she probably doesn't realize is that he knew she'll find out from the moment he does it.  He just likes his freedom, and likes bending the rules a little every now and then to enjoy himself.

There was a day, just once, months or maybe a year ago, I can't remember exactly when, that we sat in his living room and talked.  And that day, rather than the usual "Work is good.  How's your latest girlfriend?" conversation we so routinely have, he just opened up and started talking.  He told me all about what things were like in the house when I was young.  I suddenly saw this whole new perspective on my family and my youth.  A different angle I'd never considered.  And there, in that afternoon, chatting about my mother and my sisters and brother, he opened a whole world before my eyes just by telling me a few simple truths I'd never before realized.

I could read the works of Lao Tzu, or Buddha, or Gibran for years and not have the eye-opening that I got that day just because he chose to express to me, after all these years, a few simple truths I'd not noticed along the way.

And whenever I visit him now, we go through the same routine as we always did before: my work is good, how is his girlfriend doing, are you getting out to many dances, is my sister still bugging you about your diet.  And I don't know that we will ever have that powerful conversation again like we did that afternoon, but that's OK.  I content myself with the wordless tranquility that comes from just sitting in my old living room, watching his eyes as they comb over the pictures on the mantelpiece.

For all the computers and palm pilots and cell phones and multi-national,  multi-million dollar website projects overseas, there are some things about this world that have never, that must never, change.  Fundamental things.  Simple things.  Understood by simple people,  perhaps even better than by the cell-phone wielding, blackberry carrying people.

My father will never read this.   And if printed and read it to him, he'd still not understand half of what I've written, or said, or what it means.

But the next time I see him I'll give him a smile and a nod and I will tell him how I am going to miss him.  Because the truly important things in life, like hugging someone you love , to let them know you missed and love them... this he understands.  Loyalty he understands. Duty and responsibility he understands. Being a good father. This he understood... perfectly.

If only those people who 'considered him their lesser' did, this world might, fundamentally, be a simpler, better place.

I’m gonna miss you dad. We are all gonna miss you.   In ways I am still struggling to understand,  we will miss you. I only hope to live to be half the man you were.

                                                Martin.