Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "fathers-and-sons"

I love my Dad.

That’s probably not an unusual statement. But when it’s a gay son talking, there is often some history and work that went into making that a true statement.

I love my dad. I saw him two weeks ago when I drove up to visit. I hadn’t seen him in about a year and I realized how much I missed him.

When I was younger, my relationship with my dad was…strained. I think part of it was my own resistance to him, thinking he didn’t like the idea that I was gay. So for some years in there, I kept my distance. That changed one rainy Saturday morning in 1988 when I was racing to work outside of Washington, D.C. I was doing 80 when a car merged onto the highway in front of me. I would guess it was going about 40 miles an hour. I slammed on the brakes. I was going so fast and the other car was going so slow, it actually looked like the other car was moving backwards towards me. I’d decreased speed to about 60 at the moment of impact. My car started spinning and as it started to flip and the sky was suddenly below me, I remember thinking “I’m going to die without ever having been friends with my father.”

Next thing I knew I was standing on the side of the road, in the pouring rain, not a scratch on me, my little red car literally in pieces scattered across the highway. I remember cops and fire trucks and an officer asking, “Where’s the driver of the red car?”

“I’m here,” I said.

He stared at me.

“You were driving that?

I nodded.

To this day I do not remember getting out of the car.

I had a second chance and I used it to befriend my father. I moved to Philadelphia so I was closer to where my parents lived in New York. More than twenty years ago when I introduced my family to my now husband, my father pulled me aside and said, “I like this one. He is what I had in mind for you. Please keep this one.”

And with those words everything changed. I suddenly saw that he didn’t dislike me being gay, he just hated my choice in men thinking none of them were good enough for me (he was probably right.)

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was watching my dad play with Max, my nephew, his only grandson. He and Max seem to have a special relationship. I was a bit jealous, I admit. And then I realized that my father and I have our own special relationship as well. And maybe that is my father’s gift—the ability to build a special relationship with each person in his life.

He has taught me so much in his quiet way. The dedication in Unbroken, reads in part “And for Space, who taught me the value of silence.” Space is my nickname for him, because he always seemed lost in his own world, kind of “spaced out.” I never thought we had much in common though, until I called him the other day. Hearing my voice, assuming I’d called to speak to my mother, rather than him, he said “Your mother and Vernon are at the chiropractor.”

I could hear him rolling his eyes.

Anyone who knows me knows I am prone to rolling my eyes, and in fact was doing that at the word “chiropractor.” It was delightful to discover that shared tendency.

Today at 10:31 a.m., my dad closed his eyes for the last time. When he did, a part of me died with him.

I’ll accept your condolences but please check your religion at the door. And don’t talk to me of your God and His wisdom and mercy. Not today. Not today. I believe in God, I do. But not today. Not today. Today, I feel He abandoned me and my father when all I could do was hold his hand and rub his head and tell him I loved him; when all his doctors could do was increase his pain medicine and escalate the frequency with which he received them, and swab his mouth with plain gelatin to make up for the water he could no longer drink, the food he could no longer eat.

The first time I, went, alone, to visit dad in the hospital, I arrived in his room while he was still downstairs in radiation. A nurse walked in and asked who I was.

“I’m Larry, his middle son.”

“Oh, you’re the one who lives in Philadelphia!”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“Your dad talks about you. He talks about all of his sons.”

My dad talked about me. He owned me as his son. He owned me as I own myself, in my imperfection, in my boisterousness, in my rowdy affection, in my gayness. That meant the world to me.

I stayed at the hospital in his room on more than one occasion. One morning when they brought him his breakfast, I got up and added cream & sugar to his coffee and opened the packet containing knife and fork and napkin. Having done that, I speared a section of omelet and moved the fork to his mouth. “I can feed myself,” he said sharply. I handed him the fork and picked up my overnight bag. Dad would need help feeding himself. But not today. Not today.

As I walked away, he asked, “Are you going home?”

“No,” I called over my shoulder. “I’m going to shower and change. Holler if you need anything.”

A few weeks later, I got caught in traffic and missed having lunch with him. When I arrived he was eating ice cream. Judging by how melted it was, he’d been at the ice cream eating for a while. And he was wearing more ice cream that he could possibly have eaten. I watched him struggle to bring spoon to mouth but did not offer any assistance. When he finally, accidentally, upended the container of ice cream, I said, “You’re all finished,” and quietly cleaned up the mess he’d made.

Saturday as I was on my way to New York to visit, Dad’s doctor called to say Dad had begun his “transition,” and we’d better come at once. I called my brothers and getting on the New Jersey Turnpike, I settled in the left lane, and depressed the accelerator until the speedometer read “90.” I was the last to arrive at dad’s bedside. It was my younger brother’s birthday. Dad, unmoving, eyes closed, unable to speak, slept on peacefully, his breathing strong. Dad was dying. But not today. Not today.

My dad died today, four days after he began his “transition.” Instead of crying, I’m remembering all the conversations we had in that hospital room; I’m remembering what he told me about his funeral and that he assumed I’d write his obituary. Instead of crying, I’m focusing on the myriad things that need to happen now, on all the things that remain to be done. I know I’ll cry—Daddy deserves tears, and my bruised heart needs the release of tears.

Yes, I’ll cry. But, not today. Not today.

Recently my brothers and I attended a veteran's memorial service at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center (Bronx, NY). In a way it was like telling our dad goodbye again, but in another way we found a community. I wrote an article about the experience for Philadelphia Gay News that explores not just the day and my feelings but grief in general. Hope you'll give it a read.

I remember the accident as if it was yesterday.

I had been living in Washington, D.C. for three years. That particular morning, a Saturday, I was running late for work. It was a gray, wet morning at the edge of Winter. Heavy rain, like molten white gold, fell from an aluminum sky as I blazed along at 80 mph. A gray car merged onto the roadway from the right, then proceeded to move into my lane without signaling. The car was moving so slowly it looked like it was moving backwards. I pressed the brakes hard, pumping steadily with increasing pressure, my right hand tight on the gearshift ready to down shift. Realizing collision was inevitable, I glanced at the speedometer: 60. The impact sent my little car spinning towards the concrete divider separating west-bound traffic from east. The world seemed upside down. I remember thinking, I’m going to die and I never got to be friends with my father. I glanced up at the sky, oddly unafraid, and I swear I saw the hand of God reach down and stop my car from spinning.

Fast forward a few months: Father’s Day, 1988. I moved back to Philadelphia, in large part to be closer to my parents who lived in the Bronx. What I had thought would be my last thought haunted me. By being physically closer, I hoped to befriend my father. I don’t know if the thought of losing me, shook my father as much as I had been shaken, but I know after I got back to Philly, I started walking his way and he started walking mine. Sometimes we walked in rain, sometimes we walked with the sun on our backs. We gained a lot of ground because we both gave a little and learned along the way that no road is too long when you meet in the middle. When he died 29 years later, I lost not just my father, but my friend.

My older brother told me a story about Dad kissing him after commencement when he graduated from Syracuse University. Dad had, of course kissed us before, when we were younger, but for some reason that kiss stood out in his memory because it recalled dad’s pride and happiness, two things he didn’t demonstrate often.

I don’t recall Daddy ever saying he was proud of me—of any of us. He wouldn’t have done that any more than he would have said he was ashamed of us. But his pride was unmistakable. One day at the hospital, he introduced me to one of his nurses. “This is my son. He lives in Philadelphia,” he said, “He’s a writer.”

When my brother and I were cleaning out Daddy’s things, we found an old wallet filled with our class pictures from first grade to seventh grade; year after year, he’d add the new picture in from of the old one. Going through his wallet was like watching my brothers and I grow up in time-lapse photography. His father’s pride in his children was almost palpable. In an envelope, I found a series of Father’s Day cards I had sent him over years; each one was signed by me and Stanley, who daddy unflinchingly embraced as his son-in-law from the very beginning. That he kept those cards told me he was proud that I’d met a man he approved of and built the kind of life he wanted for me and each of my brothers.

My brother told me he remembers Dad’s graduation kiss every time he kisses his own son, Max. Max, my parents’ only grandchild.
Daddy always wanted grandchildren. When my older brother and his wife announced they were expecting a baby, daddy’s joy was unmistakable. He’d waited so long and yet he never once, as far as I knew, voiced his desire for a grandchild to my brothers. He’d only mentioned it to me once, many years ago.
Daddy started noticeably declining about a year before he died. After an accident, he was no longer allowed to drive. So, he used Uber to get to doctor’s appointments, my younger brother drove him to the bank and the barber shop. Dad would occasionally walk around their neighborhood on errands. The last time Dad went out by himself, was a December day. Returning home, he fell in the street and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. We were puzzled about where he’d been coming from. My brother discovered the answer a few days later when a Christmas card from our father, addressed to Max, arrived. In it was $300 in cash; the card was signed “Love, Grampy.”

Earlier this year, my brother, Max’s father told me he and his wife were expecting a second child. My first thought was oh man Daddy would have loved that. I did a quick calculation in my head and realized this new baby had been conceived while Daddy was dying; as one life was winding down, another was beginning.

We buried Daddy on November 15, 2017. As we drove away from the cemetery, I thought I am a fatherless man. Now, six plus months later, as Father’s Day approaches—our first without our Dad—I know I will never be fatherless, for daddy will always be with me, in the lessons he taught me, in the love he gave me so unconditionally, in my brother’s gentle kiss on his son’s cheek. Because of his influence, we, my brothers, and I will be the stand in for the father himself. I know that I will never be the man Daddy was, but I can aspire to be. In that effort, he remains my inspiration, my father.

My only remaining question is, who will be proud of me now?