I'm okay.

My Dad holding FC at a Tractor Pull.  The speck on the AC tractor is my Brother.

My parents split up when I was very young.  I was just over five, and my Brother was barely one.  The reason?  He treated my Mom like crap and drank too much.  He was gone so much when they were married that it barely registered to me when they got their divorce.

My Mom moved on.  My Dad was remarried within a year.

In some ways things improved between my Father and I.  The time that we spent together on the weekends was, for the most part, quality time.  It didn’t occur me back then that he wasn’t paying child support to my Mom, nor was he paying for our health insurance like the court had ordered.  Maybe that was why he had the money to do all the fun things with us that my Mom couldn’t afford to do.

He would often confide in me (a little awkward for a little kid) that he loved my Mom still, but that she left him because he drank too much.

He continued to drink.

**********

When I was 13, I got into a huge fight with my Mother over something so stupid I can’t even remember it.  I ran to my Dad, who took me in with open arms.  The first night I stayed with him he decided that he was going to go out to the bar and leave me with my Grandmother.

I was hurt, but it wasn’t a big deal.  It was only one night.  When he chose to do the same thing on the second third and fourth nights, I decided to go back to live with my Mom.

When he asked me why, I couldn’t tell him.  I didn’t have the strength to tell him what I knew then, and I know now.

He continued to drink.

**********

When I was eighteen he started to make comments about my weight.  He told me that no man would ever want to marry someone who looked like I did.  (I weighed 160 and was 6’2, by the way.)  It crushed me.  I’ve always been a Daddy’s girl.  Always.   His hurtful comments have continued to this day, even knowing what I’ve gone through with my weight.  I let it go because he only said those things when he was drunk.

My Brother and I would beg him to stop.  So many times… Soooo many times.

Still, he continues to drink.

**********

When I was 22, my Grandmother, his Mother, passed away.  She was an alcoholic who literally drank herself to death.  While her organs were shutting down in the hospital my Dad was right there with us making the decision to remove her from the life sustaining machines.  He was right there with us, sobbing, crying to the point of dehydration and actual exhaustion when She died.  He was the one who paid for the funeral.  He saw what Her passing did to our family.

Still, he continued to drink.  Not only did he continue to drink, he increased the amount and frequency of his drinking.

He got DUI # 4, 5, and 6.  He finally did jail time for it.  His new wife wouldn’t come pick him up.  So I did.

He continued to drink.

**********

He’s shown almost no interest in my children.  Their Paternal Grandfather lives almost four hours away and he manages to see my kids more than my own Dad, who lives 25 minutes away.  While he puts forth no effort to see or get to know his Grandchildren, he bitches and whines incessantly about the fact that they prefer my Step Dad (Their Papa) to him.

He called me out of the blue last year and begged me to let him take the kids for the night.  I knew his wife would be home, so I agreed.  I packed the kids up and drove them out to his house, they were so excited and happy to spend the night with Grandpa.

I went out with friends.  Confident that they were being taken care of by my Dad and his wife.

I picked them up the next day, in the car I asked FC how the night had gone.

“So what did you do with Grandpa?  Did you have a good time?”

“Well, Grandpa fell asleep… And I couldn’t wake him up.”  FC was chewing gum and staring out the window.  He didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by what he had just admitted to me.  And that bothered me just as much as what he said.

I damn near slammed on my breaks right in the middle of the road. “HE WHAT???”

“Well, he fell asleep.  He was really tired.  And SWR woke up, and I tried to wake him up to tell him, but I couldn’t, and SWR wanted to watch cartoons so I put cartoons on and we watched them until *Dad’s Wife* came home.”

“Where in the hell was she?  She was supposed to be home with you guys?”  I could feel the blood rushing to my face.  I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down.

“Oh, she had to go to work.  Can we go to the park?”

SWR piped up, “YEAH!  THE PARK!!!!”

“SHE… WENT… TO… WORK?”  I was starting to feel ill.

See, my Step Mother is a bartender, which means that she was gone until at least three am.  Given the fact that my Son was awake when his Grandfather passed out, and was left alone to supervise his three-year-old sister until their Step Grandma came home from work, that means that it was probably a pretty significant period of time.

Like hours.

I was sick about the whole situation.  How DARE he. They have not been allowed to stay with him since.  And Dad knows why.  I made it very clear to him.

Still, he continues to drink.

**********

It all came to a head on his Birthday.

Traditionally, my Brother and I take him out to eat on his Birthday, in December.  2008 was no different.  What was different was the conversation my Brother and I had to agree on before taking him out.

“Okay, so if Dad’s drunk when you get there, you’re going to tell him that we’re not going, right?”  My baby brother wasn’t kidding either.

I would be the one to pick him up.  I would be the one to drive him almost an hour across the city to the restaurant.  And I would be the one who would have to drive him home.

He can’t drive himself because a few months ago he went and got himself another DUI. This would be number eight.

“Yes, I’ll deal with him if he’s drunk.”  I hung up with Baby Brother and set out to collect my Dad.

He was surprisingly straight when I arrived at his house, and I was so relieved.  It wasn’t until his speech started slurring twenty minutes into the drive that I suspected he wasn’t nearly as sober as I had thought.

“Your Mom is a Whore.” He yelled out of nowhere.

“Don’t…you….DARE say a bad word about my Mother.  That’s my MOM.  It’s been 28 YEARS since you two divorced.  Guess what, Dad… It’s time to get OVER it.” I should have just turned around right then.  I should have driven him home.

But no.  I continued driving.  And he continued ranting.  And I started to cry.  I cried, and I threatened, and I stomped my feet and pounded the dashboard.

And he continued to rant on with his delusional line of bull shit.

All I wanted to do was get to the restaurant and drop him off with my Brother, and leave them there to enjoy their dinner, then drive them home.  He always calms down when he’s around my Brother, after all.  The fact that I look like my Mom seems to piss him off more than anything.  My brother has the opposite effect.

I’ll spare you the drama that ensued once we made it into the restaurant, but suffice it to say I’m shocked that the police weren’t called.  It was a scene straight out of an episode of Cops.

I left him in there and escaped to my car to call my mom on the phone.  After calming down I returned to drag him out.

Enough was enough.  He was going to wind up getting arrested and it was my fault for bringing him in the first place.  He stormed past me, pissed off that management had cut him off from making more purchases from the bar.  My Father then flipped me off and marched over to the bar across the parking lot.

You don’t even want to know what happened in the bar.

We haven’t talked to him since.  Not my Brother, not me.

**********

And that’s why I’m done, folks.  Those are just a few of the highlights.  The whole sordid story of what inspired last night’s tirade would take me years to write.  It’s a very difficult thing, cutting off a parent, particularly one that has a disease.

Difficult, but not impossible.

I’m done.  I said it last night, and I say it today, and I’ll say it tomorrow.

And you know what?  I’m really okay with it.

I am.