I’ve got to be quick, because there is not enough air in here and I’m told it’s beautiful outside and I need to stretch the legs and breathe.  I am just thinking about the games we learn as kids and how much deliberate and focused attention and hard work it takes to unlearn the bad ones.

It’s a tiring story, but my father was a tormented soul.   Great, dark sense of humor, but essentially a well-defended fortress against all potential invaders.  Everyone was included in this category.   If I had a problem being raised by someone like this, it was not something he was obliged to concern himself with.   That was his position for our long, difficult relationship, his answer to every attempt on my part to have him lower the bridge so I could cross the moat: I was the one with the problem, not him.  A position he apologized for quite sincerely hours before he died.

He gave me the gift of belatedly acknowledging that my painful childhood was largely the fault of an adult incapable of being a better parent.   He acknowledged that I was right to be hurt and saluted, for the first time, my many attempts over the years to improve the relationship.

While he was alive and on his feet, however, he’d fight to the death any suggestion that on his deathbed he’d have the regrets that could be so easily seen by anyone who wasn’t him.