Blessings From My Father

My parents were Catholic, so for the early part of my life I was, too. We had a nighttime tradition, just before bedtime, of getting a blessing from our parents.

We'd have a very short prayer-not much more complicated than the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, except more free-style and less rehearsed. After the prayer we'd line up in front of our parents for our blessing.

Since there were five of us kids it was a soft-shoe-shuffle-push thing.

We'd get a blessing from one then get in line for one from the other. A reciprocal thing- we were both blessed and we gave the same blessing to each parent. Using, usually, two fingers- the middle and the pointer- my dad would gently touch the forehead, then the top of the chest, then each shoulder.

As he did he would say "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God bless you."

We'd return the blessing then lean in for a kiss. Good night.

I remember this ritual quite clearly as continuing at least through my middle school years. It was the one time during the day that there was no fear about having my father reach out with his hand. No matter what had happened during the day, no matter how his anger may have flared up, the blessing was special. Tender. Real. I don't remember when it stopped.

But it did stop. And after the unmoored feeling of not receiving my father's blessing passed, I got used to going to sleep without it. I told myself that receiving his blessing didn't matter anymore.

But I was lying to myself. I've never stopped wanting his blessing and approval.

My Father

I remember my dad as (at least) three people:

1. Happy, goofy, friendly, outgoing, creative, persuasive
2. Angry, depressed, mercurial, frightening, hurtful, unforgiving
3. Confident, professional, caring, attentive, reverent, charismatic

At any one time, when I was his child, I didn't know which Dad he would be. More and more, though, I knew Dad #2.

My children? My children knew their Pap as a genuine, loving, and caring man. A mix of Dad #1 and #3. They adored him- and I was glad. I didn't know who this man was, but he loved my children. I would have liked the man they knew to have been my Dad. I think I'd have felt safer around him. Less afraid that a misstep by any of us would bring down the anger and thunder onto our household.

The older I got the less I felt my father's blessing. His approval. I know now that he was struggling hard to find his own way.

He left sales and went to school to be a minister. He took small parishes, and he and my mother moved several times. Each parish was farther from our hometown. His congregations loved him. He was a good and caring minister and know that the people in his churches loved him. I'm glad that he found a way to pass along the blessings once again.

But that, too, stopped. He retired from the ministry and older issues resurfaced.

Depression, a legacy of his mother I believe, and addiction, the tendency dances through his father's side of the family, usually appearing as alcoholism but for my dad it was painkillers, are the things that influenced him to end his own life at 72 years old.

He did not become a great-grandfather.

He could no longer grant his approval, or a blessing, to anyone. There was no final blessing. No final kiss. No last 'good night'. There never will be again. Even after so much time had passed since I was a child sleeping softly after the blessing from my father, that realization shattered me.

I no longer wonder if he will be proud of me, or shake his head in disappointment, or mete out the physical blows along with the biting words when displeased with me. I no longer wonder but still feel the pain of never knowing.

Being a parent is a complicated thing. The longer I am one the more aware I am of my own failings and shortcomings. I know that I did not spare my children the full fallout of my childhood.

I still see my father's legacy

I see my father's smile in the smile of my grandsons. I have the feeling that they received his charm and the gift of making a connection with people.

My eyes are his eyes- albeit they are the same blue of my mother and not the warm chocolate brown his were. My eyes crinkle up and squinch when I smile. just like his did.

I feel his emotions, too; the family legacies or rage, depression, and addiction are with me still today. I work to regulate the impact of the emotions and am not ashamed to share that a low dose of daily Prozac keeps the chemical balance easier to maintain. And as for addiction: with me it's food and likely to be a one-day-at-a-time thing the rest of my life.

I want to think he'd like me; my dad. I know he'd enjoy talking with my husband (he'd like Kenny- I know). He'd be surprised that I worked for a furniture company (like he did), and that I became ordained, (although not in the same way as he did, I don't have a church) too.

I don't know if he'd approve of my choices, my friends, my politics, my parenting, my spiritual beliefs, the distance (both geographical and emotional) between where I live and the rest of my family.

I don't know what we'd talk about. I'll never know those things.

But, when I am with my daughters and grandsons, I feel the blessing again.

God bless you Dad. Good night.