At eight AM, Alicia, Kingsly, and I load my parents and their beach chairs into my beater Jeep.
As we pull away from Mom and Dad’s house, my father turns toward me, and—with alarm in his voice—asks if he locked his front door. Since the dementia really kicked in, this happens every time he leaves his home. When I tell him he did indeed lock his door, he exhales.
In the backseat, Kingsly pants between my wife and mother, who are talking about the neighborhood dance party they attended the night before.
From the driver’s seat, I ask my shotgun-riding father what he wants to listen to, saying it’s his pick, because it’s Father’s Day.
When Dad gives me a scared look, I list his favorite two bands, saying, “Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles?”
Dad now finds open-ended questions difficult and often does better if you give him two options.
“Can we listen to Eagles there and Fleetwood Mac on the way back?” he asks.
My father never asked me questions when I was young. He yelled commands. It’s a gentler, more childlike father I’m experiencing these days.
“Sure,” I say. “It’s Father’s Day.”
Then I put on the Eagles mix I made for him. It’s called Eagles For Dad and begins with Take It to the Limit. Dad immediately begins humming along.
The day before, on our weekly Saturday morning father-son walk, Dad kept quietly humming a different song I couldn’t place, so I asked him what it was. He said he didn’t know, but had heard it in church. Then he called church “the place you go to be in touch with the maker of the world.”
Earlier that same morning when I told Dad that Alicia was at yoga, he had said, “Good. That’ll keep her limber.”
For the first forty-some years of my life, I never once heard my father use the word ‘limber.’ Nor had he ever used the word ‘good’ in connection with me or my wife. And he never talked about being in touch with the maker of the world either.
The drive to Hunting Island State Park takes thirty minutes. We pass small communities, farms, and signs inviting us to pick our own tomatoes and strawberries. We drive by the Gay Fish Company and a few sea-food restaurants. The road cuts through marshes and over scenic bridges. It’s a place that time forgot. We like to go early before the crowds arrive and the sun blazes too hot, especially because we always bring Kingsly.
Manning the entrance gate is the same young man we always see on weekends. After clocking the pass hanging from our rearview mirror, he waves us through and wishes us a happy Father’s Day. I wonder what his story is. He has a kind gentle way about him that is instantly likable. I silently wish him well every week.
The drive from the entrance to the actual beach is often compared to Jurassic Park. I’ve never seen dinosaurs there, but the thick tropic vegetation makes it feel like a T-Rex head could pop out at any moment. We all love this and the fact that there are no businesses or houses along this particular stretch of ocean, which is instead lined with sand, palm trees, and not much else besides the historic lighthouse.
As we carry our gear from the Jeep to the beach, I ask my father if he has any good memories of Father’s Days gone by. You might think that asking a person with dementia about the past isn’t the best idea, but Dad often surprises me with tales of his childhood and college experience.
It’s five minutes previous that eludes him.
“No,” Dad says. “I don’t remember any good Father’s Days.”
I start thinking about it and I can’t remember any Father’s Days at all. I’m sure presents were given and get togethers were had, but I can’t remember a single detail about any of them.
“Well,” I say. “Maybe we can make this one memorable.”
“Your brother and sister are coming today?” Dad says, lifting his eyebrows in anticipation.
“No,” I answer. “You’ll see them both in two weeks. But we can still have an epic Father’s Day.”
“That’s okay,” Dad says. “It’s nice here.”
We arrange our chairs and begin to put up the Shibumi Beach Shade, which is sort of like a kiteboarding kite that you stake into the sand so that the wind will keep it flying over your head, blocking the sun and offering cool shade. My father loves the Shibumi and—on this day—will say several times, “This is a good investment! It really works!” as if we are in a recurring commercial.
Again, I marvel at the childlike joy my father gets from such things. I don’t remember him ever celebrating shade or getting bliss from funnily named gadgets before his dementia journey began. This is a new side of Dad and I’m grateful for it.
I ask my father to swim in the ocean with me and he agrees. We take off our shirts. I apply sunscreen to myself. Then Mom and I sunscreen Dad. She takes care of his torso as I do everything from the neck up, massaging the cream into his scalp and face and ears and neck. I find myself doing things like this for my father all the time now. Almost as if he were my son instead of my father. I’m one hundred percent certain that Dad has never once put sunscreen on me. Not even when I was a little kid. The moment feels intimate enough to make me a little nervous. But my father—who never liked being touched—tolerates Mom and me protecting him from cancer-causing sunbeams. He’s not so much passive as he is resigned.
Dad and I make our way into the ocean slowly. He doesn’t trust his body the way he once did. He’s lost some weight. And often gets dizzy. Luckily, the ocean is calm enough to be mistaken for a lake.
“It’s warm as bath water!” Dad says in a way that makes him seem very young.
The chain around his neck glints. At the end of its long silver V hangs a medical dog tag with identifying info printed on the metal: his name, hometown, my mother’s phone number, and the word ‘dementia.’ It refracts the sun like a single fish scale.
Without warning, Dad dives into the water. I worry he might scrape his face on the ocean floor, because we’re only thigh high in sea.
But a second later, he pops up with a proud, surprised look on his face, which seems to exclaim, I can still actually dive under waves!
I raise my hand and we high five.
When I first entered into analysis, I had what Jungians would call a father complex. I was angry about many things. Resentments circled my heart like barbed wire. I was sure that my father had cheated me out of so much, mainly love. I focused solely on what he couldn’t do.
Early on in my analysis, my analyst asked me to list the things my father had done for me.
I remember saying, “He never hugged me! He never once said he loved me! He discouraged my ambitions! He never congratulated me when I had successes! No matter how big the successes were!”
“But what did he do for you?” my analyst said, steering me back to that different viewpoint.
“Nothing!” I said.
“Nothing? Really?” my analyst said. “Nothing at all?”
After much frowning and headshaking, I reluctantly said something like, “Well, I guess he put a roof over my head for two decades, paid for all my food and clothing, and made it possible for me to go to college.”
My analyst quickly pointed out that not everyone’s father does that. And that people often express love in different ways. My father wasn’t built to express love in the way I might like him to, but that didn't mean that my father hadn’t expressed love.
“But he never even once smiled at me!” I said to my analyst. “Never! How can you appreciate a father who takes zero delight in his son?”
Then my analyst asked why would a father smile when his son was so ungrateful for what was actually being offered. Maybe my father had offered everything he possibly could, given how Dad was raised and the peculiar way his psyche is configured. And I had found all that he had to give distasteful. Turned up my nose. Shamed my father for his best efforts.
“But,” I said. And then went on to repeat all the many resentments I was clinging to at the time.
Which is when my analyst said I was welcome to remain in hell if I wanted to. He would not abandon me. The choice was mine.
Over many sessions, my analyst said men in particular need to redeem their fathers if only so we can stop hating ourselves. It pissed me off royally at first. To my sick self, all that sounded like what some might call victim blaming. But deep down, I knew that I was engineering most of my present-day agonies. A seed was planted, and slowly something far less bitter and resentful began to grow deep in my heart.
My father has always lectured me about how hard he worked and how many professional obstacles he had to overcome in the banking world. I used to resent that too. I often felt trapped by it. I saw my father endlessly staring into an ugly mirror that I desperately wanted to smash, if only so I would never become the man in the ugly mirror. I never once saw him trying to give me a road map, outlining his mistakes so I wouldn’t make the same. Instead, I resented him for not thinking and talking like I did. I definitely looked down on Dad’s life as a businessman. I was going to be an artist. And that seemed so much more important to the younger more arrogant version of me. As if artists didn’t use banks and need bankers like my father. As if I were going to exist in a perfectly pure vacuum. As if I would never make the same very human mistakes he made.
With my analyst always gently nudging, I began to listen to my father’s banking stories as if they were messages from his psyche, attempts at self-disclosure, maybe even offers of love, albeit ones that needed decoding.
I tried to listen generously. I tried to translate his love language into mine, so I could feel his love.
My father often talks about the many years when he had to live alone in a hotel during the week so that he could conduct his business far from home. He talks about being lonely and gaining weight from eating out all of the time. He talks about sleepless nights. He talks about being undervalued and overlooked. He talks about doing whatever it took to put three kids through college and make sure his wife would be financially taken care of for life. That was his mission. And he paid a big price to accomplish it.
My father’s banking career was indeed extraordinary. He overcame a stutter and painful shyness. Defying the expectations of many of his superiors, he fought his way up from the banking-world bottom and made it very close to the top. He often tells me his last official title, as if he still needs me to understand that he accomplished something special. His father never told him ‘good job’ either. Chasing his father’s elusive approval was Dad’s super power, which he passed on to me.
Recently, I asked Dad if he thought working so hard for so many years might have contributed to his getting dementia shortly after he retired.
“I had to deal with a tremendous amount of stress,” Dad had said. “I was always under a lot of pressure.”
My analyst and I talk about how most men need a sense of purpose. And people to appreciate them for completing their missions. That’s how most men are wired. Especially my father’s generation.
So in the ocean on Father’s Day, I say, “Hey, Dad, I really appreciate all the sacrifices you made to put a roof over my head and food in my belly. I appreciate your making all the money you did to put me through college and assure that Mom is taken care of for the rest of her life. It’s quite an accomplishment. I respect it. Massively.”
The tiniest of swells gently rolls by. My father throws his body forward and furiously paddles his arms and kicks his legs, as though he has a shot at riding a powerful wave all the way to shore. The anemic swell doesn’t break. And Dad only ends up a foot or two closer to the beach. But when he stands up again, he looks over at me and flashes the biggest grin I’ve ever seen brighten his face.
“The only thing that would make today better is sandwiches,” Dad says. “I wish there was a sandwich shop here.”
“Alicia’s making us a pancake lunch later,” I tell my father.
“That would be nice, too,” Dad says.
“Are you having a good Father’s Day?” I ask him.
“Are you my first-born son? Or do I have a child older than you?” Dad asks.
“I’m pretty sure I’m the oldest,” I answer.
“Then I’m glad to be with my eldest son on Father’s Day.”
I smile back at my dad.
As he and I float over gentle waves and look out at the place where the sea meets the sky, a line of pelicans soars overhead, and I know this is the best Father’s Day this childless writer has ever had.
By far.
PS - Did you read the June 19th post? Mocked Or Encouraged? (Who is inside?)
PPS - Did you hear my most recent thoughts on sobriety, writing, and Jungian analysis? The One You Feed podcast. Episode 715: A Journey to Self Discovery and Sobriety with Matthew Quick (You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.)
Dear Matthew, you always write so beautifully and there’s always a message for other people who’ve had similar issues with their father. Thank you so much. I always get tears in my eyes when I read your work- love, naomi
Matthew, I enjoyed this piece and glad you had a nice Father’s Day with your dad. I’m grateful you had the opportunity to tell him that you were proud of him. I’m sure he’s proud of you too in his own unique way. My dad frequently told me he was proud of me when he was living, but now I’m wondering if I ever told him how proud I was of him. He served during Vietnam, overcame alcoholism, drove over 3 million miles safely in a trucking career, and always provided well for our family. He only had a G.E.D. but was one of the smartest men I knew. He knew the value of education since he didn’t have the opportunity to go to college, and he sent both my brother and I to universities for our degrees. I’m thankful for him. I hope he knew it. I hope I told him I was proud of him but don’t know if I did. Anyway, your story brought sweet tears and remembrances of my dad. Thanks for sharing.