Grief is a funny thing.
My dad died a few days ago, and yesterday we had his memorial, which was difficult. I stood there listening as people shared stories about him; funny stories, good memories, moments when he had made them laugh, and I found myself struggling.
Because for every good story someone told, my mind seemed to answer with fifteen bad ones.
The truth is, my dad was a troubled man.
He was an alcoholic and an addict, and when I think back on my childhood, I honestly can’t remember a version of my dad where alcohol wasn’t right beside him.
He drank on the way to work, and there was most definitely a six-pack on the floorboard for the drive home. He drank at home, on the boat, on the tractor, on the lawnmower, and in his big green chair.
But alcoholism wasn’t the only thing that shaped my childhood.
My dad was also an extremely mean and abusive man.
He physically abused my mom weekly, and he verbally and emotionally abused all of us.
Yesterday, while people were remembering the good parts of him, I was remembering being a little boy running into the kitchen because I heard my mom screaming, only to find her lying on the floor with my dad straddling her, choking her so hard that eventually the screaming stopped because she couldn’t even make a sound.
I remembered all the nights when my mom screaming our names was like an alarm clock.
“MEAGAN! PJ! MEAGAN! PJ!”
I can still remember running down the hallway half asleep and terrified, moving so fast that I would bounce from one side of the hallway to the other. Sometimes I would get there and he was already on top of her. Other times I would make it just in time to get between them and beg my dad to stop.
Those aren’t memories one ever forgets.
I remember him chasing us out of the driveway with a baseball bat.
I remember the gallon of milk being thrown at our car, an explosion of white blanketed across the windshield.
The boiling pot of water thrown at mom.
The birthday cake thrown at her, too. Thirty years later, remnants of it remain hidden behind the kitchen buffet, embedded on the wood-paneled walls.
The shotgun being pulled out countless times with threats that he was going to end it all.
For every good story I heard yesterday, I had fifteen more sitting on the tip of my tongue, ready to come out like word vomit.
My dad threw more punches at my mom than he ever threw a football or baseball with me. That was a difficult realization for me to come to, and a difficult sentence to write about your father, but it’s the truth.
And death doesn’t erase the truth.
For most of my life, my dad also used his assets as a way to control me. The McKay Farm, which has been in our family for over 100 years, was a big weaponization tool. Whenever he was angry with me or didn’t think I was being loyal enough, he would threaten to take me out of his will and leave everything to my sister.
Thinking about those threats now almost makes me laugh, because out of all the promises he ever made me, it’s the only one he actually kept.
Now that I’m a father myself, I think about all of that differently.
I look at my children and cannot imagine using their inheritance, or anything else, as a weapon to make them afraid of losing my love or to force them to remain loyal to me.
About six years ago, I finally reached a point where I couldn’t continue the cycle. I went to my dad’s house and told him that if he didn’t change, I couldn’t allow him to have a relationship with my children.
I desperately wanted him to choose differently, but once again, he chose alcohol.
And he chose anger.
So yes, yesterday was difficult, because how do you grieve someone who hurt you?
How do you stand at your father’s memorial and listen to people talk about the man they loved when the man you knew was so different?
How do you mourn the father who died while also mourning the father you spent your entire life wishing you could have had?
I don’t have those answers yet.
What I do know is that grief isn’t always simply missing someone.
Sometimes grief is mourning what was.
Sometimes it’s mourning what wasn’t.
Sometimes it’s remembering the good and immediately being flooded by the bad.
And sometimes it’s realizing that you can love someone and still tell the truth about what they did to you.
My dad was not all bad. There were things about him that were funny and there are pieces of him that I will miss, and there are pieces of him that live in me, whether I like it or not.
I loved my dad.
But I was also hurt by my dad.
Both of those things can be true at the same time.
And maybe part of grieving him is finally allowing myself to stop trying to decide which one of those truths I’m supposed to feel.
He was my dad.
I loved him.
I wanted better from him.
I wish things had been different.
And despite everything, I hope he has finally found the peace in death that he could never seem to find while he was alive.
-PJ
We got this rechargeable candle lighter a few weeks ago and omg y’all we are never going back to a regular lighter. This thing is such a game changer! It’s windproof, splash proof, and can be used 600 times on a single charge. Wouldn’t it make a great housewarming gift or stocking stuffer?
I found these food prep tips to be SO fascinating. I won’t be using all of them, but most of them are truly helpful, like the rice bowl trick and an old ketchup bottle used as a tool to make pancakes! Do you do any of these??
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