My Superhero
By the time I was informed of my father’s death, it was too late. I still blame myself for not reaching out to him in his dying moments. What he would’ve said or done had I contacted him, after not having spoken to him in so long still remains a mystery. Why did I wait until he breathed his last to consider breaking the silence between us, and why didn’t I do it when given the option? Would he have been able to respond to me in such a critical condition? Why was I, at fifteen, presented with this unusually onerous ethical dilemma? A man I had once held in high regard succumbed to such an awful fate, it was almost unbecoming of him to die in such a fashion.
White lies and ignorance characterize my childhood. Never married, my parents separated when I was two because of my father’s abusive nature. After my mother and I moved into our own house, our new lives began. My mother had been the stronghold of my innocence in a world filled with malevolence. Although we didn’t get along perfectly, a disgruntlement here and there only sufficed to strengthen our bond. We were a team of two, competing against the world which was constantly beating us down. Although content with what we had, I felt the absence of a father figure left an emptiness of emotions that I believed could be filled by simple pleasures, an ill-informed conclusion. A bodybuilder, model, and celebrity, my father was always a superhero to me. Every visitation, he would buy me gifts, and he never disciplined me nor put a hand on me. Seeing him was like a reprieve from reality; he would always tell me I was “the best thing that ever happened to him.” and that I “gave him a purpose.” I was too naive to understand his manipulation, something I would realize in the latter part of my childhood. They say “never meet your heroes,” something I now understand acutely.
By the time I was ten, constant arguing and court appearances left me emotionally damaged and blunted. I still remember talking to men in suits in big, archaic oak wood offices about the way my parents treated me, and the subsequent sweaty palms wiped on polyester sweatpants, and feelings of failure. Was I a bad son for choosing one parent over the other? As a result, I didn’t know how to properly express emotion. I am from a family in which hard work and obedience warrant honor, while emotions expose weakness, which is unbecoming of a man. I took a radical tough-love approach to all obstacles thrown my way. Strict indifference was how I dealt with situations demanding empathy, and I was judged for it. Apart from this, my childhood was mostly normal. I never considered myself to be different from the other children at school, no more or less privileged. I fit in with them because I was ignorant. My mother withheld the truly harmful information about my father from me, something which I still thank her for to this day.
When I turned thirteen, the glorified image of my father, long held in my mind, came crashing down. My mother took on another job to enroll me in private middle school. Middle school was the golden age of my childhood. I had almost completely forgotten about my father, the thought of him rarely coming to mind. Although I knew my parents still argued intermittently, the silence from my father had become unorthodox to me, and I was overcome with curiosity. One afternoon, I was rummaging through my mother’s grandiose filing cabinet, searching for clues as to why my father had seemingly disappeared. I pulled out a paper at random. It was a printed email to my mother from my father. As I began reading the paper, the blood drained from my face and hands as I went pale. My heart sunk as I read the first line.
“Your tool no longer has any power, You’ve both been replaced.
I have a new son now. Bye!”
I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or upset and to be honest I was having trouble processing the information. Had I been replaced? Will I ever hear from my father again? Is this really the kind of man my father is? I immediately presented the paper to my mother and demanded an explanation. She scolded me for going through her belongings but reluctantly agreed to tell me more about my father. She told me stories about my father: about the abuse, both physical and verbal, the lies and substance abuse. In my mind, my father had become a coward. A shell of the man I once thought him to be. From then on, I always thought of him with resentment. His name still has a negative connotation. I concluded “out of sight, out of mind,” and so he was no longer a component of my life, for about a year.
I remember the somber sky on the night I was informed of my father’s accident. It was March, and I was working on homework. My mother returned from her afternoon job and was visibly distraught; I saw it on her face. She informed me that my father had been in a terrible accident. I remember immediately feeling empty and brushing off the information with a joke, in a desperate attempt to sheathe my emotions. “His ego is too massive, he won’t let himself die.” I went outside, onto my porch, to console myself and be alone with my thoughts. It was cold, the chill of the night-time gust nipping my face. I sat down on an old ornamental iron bench that we kept; it was rarely cared for, and coated in rust. As I sat and stared upwards in vulnerability, the full moon and starry sky filled me with awe. I felt a strange warmth, which helped me get through the night. I considered reaching out to my father that night, taking into account the slim chance of actually reaching him, given the limited contact that we had, and his current state. I persuaded myself that his chances of death were slight, and decided not to make the call.
I went to California for the funeral. The warm temperature and scenic mountains contrasted with how I felt, cloudy and dark. I hated him for the emotional scarring he had left me with and was angry at him for leaving me. But, looking up at the sunny sky, I also felt grateful to him for making me into who I am today: self-sufficient, maybe a little suspicious of people’s motives, but also more forgiving of their shortcomings. Although I still blame myself for not calling him, I guess some questions are meant to remain unanswered. Although my Father’s story has ended, I will carry him with me into the future as my superhero.