In the months that have since passed I can't say I've come to a closure of any sort with my father, but I believe I may have reached an armistice of sorts as with nothing being done (that I know of), I'm ok for the time being.

My attention has tilted easily back to my mother. With her death coming just as I started to recover the memories of her abuse and molestation, I've been denied the right to face her and ask her to come clean about her actions and manipulations that led to the slow, deliberate peeling away of myself. It's hard to face your feelings with enough strength to clean your own house, that's where closure comes in. With her dead, my choices are limited and difficult to say the least.

Hope has come to me in the form of her ashes. Previously I was of the mind that my sister Thersa was in possession of the ashes, promising to come out here numerous times for a ceremony. Having passed the 5 year mark and stepped into the ridiculous. It turns out my mother's remains are in Illiois with her sister, my Aunt Linda.

I think its tine for closing ceremonies for my mother and for my to get my final closure.

Boy is it hot inside

As I contemplated what I had written last time it became completely obvious, perhaps for the first time, how much anger and rage I have left stored and ignored over my Dad and his actions. Its the worst type of anger, because is roils and simmers just under the surface, always ready to ignite and empower a crux of destruction to myself and those around me. The last thing I want to have take place is for these issues to spill over onto others in a harmful way either physically or emotionally, but as Homer, not the Greek poet, but the Simpson says, "Usually I'm the one who takes it too far!" It is that quote that scares me more than anything.

A good friend and relative reminded me of a story that really reveals the duality and apathy my father modeled for me both as a parent and as a human. My Father Lou, appealed to him (as well as my mother, was worse than my Dad by far) to step in and take care of me, as I always had grown up living with my mother in some shape or form. His pleas were always denied by my Dad as Lou explained the desperate conditions in which I was being cared for, but the response he gave Lou was that he was "too busy" with his other family to take on the burden of me.

When my Father pressed forward and asked him, isn't Chuck your family too, he refused to answer the question. Yet several times he would tell me how he wished he could take me to live with him, but my mother would always threaten to take him to court for back child support, something that I was told they had both conveniently agreed not to have him pay. It's the kind of story and excuse that only high school kids will believe because they still want to believe, and that's exactly what I did.

Yet the anger over this could easily have been quelled or healed with the truth or honesty at any time, but that was never to be the case with either parent. Their reasons were both taken with them in fiery ends after lives of bitter lies and deceitful injury to others.

As late as 2007, after years of silence and therapy, I confronted my Dad on many of the issues that separated us, and on this issue of child support and supporting me, he again came up with fantastic lies that were just ridiculous and libelous to both the living and dead, all for the purpose of not owning up to his own actions or accepting accountability. This time is was different though, because now I was a parent, and I wanted to give my children a chance to know him and make a decision for themselves what kind of person he was.

So, I pushed the last of my feelings aside, and felt the fire inside begin to simmer and roil.

Feeling like a number!

It's been six days now since my dad has died. I find that the more removed I am from the event, the more conflicted I become about him, our relationship, and the past.

Just the calm acknowledgement of his passing, although it was after an extremely long a hard fought battle against his body breaking down, gives me pause at the lack of emotion or sense of lose that I am feeling. When this time came I anticipated inner turmoil for myself over this matter, but I never fathomed how hard it has hit my identity and my being. My friend Lou Cicirello's father had such a greater and more significant impact on my life that when he passed away in 2008, I remember coming apart and being weighed down for days by the loss and grief, that five years later are absent for my own Dad. I guess it bothers me more that I am not upset at not being upset over that fact, which is a larger reason why I refer to him as my Dad and to Lou, Sr. as my Father.

Yesterday morning my Dad was cremated. I had not seen the body or said my goodbyes, but in accordance with my spiritual beliefs that wasn't necesssary. As it grew closer to the time for this event to happen, I felt that if I didn't speak up I wouldn't get a notification to this from my stepbrother's and my Dad's family, as I often felt kept out of the loop.

Yet as it drew closer, I began to get too anxious at the scope of the event and what I thought was to be a larger turn out of support, so I jumped at the chance to avoid the ceremony when myself and the triplets were very mildly showing signs of a stomach virus. The truth of the matter is that I couldn't work myself up to being around people grieving and crying about their loss over someone that I myself couldn't do. The very thought of being around these people: sad, grieving, and looking for support from each other as they mentally grabbed for memories of my Dad was a lie to which I couldn't portray or act, let alone participate in.

Now that I am parent-less, and feeling like no one special and possibly rudderless, but because of the parents I had, free from the yolks and hackles of my past, I wonder if I really will go through the normal stages of grief or if this is something else altogether different. My desire to acquire the truth of that part of me that my Dad contributed hasn't gone away, it has just become stronger; to understand it for what it is regardless of the outcomes and to share that with the world. Its the way he forced me to spend my life explaining that I was alone while he raised another family with all the love, protection, and caring that he withheld from me for no valid reason. I lived with this shame and guilt and difficulty for 44 years, never receiving anything but lies, all the while I had people telling me how wonderful he was.

Lou, you would have never done that to me. In fact, you didn't.