Promises

If I had a blog about my father, this would go there. Since I don't, this will have to do.

My father would have turned 89 on July 7. He was 48 when I was born, and back then it was still unusual to be a first-time father when you were that old. It didn't make for a typical father/son relationship. Most of the time, people mistook him for my grandfather. We didn't play catch or go fishing. He worked all the time.

Besides that, he wasn't an easy person to get to know. He didn't talk about his past too much because he was unhappy with it. Even my mother doesn't know all that much about it, and she was married to him for 30 years.

What I do know was he was first-generation Chinese, born in Canton. He came to the U.S. when he was 8 or so, when Chinese immigrants were not welcomed. He came in on a iffy passport that said he was 11. His father already was here, and he sent for his sons.

As little as I know about my father's past, I know even less about my grandfather. I found an old newspaper article in Yuma about his dying. The way my father told it, he had gotten drunk, cut his foot badly and bled to death because he couldn't get help.

My father followed in his footsteps in one respect: he was an alcoholic. He was a functional one, so he could get up in the morning and go to work as a meat cutter, but on his way home he'd buy a pint of whiskey and drink it all. Worst of all, he was an angry drunk. He didn't hit, but he would yell and curse. My sister got the worst of it because she's strong-willed while I just stayed out of the way. Again, this didn't make our relationship easier.

To top it all off, I was a pretty weird kid. I was bright, to be sure, but I was also, as the report cards put it, "super sensitive." I didn't like to be wrong, and took it badly when I was. I spent most of my time reading by myself. I didn't get into sports and I didn't make a lot of friends. At home, I liked to just be in my room, listening to music or, of course, reading. Again, not a relationship builder.

I don't mean to paint a picture of him as the world's worst father. He had his redeeming qualities. For one, he loved Christmas. He'd shout, "Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas! Jingle bells, jingle bells, Batman smells!" at 3 in the morning on Christmas day. It was never a matter of waiting til morning to open presents with us. When he started yelling, it was time to rip 'em open.

Sometimes he'd tell me he loved me. Not often, but he did. And when I taught myself how to read when I was 4, he trotted me down to the store where he worked and showed his co-workers by having me read the poster showing the cuts of meat. I knew he was proud of me.

But still, when I grew up I got out of the house as soon as I could. By that time, the drinking had caught up with him. He stumbled around a lot, finally using a cane and then a walker after he fell down too many times and broke a hip. He'd pee himself sitting in his chair. When he couldn't get the alcohol anymore, he stopped drinking, and became a little more lucid. But he was also mostly deaf, and you had to shout to talk to him.

Those last few years before he had the stroke and died were hard to bear. But it was during those years that I found the piece of my father that I carry with me to this day.

About a year before he died, he broke his hip again but refused to go to the hospital. I would come over and stay with him while my mother would go shopping. Mostly he'd just sleep, calling out when he wanted something to eat or drink or help to go to the bathroom.

One time when he called out, it wasn't for that. When I got back to the bedroom, he told me, "I want to tell you something."

What, I asked.

"Don't be afraid of living."

It was the first time he'd ever said anything like that to me.

"You spend too much time by yourself, living in your own head. You can't live life in your room. You have to go out your front door to do that."

I didn't know what to say.

"Promise me you won't be afraid of living."

I promised.

I don't carry many great memories of my father, but I carry that one.

There are three great promises I have made in my life. "Til death do you part," I fulfilled. I promised Deb on her deathbed that I would be OK, and I'm still working on that.

The promise I made to my father, though, is the one that's closest to my heart.