Wyvernsridge 🌻:solidarity: on Nostr: My father, George, died almost twenty years ago. He wasn’t a man to make much of an ...
My father, George, died almost twenty years ago. He wasn’t a man to make much of an impression, so it if feels odd that it has taken me this long to finally understand the shape of him. The reason for this is that it is only recently that my daughter and I worked out that he suffered from autism. Of course, that was not something that was understood when George was growing up.
George was born in Latin America. It was a large, wealthy and mostly happy family. Intelligent, but not academically inclined, he only got seven years of education. He was happiest working in the family’s cattle stations.
By his mid-thirties, he was back in the city. He worked in an office for half the day and flew his beloved aeroplane for the other half. We’ve never been able to identify even one friend. He was a loner and happy with his life. Alas, society’s expectation meant that he had to marry. Enter my mother (stage left).
Elena was born into a poor, dysfunctional family. Alcohol and poverty meant that she spent much of her childhood living with cousins, as her parents’ lives fell apart. She met my father in the office.
Elena saw that George had what she most wanted, a wealthy happy family. So, she set her sights on entrapping him. They were married the following year. Her first command was that it was “the aeroplane or her”, so George sold his beloved Aeronca. That set the dynamic for their marriage.
I never understood how other boys related to their fathers. Mine was just a figure in the background. He read and he fixed things, but did not interact much with my brothers or me.
It was in the late seventies that I had the one and only conversation with my father that I remember. We were in the backyard of their home having a barbeque. He and I were sitting in the sun after lunch, talking about the future. He then told me that he only wanted to live long enough for my youngest brother to turn sixteen and be able to look after himself. After that, he was happy to die. I have often thought about his words, and the decades of misery that those words carried as baggage. Divorce was not an option, and so he wished for death as a way to escape my mother and his Sisyphean life.
In a way, he got his wish. Soon after my youngest brother left home, George started showing signs of dementia. He lived until the age of 82, but by the end he did not recognise me. He found escape from his pain, and from my mother in the foggy recesses of his own mind.
I don’t know how things would have been different if his neurodivergence was understood when he was growing up, but I think his life would have been different and much happier.
It’s difficult to mourn a man one did not know, but at least I now understand him a bit better.
Fathers’ Day 2024.
George was born in Latin America. It was a large, wealthy and mostly happy family. Intelligent, but not academically inclined, he only got seven years of education. He was happiest working in the family’s cattle stations.
By his mid-thirties, he was back in the city. He worked in an office for half the day and flew his beloved aeroplane for the other half. We’ve never been able to identify even one friend. He was a loner and happy with his life. Alas, society’s expectation meant that he had to marry. Enter my mother (stage left).
Elena was born into a poor, dysfunctional family. Alcohol and poverty meant that she spent much of her childhood living with cousins, as her parents’ lives fell apart. She met my father in the office.
Elena saw that George had what she most wanted, a wealthy happy family. So, she set her sights on entrapping him. They were married the following year. Her first command was that it was “the aeroplane or her”, so George sold his beloved Aeronca. That set the dynamic for their marriage.
I never understood how other boys related to their fathers. Mine was just a figure in the background. He read and he fixed things, but did not interact much with my brothers or me.
It was in the late seventies that I had the one and only conversation with my father that I remember. We were in the backyard of their home having a barbeque. He and I were sitting in the sun after lunch, talking about the future. He then told me that he only wanted to live long enough for my youngest brother to turn sixteen and be able to look after himself. After that, he was happy to die. I have often thought about his words, and the decades of misery that those words carried as baggage. Divorce was not an option, and so he wished for death as a way to escape my mother and his Sisyphean life.
In a way, he got his wish. Soon after my youngest brother left home, George started showing signs of dementia. He lived until the age of 82, but by the end he did not recognise me. He found escape from his pain, and from my mother in the foggy recesses of his own mind.
I don’t know how things would have been different if his neurodivergence was understood when he was growing up, but I think his life would have been different and much happier.
It’s difficult to mourn a man one did not know, but at least I now understand him a bit better.
Fathers’ Day 2024.