Dead Flowers and a Father's Tale

“Well, when you're sitting there in your silk upholstered chair

Talking to some rich folk that you know

Well, I hope you won't see me in my ragged company

Well, you know I could never be alone” (Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers).

My Dad's birthday would have been just the other day (from the time of posting), if he were still alive so this feels like a good time to understand the father-son relationship for me. The song that opens this post is what I would have played at my Dad's funeral had there been one and a whole host of other reasons. 

Dead Flowers is the perfect Stones song for my dad in my memory. You see, my dad was the “ragged company”, only he didn't want the world to see that. For the number of people who looked down upon my dad and there were many (including me), I don't think it compared to his internal pain. He didn't want to be alone or alone with his pain. 

I don't know why my dad became an addict, like I know the stories of being a hippie and how that was a part of it all, but the internal why is something I don't think he ever really told me. But addiction was a way he wasn't alone with his pain. And, in my lifetime, he wanted people around – especially me – which was complicated at best. 

“Well, when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac

Making bets on your Kentucky Derby days

I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon

And another girl to take my pain away” (Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers). 

The second verse of Dead Flowers connects the relationship with my father to childhood memories of his love of Cadillacs, he even had one when I was really little. I remember getting to sit in it and play around before he sold it. My dad was in recovery treatment at that point. 

One day when my sister and I finally got our own rooms as kids, my dad's room became the basement. So the basement room line isn't just a line for me. It's thousands of hours of bonding and plenty of conflicts. My dad was my hero growing up. I was proud that he beat his addiction or so I perceived for a very long time. I would have ridden through hell for my dad, and arguably did. 

In that basement room, I got my first musical instrument, a drum kit. I played endless hours of music with my dad (eventually others too). It's where movie nights took place. It's where a lot of meaningful conversations happened with my dad and it's where I had to tell my friends for the first time that my dad was an addict, when we moved his room out of the basement. I was in my late twenties then. It's also where I'd start my final walk through my childhood home, as I walked through it alone for the last time.

My dad's addiction was the other girl taking his pain away just like in the song. Only it caused a lot of it too. I told the nice stories that the song brought up for me about my dad and intentionally because I thought about playing that song at his funeral for many years and had been expecting his death since I was fourteen years old. 

I defended my dad against everyone and that's a big factor in some life choices I've made over the years. But here's the other side, I saw his “ragged company,” up close for a long time. I was the household finance manager – I made sure the bills got paid on time from age fifteen ish until caretaking my father was taken off my plate at age 28. I managed the grocery budget. At a high point it was $65 a week. I attended doctor's appointments, the treatment center, hospitalizations, the DMV, the SSA, and a whole host of other stuff my high school peers weren't doing with their parents. When my friends wanted to stay out late, I went home because he expected me home (this frustrated many friends, many times, and I appreciate that they went along with it for me). There's more I could say but I don't want to at the moment and this is a post not a book. There's only five more paragraphs.

I'd probably still look at my dad through hero lenses, but the last ten years of his life changed how I saw my father dramatically. I love my father. Sometimes I hate my father (and I don't throw hate around). But, my life is easier, not easy, without him in it. 

We are many things to the people in our lives. I look at some of the stuff that I've shared openly here that I didn't talk about with my closest friends until I was twenty eight years old. It took thirteen years of a lot of personal development to get here. My dad's dead and I can't change any of the past, but I learn and grow from it daily. 

This is a journey and one where I look at my kids every day and think about how I'd want them to see me when they're my age. I ask, can I heal the old wounds enough to be a better father? 

Maybe one day, my kids will think, my dad did the best he knew how to do. They'll think, we didn't know that our dad tried to shield us from human darkness as long as possible because he didn't want us to carry the weight of that knowledge any sooner than we had to by virtue of growing up. Maybe they'll think, our dad did a good job of letting us be children while he was the grown up. Who knows what my kids will think of me down the road but I know what I want them to know is that I love them. It's the reason I share the mostly processed stuff here, the raw material with trained people, and none of it with my kids just yet. I might have the smell of methadone on memory recall starting at age four because of my dad. But, I'm okay if my kids don't even know what drugs are until they need to know for their safety. I'm by no means a perfect father. I get frustrated a lot and that's my biggest frustration with myself as a dad. 

I'm not my kid's hero, which confuses me sometimes because my dad was mine. But, my kids are the only kids I've ever encountered that don't ask why I walk differently and it's not because they understand Cerebral Palsy. If anything, I get, “it's easy Dad, just jump, here, there, sideways, and over the moon to get around that stuff.” Also while you're at it, “would you get me a snack? My legs are too tired.” Wish I'd thought of that one because it's never a fib for me.