Not Happy With Dad...

It almost feels sacrilegious to write about it but I think I went numb the moment I saw my Mom lying back on the chair cushions in the big recliner in their bedroom.  Her face was almost colorless and it was immediately clear to me that she was not breathing.  Although I instantly grabbed the phone and called my Dad (who ran around the corner and up the 3 flights to our apartment within 30 seconds), and then 911, I was acting in a state of detachment and denial.

And somehow, looking back, it was this behavior…  this reaction…  that enabled the subsequent madness.  You can’t do dangerous things successfully without detaching yourself, without being able to look at yourself from a distance.  If you only see things as they appear looking outward, you are almost guaranteed to be blindsided by something you never saw coming.  On another level, you end up with tunnel vision, only seeing what you see…  another path to tremendous success or abject failure.

I’m going to skip past a lot of additional death stuff here because…  well… I’m not in the mood to dwell there and, after all, it’s my story and I can do what I feel. 

So Mom was gone almost a full year before I began working at the Times…  But it wasn’t long after that year ended that my Dad met a Connecticut widow from Bridgeport at a Catskills hotel (Grossingers), and began courting her. 

One thing I’ll say for the generation that lived through hard times during the Great Depression is that they had a whole other sense of entitlement than those that came afterwards.  We were basically the beneficiaries of all that suffering.  They were the sufferers and, at the same time, capable of justifying selfishness to the extreme.  And, that’s what happened….  Dad decided he was going to marry this woman and move to Orlando Florida.  That part of his plan was reasonable and hey, he wasn’t 50 yet and he didn’t want to live out his life as a bachelor.  He also didn’t cook hardly at all…  an inability he passed on to me.  Yes, I can cook up a decent meal but it’s not something I ever want to do. 

What I didn’t expect, and what I still refuse to accept was how he treated Gramps in the aftermath of losing Mom.  Gramps, (Mom’s Dad) had taken him into the stationary store (or candy store) business as a partner and treated him fairly…  from what I understood, splitting everything in the way of profits.  Gramps had no problem sacrificing when necessary, knowing that the welfare of his daughter and his grandchildren were beneficiaries).  Dad contributed very little to the creation of the business and only joined Gramps when he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) find work elsewhere that suited him.

Now, Dad is moving to Florida with another woman…  Larry is overseas in the Air Force…  I’m living in the apartment and in college…  working for Queens Two Way Radio cab company as a radio dispatcher.  The rent was just $85/month, fell under rent-control, and frankly, it was just a perfect financial arrangement for me.  $85 a month?  I could afford that easily and even had enough room in the apartment to take in a roommate… 

What does Dad do?  He pulls together every penny he can get his hands on.  He has me sign over all the childhood gifts I had gotten that Mom considered a ‘college fund’.  He does the same to my brother.  He announces that he’s closing the store and proceeds to sell every last piece of furniture, every saleable bit of merchandise…  and what he can’t sell, he returns to the wholesalers.  And he leaves Gramps (who was around 70 at the time), with little or nothing, expecting that he’d get by with help from my Aunt and Uncle.  To me, that was unforgiveable and no matter how I rationalize it, it bordered on criminal malfeasance without being strictly illegal.  His selfishness was off the charts and I’ve never forgiven him.  Frankly, I didn’t need the college fund but leaving Gramps holding an empty bag was totally inhuman.