The Old Demon

Tipping Points

I’ve been mulling the idea of telling stories about my crazy Scottish father for a very long time. For those of you who know me personally, you probably understand how embedded my father and his shenanigans are in my daily life. He has been a source of pain, inconvenience, and deeply held trauma, and finally writing about him seems almost inevitable. I held off in doing so in large part because he was still alive and the things I had to say would probably upset or anger him.

My father will turn 89 this year and, well, I believe I have waited long enough. He is an old demon, and as these stories will tell you, he’s been brought back from the brink of death so many times that when doctors and surgeons try to tell me how sick he is, I just nod and smile. Those same doctors later find me in the halls of the hospital ward and proclaim how well he is doing. They simply can’t believe the recovery he’s made.

On a recent visit to his Nephrologist, his kidney doctor informed him how good his numbers were and asked if he was doing all of the things he suggested. My father looked at him without an ounce of irony and said, “No…”

Old demon.

Let’s face it. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and even if he does, he will remain deeply seated in my mind as a gremlin, unable to leave and happy to stay and make trouble.

For thirty years or more, the memories of my father and the stories that accompany them dealt strictly with the insane upbringing that comes from living with a violent, angry, abusive alcoholic. Thankfully, time has blessed me with a great many stories so completely divorced from those scary years, it’s almost as if I don’t need to tell them.

Of course, I will tell them, for context, but I don’t want these stories to come off as a bitter and sad list of grievances. I wouldn’t call myself a fully evolved human being, so there is a lot of repressed anger still shoved down deep inside waiting to come out. I want these essays to be entertaining, but also informative, and to have some kind of point. Whether I achieve that goal is to be seen. We shall see.

I’m inherently fascinated by evolving situations and conditions. I marvel at how a groundswell of goodwill can reach a tipping point and then nosedive violently into annoyance, anger, and eventual apathy.

An example of this can be found in the pews of a local catholic church. I had been invited to a First Communion Mass for one of my cousins’ kids. Nobody really wants to go to these events, but you do it to keep up appearances. While I was sitting there, I looked around and found a packed church full of family members there to celebrate their loved one’s first communion.

At first, there was a level of nervousness, followed by a feeling of pride and joy. As the mass continued on and on and on, trying to accommodate the endless line of candidates, the groundswell of support and joy turned sour. People looked at their watches, they looked at one another, and shook their heads. This was all fine and well, but enough is enough. The entire production lasted close to three hours, and the overall vibe of the congregation was more akin to that of an arsonist looking for something beautiful to burn to the ground

.

This feeling of aggravation was on nobody’s radar just three hours prior. No, this was purely situational. An unspoken social contract had been broken. I would attend your child’s religious claptrap for no more than an hour, and then I would travel to your house for refreshments, where I would eventually sigh and tell you all about the busy day I had planned, some of which had to be moved around to accommodate this beautiful ceremony. Cards or money would be handed out, and I would be free to go home and fall asleep on the couch in front of the television while a professional pickleball league on the Ocho lulls me into a deep restorative slumber.

But I digress…

This is but one example of the kind of tipping point I’m talking about, and it won’t be a surprise to learn that I see the troubled relationship with my father as a prime example of this phenomenon. The universe does not care about the hardships, trauma, or history surrounding your family relationships. You can make all number of agreements with yourself about your motives and your true intentions, but none of it will matter. In the final analysis, you will learn that there is no final analysis. There is no end to the experiment.

My father, the old demon, now lives in a clueless state, having forgotten the horrible years of abuse and psychological torture he inflicted on his family. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not talking about a state of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. No, I believe the culprit here is a mixture of good old-fashioned senility and selective memory.

It’s pretty simple in his mind. “If I was so bad, what are you doing here, then?” It never occurs to him that someone would be there for him in spite of his behavior. The only conclusion to be drawn — in his mind — is that he was, is, and will always be a great father.

It actually makes me laugh. You have to hand it to him. That is an ingenious way to survive. You must adapt. You must press on. If you can’t change it, you have to accept it. If you can’t accept it, you have to — well, you have to make up whatever story works for you.

My father has been many things over his lifetime, and they are not all bad. For reasons I will endeavor to explain in the coming weeks and months, my father lives by a strict code. He is not afraid to speak his mind, and this has landed him in trouble more times than I can count. He has no qualms about being the proverbial “turd in the punchbowl.” He lives with such conviction that he never hesitates to tell someone they are full of shit, or defend the actions of someone he sees as honorable.

He is a voracious reader, and I can tell you now with certainty that he has forgotten more books than I will ever read in my lifetime. He was very able-bodied, not so much now. He was a part of that generation that knew how to do anything and everything. Build an addition to a house? Sure, I can do that. Fix a broken-down car? Yup. Fabricate parts he needed by first fabricating the tool he would need to fabricate the part in question? Absolutely.

He possesses an unquenchable curiosity. He loves to learn new things and is willing to ask the simple question. “How do I do that?” The words, “I can’t do that,” never cross his mind.

He has a terrific sense of humor. He understands one of the greatest secrets of existence. He knows that every tragedy, hardship, and setback can be looked back on with an eye to humor. He taught me that you could tell people about your hardships in a more palatable way if you simply made it entertaining for others to listen to.

My childhood was filled with my father’s embarrassing stories, told as funny anecdotes with him cast as the butt of the joke. People laughed because they could see him laughing at himself. It’s such a useful skill to have and it’s the core of the Marketing Your Misery philosophy I live by as a writer.

He was all those things and more, and I am who I am in large part because of him.

For reasons unknown to me, I came to a point in my life where I was no longer angry with him for what he put our family through. If I knew, I’d bottle it and sell it. As it is, it’s a blessing that I came through the other side. Why do I say that?

Because, to be fair, he was also a rageful alcoholic. The height of his ability to laugh was only matched by the depths of his anger. He drank, he yelled, screamed, punched, and kicked his way through my childhood without a word of apology or remorse. He terrorized my mother, my brother, and me in a way that baffles me to this day. He created an environment of anxiety, fear, and stress that remains as an artifact in our lives.

What he is now, however, is an old demon, stripped of his real power and energy, and I’d like to tell you about him.