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DADDY NEVER CRIED

His first 'great noble truth' must have been that Life is hard. When I was a child I asked him
why he never wanted biscuits; he said that's all he
had to eat growing up. Not yet a teenager, he was already hustling,
self-taught, gambling in the streets; when he got caught, it meant
a beating if he lost-and giving up the money if he won. His dad was
drinking more than he made to sell during prohibition while his mom
worked all her daylight hours in a factory. There was this classic snapshot; she's a flapper,
cigarette in hand, in high heels and hat,
still not as tall as her son, and her husband is the dandy
in a sporty suit, tall and skinny, arrogant and wild. The boy stood
between them as though to protect his mom from the punches no one else saw. He told me he
used to promise he'd buy her a white car
and a fur coat when he grew up. Not in the picture was the brother
who died six years old, the babies who were never born, and the sister
they sent to live with relatives away from the violence and the lowlife;
one of life's little ironies is that in spite of their efforts, she was the one
who took to drinking. Soon after that picture was taken,
his dad died and he went to war.

When I knew him, he wasn't cold, but introspective - powerful and smart. Even after I had
married, I was intimidated and awed more
by him than anyone else. One Christmas eve, gramma died; suddenly
a part of the family was gone that had always been there -- the roots.
In my first experience with death as an adult I looked to him for comfort,
and found instead his loss, his grief, to be greater than mine.
My whiny little tears fell for three days and evaporated into the air like they had never been.
But his sorrow had no outlet; it mushroomed
and grew until it filled the air. It soaked through the cracks
in the windows and doors and blackened the sky. His breath became
a shudder-a heaving sigh that sliced through the silence in the church;
it rode in the car like an unholy presence until it hung over the graveyard in low, dark clouds
mixing with the misty rain running down my cheeks,
proving everything I knew about him was a lie.
Who didn't want me to know he was mortal, vulnerable, human and
alive-him or me? This day remains undeniably etched in my memory
for decades even though he's gone. Years after, I shared these thoughts
with Mom to compare what she remembered,

but all she said was, 'Daddy never cried.'

~ Broken Wings ~

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