Diana Hurlburt’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
When I was two my father committed suicide. This is why patriarchal religion was never going to work out, I once joked to my mother, because my family is incapable of telling the truth plainly. She didn’t laugh, partly because suicide jokes aren’t funny and partly because of the ditty running through her mind: does that mean she’s really an atheist now? Wait, what if she joined one of those weirdo pagan religions? What if she starts sending me menstrual blood paintings? Growing up with no father in a very traditional-family-oriented religion was an interesting experience. Surrogate dads were obtained for big events like my baptism and daddy-daughter sock hops and bowling nights, the dads of friends at church who had one daughter or several already, and room for another, at least for one night. The significance of the eternal family was mostly lost on me. God the Father never seemed very personal, either, largely because I wasn’t sure what He should be like. What were dads like? Luke from Gilmore Girls? Red Forman with superpowers? My best friend’s dad, who looked kind of like Alex Trebek and was adept at paternal pastimes like collecting BMWs and cooking spinach because he knew I hated it? God the Father didn’t seem too dad-like. Who had taught Jesus how to change a flat tire? Probably Joseph. Most of the kids in my favorite books were orphans anyway. I had a mom at least, and mostly that seemed like all that was needed. We camped and visited weird wood-carving museums, she and I and my sister. Three tall, slightly standoffish swans, whole unto ourselves. I liked the number three as a kid; I collected gewgaws in sets of three. Three blown-glass goose figurines, three ceramic skunks, three pewter unicorns in a shadowbox on my wall. My family.
When I was ten my mother remarried. Suddenly I had A Dad. Now people could stop asking me how my dad had died (a question I didn’t know the answer to until I was twelve or so anyway). My mom had married my stepfather in the Orlando temple, and I had been sealed to them, so the eternal family question was no longer anxiety-inducing for my mother. It hadn’t been for me, and only would become so in later years, when as a snotty teenager I ruminated on the unfairness of not being able to ascend to the highest levels of Heaven without some man’s help. This was not a stage I got over. As a tweenage person, however, my concerns were more mundane: what did I do with a dad now that I had one? Not much seemed to have changed, except there was ranch dressing in the fridge now. Nominally, my stepfather and I had some stuff in common–a tendency to rent terrible sci-fi movies from Blockbuster, for instance. Practically, there was an uncrossable gulf. It was handy to have a priesthood-holder on hand without having to call the home teachers for a blessing, I supposed. But why was he trying to talk to me about sex ed? My mom, and the school district, kind of, had already done that. I wasn’t convinced of his interest in me. It showed up in weird ways, like when I heard him tell my mother he thought I would make a good sister missionary. Even in eighth grade I knew that was code for “future spinster.”
When I was fifteen I found an old diary in a box of books. One of the entries from July 1997 detailed that my mother had gotten married and now my last name would be different. This was not an event that had transpired. I couldn’t remember why little me had thought it would, and I didn’t know why my mother hadn’t wanted it to. Other things I found that year included one of my father’s passports and his death certificate. I was shocked by how much I looked like him in that sepia passport photo, especially with my glasses on. I wondered whether it hurt my mom to look at me and see him looking back. I wasn’t sure how to feel about reading the word shotgun on the certificate. It was something I knew to be true, but seeing it written down didn’t make it more real. I didn’t feel sad–slightly ashamed, perhaps, as though I was looking at something private. I left the certificate where my older sister could find it. Later, when we lived together in college, she did the same with a bundle of letters our father had sent our mother when they were young and he was overseas. We never talked about him directly, a long and silent agreement. For me at least, that silence had been indifference when I was young, too young to understand death and loneliness. It had morphed into defensiveness laced with deference as I grew older, a desire to not hurt my mom. She was the default, always.
When I was seventeen my stepfather had the bright idea to move himself and my mother a very cold, small state 1,500 miles away from my hometown. This seemed un-dad-like and, worse, un-mom-like. As far as I had gleaned from books and TV, when a kid went to college Mom helped them pack and Dad got them a can of Mace and/or a tire repair kit. They had already done the college thing with my sister–a much higher-maintenance young woman–so I guess they figured all would be well for me. Maybe if I had managed the appropriate choice and gone to BYU; maybe if I hadn’t gone to a heathen state school and found Science. I helped them move. My graduation gift was to drive up with my mom and then shift boxes around between barn and sprawling New England house. I thought on this lengthy road-trip I might finally grind up the nerve to ask her about him, my father. I didn’t. We stayed overnight in Virginia and watched a documentary about Patty Hearst, we ate Cow Tails and I endured a lecture about wearing ear plugs to concerts because Deep Purple had ruined Mom’s hearing. All comfortingly normal. I flew home for a summer trip and then college, and felt a strange relief at the new distance. I could do my daughtering at arms’ length. There would be no more daily searches for the right words, the right actions, the right feelings.
Age nineteen: patriarchal religion forsaken. Age twenty-two: an email from my mother berating me for forgetting to send my stepfather a birthday card. Age twenty-seven: a polite, restrained visit from the parents to my new city, the second time my stepfather had accompanied my mother on a visit to me. Having to tell people your parents are visiting is such a loaded statement. Are you going to have fun? Are they cool parents? Years later the word parents still sounds funny coming out of my mouth, heavier than it ought to be and with a pause in front of it. I’m unsure of its propriety, its ability to convey the truth about these people: one threaded into me in every way significant, biological and formative and sympathetic though not always understanding, approving, or aware, and one an organ rejected by the body. And one more, visible in the set of my eyes and the smirk of my mouth, a file readable only by outdated software.
Tags: dads, diana hurlburt, family, grief, loss, relationships
My parents got divorced when I was two, so I’ve had a few experiences trying to sort out what to do with new step parents (and siblings). I had a step-mother and sister for years before the second big divorce in my life. My mother has several goes at it before she finally married someone who stuck, and my step-dad and I have shared respect for our odd family ties. I got along with all of my dad’s girlfriends and their kids. I could explain easily step parents and second wives and half/step/not-step-but-close siblings. Conversations about family were lengthy, but not too hard to get through.
My dad killed himself last year. I have such a hard time talking about family now. I try to have my same blasé attitude when I meet new people and talk about life, but there isn’t the huge family tree with a million branches to track out. Now it’s just my mom and her husband. There isn’t anything more to explain or go into detail about. Just one mom and one (step) dad.
I don’t really know how to say ‘parents’ either.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I lost my one of my 4 sisters to suicide last year and I also have a hard time with “simple” questions about my family now. I used to enjoy telling people all about my large family, but now I get stuck on “How many siblings do you have?”
I feel this so hard. My dad died from a brain aneurysm when I was 4. I have vague memories of him, mostly as a source of Christmas and birthday gifts, as someone I looked forward to seeing after school. The performance of Dad by my mom’s boyfriend was the palest imitation of what that relationship should be. It was a relief when she left him and I could own being fatherless. I’m now prone to dark jokes about having one less greeting card holiday to worry about. It makes things a little awkward with my father-in-law.
This has me thinking about some choice dad-less moments from the past year.
My mom sending me a copy of his death certificate when she mailed my original birth certificate because she thought I might like it.
Talking with my husband about military service and sticking it to him that my dad was in the army so our future kids will at least have one set of cool dogtags from a grandparent.
This was really good.
Oh man. My situation is a bit different but elements are very much the same. My mother (who I was extremely close with) died when I was 21 and a senior in college. My father (who I have a somewhat close but also pretty fraught relationship with) remarried when I was 25. Both my original family and the new stepfamily I’ve inherited were/are extremely close-knit — but where I fit into my family’s new iteration isn’t clear. My father, my stepmother, and my three adult stepsisters all live in the same small town and see each other almost daily. I was raised an only child, half my “real” family is gone, and I live 4 hours away. It feels cold to reject my new family, but at the same time they don’t feel like my family in any appreciable way. Being far away is easier in some ways — “I could do my daughtering at arms’ length. There would be no more daily searches for the right words, the right actions, the right feelings” hit quite close to home for me — but makes it much harder when I AM home, and I’m still unused to the sense of disconnect that “home” now entails. Also theoretically I have siblings now, but I have no idea how that works or what to do with them?
tl;dr does anyone know how siblings work
Same. I was raised LDS, and am going through transition of sorts. I still consider myself a part of the church, but no longer give a shit what anyone in the church thinks about me or my decisions? And am comfortable disagreeing with some major points of doctrine and cultural pressures. It sounds fairly contradictory, but I also think I am part of a growing demographic.
This piece cut to my core. There are significant differences, but a lot felt familiar.
My father didn't commit suicide, but he abandoned me and my family, and in doing so, directly contradicted all the beliefs and standards that he and my mother had incessantly instilled into us since birth. He stopped taking care of us, too, and when he'd come around every other week or so, it was like we were having to visit with his ghost, but pretend nothing was wrong. My father has been a bishop, and people did NOT know what to do with us. The LDS church is so family centric, but doesn't, or at least at the time, where I grew up, didn't really have any contingency support systems in place for when your picture perfect eternal family crumbles into ruin.
TL, DR: Hi, I am in therapy.
This is great, and that last paragraph is magnificent.
Yeah, I don’t have anything to add comment-wise, other than that I was thankful to read this and thought it was incredible.
… parents.
Always makes first date / cocktail party small talk much more fraught. “Where do your parents live?” If I say step-dad, will they ask where my real dad is? “What do your parents do?” If they notice my subtle use of past tense, maybe they’ll just think he’s retired. Ten years and I still don’t know when in the getting-to-know-you process is the dead dad time.
This is beautiful and painful and thank you.
My dad bought me that exact Carl Larsson picture (my fave painter anyway). It’s now many years later and we no longer speak (my idea, but necessary). I shall be crying in that corner over there… 🙁