Ambivalence

My father is infirm, terrified of the future, and has been through a significant amount of trama over the past 7 weeks. One day he had a life, miserable as it was, living alone, with two cats to love, a car to take him anywhere he wanted, and the freedom to watch TV deep into the night. Now, a mere seven weeks later, he's had body parts chopped off of him on an emergency basis three times, he's lost his fucking leg, and his life as he knew it is over. He hasn't completely accepted his lot, and he is scared of the future.

I realize what he is going through in my more rational moments. At times, I even have empathy for him. Unfortunately, more often than not my empathy is replaced by a stronger malvolence due to his drinking, his abuse of my mother, his abuse of me and his other children, and his continued habit of walking this earth feeling entitled to cuss out anyone who tells him something he does not want to hear. He is a bully, a coward, a fucking dry drunk, and genuinely not a nice person.

I find myself wondering if he was ever a decent person. I wonder what it was like when he loved my mother. I wonder if he always resented my presence on this earth, or whether he acquired his hatred of me after I was born, and if so, I wonder what prompted it. I wonder what caused his misery. I wonder what caused him to destroy his life and to attempt to destroy those around him in such a spectacular fashion.

I tell myself at times that it doesn't matter how I treat him now; he will be dead and it will all be forgotten or buried, and what's meaningful after you die? At other times, I tell myself that I ought to visit him and do what I can for him just so that my children do not hate me and ignore me when I am old. I'm still not able to grapple with the notion that I ought to visit him and do what I can for him because he is my father, period.

My older brother once stole money from me, and told me that I should not be angry at him because he was my brother. His theory was that he got a pass because of our familial ties. I disagreed - I thought that a higher duty was owed me because of our familial ties. And when someone tells me to forgive my father for his transgressions, I think that he owed me a higher duty because I am his son. God knows I lived up to that duty to him. I never got arrested (unlike my brothers), never got suspended from school, never got into any trouble, graduated from college on time, and was financially independent the day I finished school. And I ask what it was in me that made him despise me so much.