I used to be involved in my church's youth ministry, and wound up tutoring a middle school boy in math. He really didn't have a lot going for him, and he often wound up at my place to do chores and help out -- which I paid him for. He had a lot of potential, and was fascinated with computers.
He called me up one day, and wanted to hang out -- mentioned it was his 14th birthday. I couldn't say no. He showed me places his dad used to take him, we got food, played video games -- it was a great time. But towards the end of the night he got quieter and quieter, and spontaneously burst into tears.
All he wanted was a call from his dad.
High school was a roller coaster, but he graduated. He's off and working a well paying job right now, and happy. I still tutor math, but the thing I've started to notice is the absolute void that's left in a young man's life when his father is absent.
Samuel Sey wrote[1] a bit on this, and the statistics are staggering.
> This was the general drift of my thoughts as my wife and I dropped off my eldest son as a freshman at college. I put on my best face. But it is the worst thing that time has done to me so far. That moment at the dorm is implied at the kindergarten door, at the gates of summer camp, at every ritual of parting and independence. But it comes as surprising as a thief, taking what you value most.
Well written. Perfectly describes my feelings dropping my oldest daughter off at college. While I had two more still at home, it was clear the role I had grown into over the past 18 years was coming to a close.
When my last left home I felt a kind of crisis of identity. I had, perhaps a bit begrudgingly at first, costumed up and played the role of father when my first child was born.
I think at first I thought I could continue to be the person I had been: continue all my side projects, activities and "raise-kid" would just be another project. Slowly though, "father" became my primary project. Even my side projects were affected: things like a MAME cabinet, a Step-Mania dance pad project I saw as two-fers that the kids could enjoy as well. Other projects, like a wooden push-bike for kids, a play-house, I would not have considered at all before I became a father.
And so, slowly perhaps, father became my identity.
Oh sure, I'm still "father" but besides being physically absent, I know too that this is when they need to also be socially distant from me and my wife.
The empty nest has left me wondering who I even was before I became father. I confess that I can only see something like an apparition of what was a more hedonistic me back then. Going back to doing my little projects now (no longer family-focused) seems almost pointless.
More than a few people have suggested I volunteer, and perhaps I will give that a try ... if I can find something that clicks.
Perhaps though, if I live long enough, when my kids have kids of their own my wife and I will have something resembling our old roles back.
I'm going to post something that's not directly on topic, and is perhaps not that interesting in the grand scheme of things.
And it is going to ramble a bit. There is a summary at the end.
Shortly after 11am Pacific, 12 days ago, on his 74th birthday, my father walked into the backyard of his home of 42 years, sat in a lawn chair, and used a .357 magnum revolver to end his life.
He played virtually no role in raising me; at my parents request, his parents became my legal guardians when I was six years old, and prior to that, I spent most of my time at their house anyway.
His parents had only a single child, and my parents had only a single child.
I lived in my dad's house for five years in the 1980s while attending university, but working a full time job and taking 50% more classes than a full load meant I was almost never home and awake at the same time. Since then, except for some long pauses, we've communicated mostly via e-mail, with fewer than half a dozen phone calls.
His first wife, my mother, left him in the mid 1970s and he re-married a year later. His 2nd wife, Jane, had even less connection to me.
My grandparents were excellent guardians and parents, and I was nurtured and well cared for.
Jane died a few years ago after being married to my dad for 38 years after a prolonged and terrible fight with breast cancer. Nine years prior, she had forbidden him to communicate with me, and he had agreed, so I'd not heard from him in most of a decade.
He contacted me the day after she died via e-mail. Near the end of her life, she had given him the go ahead to resume communications with me after she died.
Born in the mid 1940s, my father would very likely be evaluated as being on the autistic spectrum as things are seen today. Just like his father and his son.
He had an easy charisma, but that was very shallow: he was functionally socially retarded. Besides the small number of women in his life, he had created almost no substantial social bonds.
When we did communicate, we got along quite well, but, in a fairly friendly but irresistible way, he almost sought to 'manage' the conversation, moving it in his own interests and directions. And there was always at least a mild to moderate negative/paranoid tone.
In general, even though the overall communications were cordial and friendly, I didn't really like to engage with him, because I felt a little worse about things after. Not a lot, but a bit.
Anyway, about a year after Jane's death, he met and started building a relationship with another woman, named Rosie. She is about 14 years younger than him. And their relationship blossomed, though with some troubling caveats.
She insisted he tell nobody about her or their relationship, and said she could not tell her family about it, for various seemingly, on the surface, plausible reasons. Of course he told me about it, since I was the only other person in the world he really talked to.
Though she didn't ask for it directly, last year he took most of the value out of his house and bought her a nice condo.
Moving ahead more briefly, she dumped him in February 2019. He was shattered, and rightly felt betrayed. He began to plan his exit at that time, eight months before his birthday.
He and I continued to exchange e-mails, perhaps one per week, and I had no hint or indication of his plans.
As was his style, every detail had been taken care of. He placed a 'packet' on the kitchen table: burial clothes, a note, a legal copies of various legal documents. That morning, he put a large package of all kinds of legal documentation, along with 15 pages of explanation and other important information in the mail, to be delivered to me the next day. He had enumerated where everything of value could be found in the house, which he had almost completely emptied. Included was detailed contact information: mortuary, lawyers, information on the reverse mortgage he had taken out, and detailed hand-written notes explaining all sorts of relevant details.
He setup a 'direct burial', next to Jane, in the Riverside National Cemetery, since he was a veteran. 'direct burial': no service, just straight from coroner to mortuary to the ground.
He and Jane took care of and loved many cats and a couple of dogs over the years, and that work brought them great joy. Rosie insisted that he get rid of all of his pets, and he did so.
The homicide detective I spoke to said that this was the most straightforward case she'd ever seen. His body cleared the Los Angeles County coroners office in a single day, which the mortuary had a hard time believing was possible.
He died as he lived: with meticulous planning and attention to detail.
Here he is, 69 or 70 years of age, a quick photo of his drivers license. Before this photo, the last time I had seen him was in 2004, before he started working out. This picture was striking because I'd never seen him have a 'thin' face.
This event has been challenging for my wife, son and I but not shattering, since none of us had any kind of non-surface relationship with him.
But it has brought into focus a few things.
In summary: building and maintaining multiple personal connections is critically important. My father was in the fullness of health, even in his 70s, working out several hours every morning.
Fundamentally, why did he choose suicide? At this time, I'd say the most proximate cause was the terrible, untimely death of his wife. But that didn't need to be the end. He had never learned how to create and maintain healthy relationships. Why? That's hard to say with any certainty, but (probably) being on the autism spectrum likely played a part.
I'll end this ramble here: the one thing he repeated most often in our communications over the years was the importance of holding my wife and son very close. In truth, their presence has helped bring me through many difficult times over the decades.
Wow, this was exactly what my dad did. He also was very well educated, and he also became bitter by his sacrifices as I got older. I came to appreciate his sacrifice when I became a father but I promised to never blame my kids for any choices I make. The difference between my father and myself is that I already feel like I have proved enough by becoming a father. If I died today, I would have no regrets. He passed away at 56 when I was in college and I know he had regrets. Like you said, I would rather have had an absent father than a bitter one too.
My Mum fought tooth and nail against my Dad for me to get my first proper computer after I spent over 2 years cobbling together an ancient machine out of scraps and garbage.
I had the carcasses of 4-5 machines stashed under my bed by the time I got a single good (in the loosest sense of the word) machine to boot.
My childhood was defined by the conflict between my parents where Mum tirelessly defended my right to learn.
Fathers are incredibly powerful and they can make a difference. Whether that difference is positive or negative depends on the father in question. I have slowly rebuilt my relationship with my own father over many years, but we will never be close. It hurts.
Agreed. My father didn't help as directly as he could've.
But he worked hard, provided a good life, and because of his job all the materials I needed were either readily available or easily borrowed.
Honestly the greatest thing my dad ever did was give me his work phone-number (before e-mail was considered strictly a necessity.) Granted you can't answer for your kid all the time - but demonstrating your willingness to be available goes a long way in the mind of a child.
This sounds like a dad trying to tell his kid how hard it was for them growing up. None of these bullets are a promise and most of them are pretty condisending and seems to just be a rant about all the things that didn't work out for him but that feels like it's because he was expecting to have his hand held alot more which is something I've never assumed.
This. My dad worked 70 hours a week and travelled for work 30% of the time growing up, but we never felt “he was never around” because he made it to graduation events and little league and called us every day after school.
Exactly what I've experienced with my dad. He went from someone I idolized who could fix anything and solve any problem to the guy who rants about Muslims coming to kill us while building up a stock pile of guns.
I'll check out that article. I'd like to commend Anthony Bradley's work to you. It's a tangent to what you're working on. He focuses a lot on the relationship between fathers and sons specifically but I'm sure you'd find lots of interesting stuff on his socials, podcast, etc.
I’m the son of a software engineer, I’m a software engineer, and I am also recently a new father to a daughter.
When I think back to my childhood — I really appreciated my dad showing me how computers work, letting me build them, explaining to me what a transistor did, how ISA and PCI worked, etc. It obviously had a profound influence on me given my career.
What really sucked was his work at all costs attitude; I rarely saw him, and this stayed true for his second crop of children w/ my step mother.
In sum; I loved the technical learnings offered, didn’t really care about his work (early 90s tech wasn’t that fun/interedting?), and I certainly chafe, now, at how absentee he was due to his career.
Most of the time it was an escape. That's why it felt genuine, and not like a pretext for cheesy father-son bonding time, on the occasions when he would invite me to participate. Part of it was riding along to go pick up a tool from Craigslist, but another part of it was him being in the shop for much longer than my attention span, being a craftsman, getting things done, while I understood that this is the kind of person he is, and I aspired to be the same kind of person in my own way on the computer upstairs.
This man is a hero. Not only because he served his country so honorably, but for the time, care, and consideration he took to codify his values and morals in his diary. This one hit me hard, especially now that I have a son. To think, there are so many children out there who will never see or get to meet their fathers again. I know it's not the same as a father, but I hope these kids find mentors or guides to try and make sense of the hand they've been dealt.
This reminds me very much of my own father, though he wasn't a gamer. Coming from an older generation, his great love was books, and I loved it when he gave me a beat up old book from the 1940s, told me he read it many times, and "thought I might find it interesting." Looking back, I know he too faced anxiety about sharing these important, secret parts of his past: "will my son find this as captivating and glorious as I did, or will he put it aside -- or worse, read it to keep my feelings from being hurt?"
As a now out-of-the-house "adult", I can say that sharing your past with your children is perhaps the most profound and meaningful way you have to connect with them as a father -- at least this was my experience. Sons especially, I think, really want that connection to their dads. It helps them understand who their father was, what he was like as a child.
He called me up one day, and wanted to hang out -- mentioned it was his 14th birthday. I couldn't say no. He showed me places his dad used to take him, we got food, played video games -- it was a great time. But towards the end of the night he got quieter and quieter, and spontaneously burst into tears.
All he wanted was a call from his dad.
High school was a roller coaster, but he graduated. He's off and working a well paying job right now, and happy. I still tutor math, but the thing I've started to notice is the absolute void that's left in a young man's life when his father is absent.
Samuel Sey wrote[1] a bit on this, and the statistics are staggering.
1 - https://slowtowrite.com/absentee-fathers-not-guns-are-the-pr...
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