This is
what
major depression
leaves
after you pass in the night.
Please be aware
that I don’t post this to shame him; my birth father, Edward, was a truly good person. He loved me in his own, less than intimate, but very selfless way.
But he was also very insecure and filled with a fear of the world. The last few years he maybe called me once a year. He just had too many demons from his childhood that followed him and never let him rest. It made him a true recluse.
He was an abused child, a victim with a ptsd one gets when they are physically and emotionally abused on a daily basis from too young to remember. He never got to truly be a happy, innocent child. At age 8 he was running milk to the curb for the milkman, and in turn his job money bought his violent alcoholic father booze.
He drove his 8 younger brothers and sisters to school and back everyday in the family car at age 14. As a middle-aged man, into his second marriage, he had to summon up all he could muster to resist the instincts to take his resentments, insecurities, shame and anger and act out on them.
Instead, he turned those instincts outside-in, and decided that if he resisted deep, intimate contact, life would be a little bit easier. He left his second wife and never had another relationship. He didn’t make any new close friends.
My former wife and I moved him into this small studio apartment in Koreatown where he sat everyday alone for more than 15 years (with his wonderful, timid rescue dog Murf for much of it) until he died in his sleep last Saturday, 10 February 2018.
He didn’t have much and he didn’t let me help him if ever at all, hence the messy, dirty, lonely apartment. He was of the generation that too much help was a sign of weakness. He really truly didn’t know any better.
But one thing he did know was that I loved him. But the fact that he was in so much emotional torture leads me to truly believe in the most caring, compassionate way, that he is now finally at peace.
I don’t need your condolences. I truly don’t. I am at peace with him being at peace. We had good moments that I’ll get to take with me. But say what you can while you can to those you love.
Now. I did. I can rest. He can rest.
—lance webber
Flommist Lance Webber is in the band. Copyright © 2018 Lance Webber.
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