…salted lithium.

“When I was a child my father believed he was a great man who was in the middle of a great revolution, and things get sacrificed during revolutions. Like family. Or maybe — as he tells the story now — he was just a magazine publisher who had unwittingly acquired a loyal and slightly depraved following of Marxist rebels intent on taking over… something. Whatever. The truth is pretty simple, however, my father told lies that corrupted and nearly killed the people who trusted him.”
— A Lying Maoist Revolutionary Con Artist Stole My Family And All He Left Me With Was A Crappy Bike

“Sometimes it will occur to me the reason I can’t throw as well as someone else is because they had a father who taught them. Or I’ll watch my step-brother skate and I’ll tell myself I’m a fool for not being able to skate as smoothly and I’ll ask myself ‘how..? Oh, right, he has a father’.”
— Rhetorical Question

…I found out this morning that my biological father has died. We hadn’t spoken in twenty+ years. Before that, we had visited once, for two hours, when I was 15-years old — and that was it since I was eight. I have a single memory of him from when I was a child… but it’s still a massive loss, just not in a way you’d naturally mourn for a family member, it’s mostly a loss of potential and possibilities.

I don’t know how he died… I know he was alone, so there will be an autopsy. But he was just a couple of months away from turning 80, and updating his Facebook page right up until the end. So I doubt there will be ‘foul play’ or anything other than him living out his last time on earth.

But I know he died having never met his grandchildren, let alone hear them speak or laugh. He never taught them any lessons, or told them a joke, or a story. He never hugged them, or roasted a marshmallow with them.

And, right up to the end, that was his choice. He made a conscious decision, when I was eight-years old, that he would have no more contact with me and my younger brother… and, later, with our little families.

When I was fifteen, I forced him to meet me. I made the plans to travel to the city where he lived and worked. I made the effort. I disobeyed my mother. After meeting at the train station, he took me to his office where I sat alone in the waiting room for twenty minutes. Next, he took me to a diner, where he introduced me to one of the waitresses. He told me he had gotten her the job, because that was what he did… he helped street kids get jobs and housing and the things necessary to get off the street.

He encouraged them to express themselves through art classes, he ran a food bank, he organized funding for shelters, he lobbied local governments for funding, and wrote letters-to-the-editor demanding spaces and safety for the kids he cared about.

When he introduced me to our waitress, who wasn’t much older than I was, he said “and this is Gabriel, my son”… being acknowledged like that was an incredible feeling, something I still can’t describe. But I also remember the shock on her face, and she said to him “I had no idea you had a son”.

He never told anyone about us. No one in his life knew about my little brother, or me. He never even told his own new little family, including his daughters, my two sisters, about his sons. My little brother and I finally forced him to come clean — when we were in our late 20’s, we told him enough was enough, and we were going to visit our little sisters, who were in their late-teens. .

So he finally told them about the two of us… but he lied again, because he failed to mention his third son from another ‘relationship’, a brother I’ve never met, because his mother wants nothing to do with anyone from that time period due to the horrible circumstances surrounding her son’s conception.

I remember sitting in the home my little sisters grew up in, and them finding out about our father’s third son… they just turned grey, and were too shocked to say anything.

…he was never a good man. He may have tried to be — with his street kid supporters, with the people who worked with him in getting the programs going, with his new family, but no amount of good-deeds could make up for his original sins: the ways in which he abused my mother, the lies he told everyone, pretending his three sons didn’t exist… the negligence.

I still occasionally wish things had been different… sometimes I still wish we had connected, not even as father and son, but in some other way. Why keep us a secret from our sisters? Why not get involved in some minimal manner with his sons? Why not ask for photos and stories of his grandchildren?

I don’t hate him… if only he hadn’t abused my mother. If only he hadn’t done what he did. If only he had been strong enough to make some sort of amends… take responsibility for his abuses. Or at the very least acknowledged them. I don’t think he could have made amends for all his sins, I don’t think we would have forgiven him but it would have made it a lot easier, or at least possible, to begin to heal from what he did to us all.

And now it’s too late… too late for anything. What a waste.