I understand how you must feel with all this.
I have two adult sons who did not achieve the dreams that I had for them when they were young.
They threw away the many opportunites, available to them, that many other families would sacrifice an arm to have.
Instead of criticising, them, I changed my goals for them. Now I just want them to be happy, healthy, and net contributors to this world. I think they are achieving that.
Now I have a new baby. My ambitions for him are already less. He will be what he will be. The opportunities will be his -like my other sons - to keep or throw away.
You couldn’t change your father’s behaviour before and now you certainly can’t. It is so dissappointing to know that he harboured these grudges and could not change how he thought. His brain is built like that.
A bee stings, an ant bites, and a thorn pricks. They cannot change their behavior. Some human brains can change, others not. Some have empathy, others not.
All you have to worry about is your behaviour to your family, so they don’t end up feeling the same as you felt. Love love love.
You write extremely well. Style, grammer, spelling, punctuation, layout and so on. It is a pity that journalists don’t write as well as you. However, I must point out one possible style error (or maybe it was intentional?).- or maybe I missed something? You started this blog writing “I know someone whose dad....”, but much later you are writing about your dad. Do we have two dads with similar relationship issues, or just one? I am assuming only one, - it is your dad? - or if two dads, I missed the moment where you shift from discussing a family friend and his dad to where you are now discussing your family and your dad.
I was hoping for some wise advice like this from a parent out there, and you really came through!
I appreciate you sharing your own personal experience to help. What I've learned in my life and relationships is that people have different value systems, and they can often be misaligned to cause inadvertent friction. Sometimes the disparity might not make any logical sense, but that's what makes everyone different and themselves. None are right or wrong, even if it seems as such. I've found that some people simply learn to appreciate certain things in life at different stages, and some may never appreciate them at all. The same applies to change, as you alluded to.
While being a parent and a child growing up are difficult journeys in their own rites, it sounds like you're all in a solid position to see it through with peace and closure. It's great that you were able to see the bigger picture to adjust your ambitions for them. Happiness is everything and life is a long journey where maybe they'll come around to surprise you in the future. Additionally, you've learned lessons that will help a great deal with your new child to make parenting easier and more rewarding.
On my side, the rest of my family understands the situation, so the scope is limited to just my Dad. He generally acted "normal" with my other siblings, so they were fortunately spared. If anything, it's better that one person deals with it in its entirely than having three equally impacted. If I truly played a role in why he behaved as he did with me, I'd accept it, but I know deep down that I didn't do anything. Since I'll never be able to address it with him, that's the only peace I'll have.
I actually debated writing on the point you highlighted that this experience will help me know how to treat my children best in the future. While I feel that I would've done this naturally anyway, I can consider it deeply reinforced, and a positive takeaway.
I appreciate your comments on my writing. I claim to be no expert or author. I just flow that I write and read it out loud a few times afterwards to make sure it has a good flow to it.
As for your fully justified confusion, I clarified the "reveal" part, which was initially styled with strikethrough text. It was my Dad I was talking about all along. I thought that some people might assume this as they read along, but wanted to introduce a little surprise if people didn't see it coming. I updated that "reveal" paragraph to the following below per your feedback to make sure that this stands out better. Thanks for letting me see it from a reasonable angle I hadn't anticipated.
The fix:
To each warning, the Dad said he was aware that he was burning their bridge with “yes", "I know,” and “good”.
The sonI'll never be able to forget that moment. I said "you just lost another son" and walked away knowing that my life would be changed forever. [Some may have sensed that this was my Dad already, but I'm clarifying the subtle reveal in case it didn't come through.]I saw the strikethrough, and did not understand why it was there, so i read on.
Whilst i guessed at the beginning that you could be writing about yourself, the strikethrough isn’t an obvious confirmation that I was right.
It would be much more obvious to write either in the middle “In case you haven’t already guessed.......” or continue writing about the friend until the very end, when you can add the following: “ in case you didn’t already guess, I know, because that man was my father. ‘
Even more difficult, but perhaps quite satisfying and rewarding to the reader would be to write the story through the eyes of your brother, mother, or even your father. Then you could end the story a bit like that song from Kenny Rogers about a soldier caught playing cards in church. The song finishes with “I know, I was that soldier.” Or something like that.
I can imagine it would be extremely difficult to write the story through the eyes of your father without putting your bias on to it. It might though provide you with more release.
That's a good point, thanks for the advice. I went back and cleaned up that spot a little bit to make a separate break along the lines of what you suggested. This does make it a little smoother and more logical in the flow.
Maybe I'll rewrite this down the line after some years to see how I can reflect on it then. It's all fairly fresh so it'd be interesting to see how my view changes over time.
Thanks again for taking plenty of your time to help, and for your generous vote.