I can't imagine how hard that must have been. My wife is a firm believer that trauma is generational, so at some point someone needs to get help or it is going to just keep getting passed along. It might not look the same, but the traces are there. In the end though, it sounds like the good memories are more than the bad and that's all we can really hope for I think. My mom and dad seemed to grow closer when he retired and my sister and I finally moved out of the house. I guess that's the way it works.
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The weird thing about that kind of childhood trauma is, in a way, it seems "normal" when you're going through it. The hard part comes later as you discover it wasn't normal and then you have to find ways to heal so you don't continue the cycle. I think your wife is right, generational trauma is real. This might seem like a stretch but I think there's past trauma at the DNA level from ancestors we've never even met. There were definitely many more good memories than bad in our case. We were just kind of figuring out everything together. My dad made some good strides in communication the last decade of his life but would have benefited greatly from on-going talk therapy and maybe some psychedelic medicine. The psychedelics have been shown to actually rewire your brain to help you heal. I'm glad your parents grew closer! That's a challenge, I'm sure, while you're raising children...mainly because of the lack of time.
I remember my parents used to argue and in the grand scheme of things it seemed pretty bad at the time, but now that I look back it was actually quite mundane over the silliest things. Kind of like my wife and I do now. So the eyes of youth definitely focus things in a different light or vice versa. I'm glad your dad was open to the meds. I actually found out some stuff a while ago that I won't get into here, that I often wonder if it would have changed things in my youth... Sorry for being so cryptic, just saying I understand what you are getting at.