My father struggled a lot himself, I know. And I knew what his parents were like, and he was just repeating what he was subjected to, really. His mother, I am positive about this because of what I witnessed between the two of them--and then his need to move far away from his parents--was deeply emotionally incestuous with him. She was most likely a very different person--loving, caring--to other members of the family, just like my father is, I'm sure. It was just me he had difficulty with. His father was desperately passive aggressive. Even near his deathbed, he was guilting me for not visiting enough. This was all my visits at the nursing home consisted of: "Hi Grandpa. How are you?" "Why don't you visit me more often?" "I do visit." "Well, don't wait so long next time."
My father and his parents had horrible, upsetting phone conversations every Sunday morning, ending with dad on the couch staring glassy eyed at the TV for the rest of the day and well into the night.
Dad also struggled a lot with religion. He held onto Jewish rituals with a grim severity, as though it was meant to torture him. I dreaded the "holidays"--they usually ended up in anger or silences, and definitely fear. My father taught me to believe that if I didn't repent for my "sins" and ask his forgiveness each Yom Kippur (Jewish day of atonement), God wouldn't forgive or love me. Each holiday, a blackness overcame the house as we all solemnly got ready to go to temple and my father's mood got more and more sour.
When I discovered Jesus, years and years later, I found a loving God. Not the God of my father.
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