Farewell to My Father

Farewell, to My Father

His voice is gruff and crackling over the phone.

Crackle, blah, diabetes.

Blah, crackle, pancreatic cancer.

         I'd not spoken to him since I was eight. A Sunday. A visitation. That was the deal in the divorce, so long as I was okay with it. He'd kidnapped me as an infant, took me to North Carolina, to his mother's house. The police wouldn't do anything so my mother had to team up with my aunt. They kidnapped me back. As a child, he was meeting me at a private airport, trying to get me on his private plane, calling my mother a whore. That was the last I spoke with him until now. Nearly twenty years later.

"Did you know you are related to a Prussian Lieutenant General?" he says, trying to impress me. And winning. Little is known about my family of three.

"Did you know your grandmother adopted a South American boy for the money," he tells me, "but he tried to rape your aunt and they sent him back."

I'm pacing the back porch, in the dark. The buzz of some persistent flying insect keeps invading my ear-space.

Crackle, buzz, my father beat me.

         I ask why he insisted on haunting my family with threats of legal action. It was his way of showing his love for us. Showing us how he loved us too much to let go. Subpoenas were served on a bi-monthly basis. This was a man that tried to sue the government for allowing Monica Lewinsky to publish her book.

Crackle, buzz, my mother didn't love me.

I say, "When I was a kid; when I visited you on those Sundays, I tried to love you."

"Don't expect me to feel sorry for you," I say.

Crackle, buzz, click.

Silence.

(299 words)