Remembering My Father On Father's Day

My father, age 29

My father (on the left) with his parents, sisters, and brother. Orchard Lake, Michigan

My dad, age 3, with his older brother Fritz, baby sister Peggy, and my grandmother Marjorie, 1918

My father and grandmother, 1915

My parents on their wedding day

My dad and baby twins, 1951

My dad with John and myself at our home on Harcourt, Grosse Pointe Park, MI

My parents vacationing in the Caribbean not long before my father's death.

 In Loving Remembrance of My Father

 

John Ward Strong was born on August 4th, 1915. My father, second born of four children, grew up in a wealthy family outside of Detroit on the shores of Orchard Lake, Michigan. Everyone knew my dad as Jack ― a man who was handsome, funny, and deeply kind. Unlike his father and grandfather, both military men who graduated from West Point, my dad went to Princeton and did not fight in the second World War. I was told that it was because he had "flat feet." But my deepest intuition tells me that Dad was a pacifist in his heart and could not have bared the burden of killing another human being. He was a gentle and sensitive soul who went on to be a chemist at Parke Davis in Detroit for 33 years until his death at age 60.

 

My mother had a passion for travel which took my parents many places, including the Caribbean several times in the later years of their marriage. While my brother and I were growing up, there were also family trips to Florida, Washington DC, Burmuda, New York City, Europe, out West, and out East (in that order). These were great adventures which also, to be honest, had their deeply painful moments, too. Yet I find myself chuckling as I notice a thought emerging ― that maybe my father was happiest when he was snorkeling and sailing on Orchard Lake. Or gardening in the yard of our Grosse Pointe home. Or downing that second daily martini.

We humans are complicated. I see many glowing remembrances of fathers on Father's Day, mother's on Mother's Day, and when our parents pass and on the anniversaries of their deaths. What is true for me, however, is that I need to acknowledge and honor the nuances, the humanness, the strengths and the struggles, the foibles and the beauty of my parents ... and of us all. These deeper truths being brought up to the light of day is what I believe can inspire us all to be more honest, more vulnerable, more human, more intimate and connected within ourselves and each other.

So my dad was complicated. One truth that i didn't fully grasp until a few years into my own sobriety is that my father was a gay man who never felt it safe to come out of the closet. Sure, he lived with two gay men prior to his marriage with my mom at age 34, 11 years my mother's senior. My aunt told me years ago that many young women swooned over my handsome dad, but he never dated. And there were those who thought he'd never marry. 

 

But then my mother came along, a beautiful young woman who he met on a blind date and married six months later when she was just 23 years old. And there was a familiarity that my father was no doubt drawn to. Because we humans are drawn to those who in some way mirror both our unrealized gifts and strengths and also our unrecognized and unattended wounds. And my father had not the slightest awareness or understanding of his own mother's narcissism. There was no conscious awareness and understanding of how it is that intergenerational patterns are perpetuated.

And so there was a lot of growing turmoil and trauma that grew in my dad's life over the years. The martinis helped him cope, but never get to the root of his suffering or our mother's and the suffering of my twin brother and myself. Yet, through it all, Dad did not leave my mom, no matter the violence and heart crushing experiences that we lived with. My aunt told me that she believed that Dad stayed in the marriage because he was afraid of what would happen to John and me if he left. And, back then, there is no way that he would have been awarded custody. So my father did the best that he could to protect my brother and me. And it was an impossible situation.

Then June 13th, 1975 came and my first husband and I hit the road, heading West, destination unknown. It was hard to kiss my dad and my brother goodbye because at some level I knew that my leaving was an act of getting off the suicide boat my family was on and choosing to save myself. I had no idea when I last hugged my dad in front of our home on Thorn Tree in Grosse Pointe Woods that I would never see him again.

My sons' father and I had settled in Oregon when August came and I received a letter from my mother saying that my parents were planning a trip to Banff in Alberta, Canada. I felt a mixture of disappointment and lack of surprise that my mother would plan a trip so close to us, but wouldn't be visiting. I had no idea that this last vacation would spell the end for my father.

I hadn't heard anything from my parents when I called them in early November to check in. I was surprised to learn that my dad had been hospitalized for two weeks and had nearly died. No one told me. At the same time, I was told that he now appeared to be getting better. I was shocked, angry, relieved. 

 

A few days later I called to check in again and my brother said that Dad was worse again. My mother was at the hospital. And when I did reach her and let her know that I wanted to come home to see my father, my mother told me: "If you travel all this way, your father will think he's really sick, and he'll give up and die." In other words, you come home and you'll kill your dad. So I didn't go.

A few days later on November 13th, 1975 my father died anyway. The diagnosis had been Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which he'd gotten on that fateful trip to Canada, coupled with pneumonia. My father was 60. 

 

I didn't go home to Michigan then either. My mother refused to see me unless I wore all the right closes and cut my hair. I agreed to the clothes. But I refused to cut my hair. So the phone call to tell me that my dad was dead ended with my mother hanging up on me. Years later I learned that there was no service for my father, and to the great frustration and sorrow to all who loved Jack.

It has always been my belief that living with my mother's severe mental illness impacted and compromised my father's immune system, resulting in his being too weak to fight off something that should not have killed him. The cost of our family's trauma was great for my dad and for all of us.

All this said, I need to acknowledgment and highlight my father's greatest strength. And that is the gentleness and kindness of his heart. Through it all ― all the image management and secrecy and pretense, the alcoholism and trauma and violence, the struggles to endure and cope with so much pain and loss, my father never lost his capacity for kindness. Which saved my life.

So my dad lives on in me. This passion for kindness and to grow in compassion, empathy, tenderness, generosity, and love is part of my intergenerational legacy that I get from my dad. And I will be forever grateful. I love and miss my dad dearly. Foibles and all, he was a beautiful human. 

Bless us all on this Father's Day. And may more and more of our stories find the light of day so they may be healed and transformed. This is the great opportunity, I believe, that lies in wait within all of us.

With deep compassion and blessings,

Molly