Passing

There's an obituary on my iPhone for a man I didn't know. My father died last month, of cancer I'm told. I haven't seen him since I was thirteen, haven't spoken to him, corresponded with him. He is a stranger to me, and I wanted it that way. Now, I'm not certain of how to feel for his passing. Do I feel loss? Remorse? Anger? Yes to all three, but in a distant way, as if the feelings are theoretical.

My father left before I was born, significantly younger than my Mom, and not ready to enter the world of responsibility. I understand that he came to visit me once or twice when I was an infant. I guess he didn't connect with fatherhood, with me. He didn't return. I next saw him when I was eleven, having been given the chance to spend a summer with him in Southwestern New Mexico. He lived off the land, farming a small plot of land near the Gila National Forest. Home for him, his wife and two children (my half-brother and step-sister) was a converted school bus and a large teepee. They were hippies, that's all I knew at the time. I never knew why, or how he came to live that way. All I knew was that he lived in a great place, with a lake and a tree swing, woods to explore, a tractor to ride on, and a stream of friends coming by who all made me laugh. It seemed he had a great life. Except that I wasn't really part of it, feeling somewhat like an intruder into someone else's family. I think my half-brother resented a somewhat older boy, his father's first son, showing up out of nowhere and competing for attention. I'm just guessing, though, because we mostly got along great.

I don't remember a whole lot of that summer, time dimming the synapses related to that memory. I do remember my brother and I getting into an argument, and I punched him in the stomach. I felt bad after, and we made up. I also remember there being payote buttons in a basket on the back shelf of the bus/house, under the rear window. And the adults smoking weed at night from a pipe, drinking beer and talking about grown-up things. I never had any of it, but I wondered. Later in life, during middle school, I had occasion to try it with some friends. It made me sleepy, something alcohol could do for a lot less money and trouble. I never had it again, even though it was offered more than a few times. I wonder now how my father's lifestyle played into my choices...

I spent three summers with my father, two in New Mexico and the last in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. I had my first shot of Jack Daniels at eleven years old, chased by a long swig of Coors taken from the yellow can I'll always remember. My father had taken me to the bar with him, that first summer, and gave me the booze. I remember how it burned going down, the taste of it washed away by the beer. I remember the head of a black bear mounted to the wall high above my head. We left the bar soon after, him driving, going down to the Rio Grande river for a bonfire with his friends. I passed out on the bench seat of his truck a little while later. My third summer, the one in Colorado, I found out my father was doing harder drugs than just weed and alcohol. He was using crystal meth, I think, and I was not happy about it. Of the few things I remember about that summer, not much invovles my father. I remember going to the bar with him, seeing girls five or six years older than me drinking (the drinking age at the time was still 18) and looking forward to the time I could drink in a bar, too. I remember helping my brother mow a lawn, a vast expanse of green turf, with a single push mower. No self-propelled job back then, we took turns mowing strips. It seemed so huge to me at the time, though I'm sure now if I were to revisit the yard it wouldn't be all that impressive. Funny how much larger the world is when you're a kid. I also remember good times jumping on a trampoline with my brother, though now I have no idea where my father was at the time.

After that summer, I faced a choice. My father was using drugs, something I absolutely did not approve of. I decided that I didn't want to be part of that, and asked my Mom to give him a choice: either stop using drugs and have a relationship with me, or continue using and I would not be part of his life. He chose the latter, a testament to either the power of the drugs or his lack of connection with his own child. I never spoke to him again. As I write this, I think back. I cannot recall him ever saying he loved me. I'm not saying he didn't say it, just that there's no memory of it. I never felt love from him, never felt that parental connection to him. He was my father, not my Dad- I never had one of those. My Mom raised me as a single mother, the saint that she is, struggling to provide for me. She never had another man in her life after my father, not seriously anyway. She dedicated her life to me, to herself, to work. She went back to school and got her Master's Degree in psychology, all while working full time to support us. I never knew any different, never really felt the strains or stresses she must have been under. We had room-mates for most of the time she was in school, helping to pay the bills and the rent. It seemed normal to me, though now I look back and realize the sacrifices my mother has made in order to give me the life she felt I deserved. Decent schools, good communities, a stable home with good values. I don't think I thank her often enough for all that she did.

My mother called me a few days ago, asked if I could talk, it was bad news. Sure, I said... I was driving to the bank, a captive audience with a hands-free phone. What did she want to tell me? I figured another of our aging family members had passed, sad news for certain. She told me a friend of my father's, whom she had kept infrequent contact with over the years, had written her to tell her my father had died. He succumbed to a long battle with cancer, having treated into remission several times before. Not this time. The illness was too much, and he lost his life. My brother was there, I'm told, although it wasn't always a certainty. My father and he had fallen out, the letter said, and not spoken for a long time, only reconciling their differences in recent years. My father and his wife (my step-mom) had divorced at some point after I parted ways with him, my brother going with his mother. I think the separation had already happened before that last summer I spent with him in Colorado; I don't recall her around, although my memory is pretty sparse. Are they real memories, or are they suppositions, guesses about what I remember taken as fact? There's no telling... It's been twenty-seven years since I last had any contact with them, any of them. During the conversation with my Mom, I found out that my father had been to Viet Nam, been exposed to Agent Orange. I never even knew he had been in the military. What else didn't I know? His first name is John, not Jaysun as I had known him for all these years. I knew that, I guess, but never remembered it. I had searched for him a couple of years ago on the internet, finding a couple of shaky leads that went nowhere in the end.

My wife, using the new information, started searching again that night. She's the one that found it: the Obituary. John Douglas 'Jason' Hammond. I never knew his middle name. He had remarried, settled back near where I first went to stay with him in Southwestern New Mexico, opened a successful music studio producing jazz and other music. He had lots of friends, touched many lives. I am not listed in his obituary, although my half-brother is. There's a picture of him, a face that I recognize but have no real emotion for. My wife wonders if my deep anger at the world is somehow related to all this. Perhaps, plus many more things. I can't say. That will likely take years of therapy to root out, if I ever get around to going back. The act of typing all this out is cathartic, too.

So, I am left to wonder. Do I make contact with this man's family? Do I want that part of my existence, do they? I will reach out to my half-brother, if I can find him. The family friend knows, and will try to make the connection possible for me. I don't know how to proceed other than that. It seems selfish to intrude into the lives of people who are mourning the loss of a loved one, when I an not mourning his loss as well. I feel indifferent, and maybe that's the most disturbing part of it all. Am I supposed to feel something? If so, what? I don't regret my decision, it was the right thing to do for me at the time. I've lived my life drug free (except for that one time...), dedicated to serving others in their time of need. I have lived a good life so far, and it's getting better as time passes. How would things have been different for me had I kept my father in my life? I'd rather not ponder that, since thinking it won't change anything. John Douglas 'Jason' Hammond was 64 when he passed on to his next big adventure. I regret not knowing him better, but not the circumstances of why I don't. Maybe in the next life, we will have a better relationship. Time will tell.

Thanks for reading.

Stay safe, take care of each other, and take care of the job.
In that order.