Reconciliation of a Son (Part 2)

If you missed the first half here is the link. Reconciliation of a Son (Part 1)


Finally peace reigned in our household. Weeks went by without fights or arguments. My ulcers weren't acting up as much. Life seemed strange and wonderful all at the same time. Now came the real challenge of my life. At the age of eighteen I became one of those God loving, Bible believing, Jesus freaks. I had attended a conference the summer following my father's eviction and was baptized in the swimming pool at Alfred University. Take a guess what the first emotional trauma I felt God was telling me to deal with... that's right, forgive my parents!

SAY WHAT!!! Yes, forgive my parents. Forgiving my mother was easy. She had been abused more than any of us in the family. I knew she suffered from Battered Woman's Syndrome. I couldn't hold a grudge against her. Now my father was a whole other mess to deal with. How does someone forgive a person who abused them from infancy to an adult? The very person, who should have been showing love and affection, abused their position of authority to degrade and belittle. How does a person forgive that kind of betrayal and pain? These were the questions I asked myself and God on a daily basis until I finally got an answer. The answer came in the form of another question.

This is what God said to me. "How can a man give what he does not have?"

That may not seem like much, but to me this summed up how my perspective of others was about to change forever. First, I needed to see my father as just a man who was flawed and abused even worse than I had been. In my eyes, Kenneth Carter was just as screwed up as I was. How in the world was he supposed to know how to raise children? Doesn't excuse him for what he did but it explained it to me.

Now that I could see my father as just a man, I began my healing process. My healing process consisted of me seeking out a relationship with my father. Regardless of whether he wanted one or not was irrelevant to me. I felt the need to reach out to this sick, twisted man and build a relationship with him regardless if he rejected me. And I did just that. I reached out and at first he pushed me away. He wanted nothing to do with me. But I persisted.

After a couple years of calling and stopping by his house, I finally started to see a break in my father's character. On a few occasions he actually invited me over for dinner with his new family. My father was now remarried to a Jewish Italian woman who was three inches shy of five feet tall with long jet black hair. She couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds soaking wet. Ellie was her name. I can't say that I liked or disliked Ellie, but she was a great cook.

At the age of twenty-one, my father and I had the best day of our life together. This day was going to change and affect me for the rest of my life. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was early June on a bright sunny Friday. I hadn't heard from my father since around my birthday, which was back in April. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I just felt like I needed to see him. My father had left a message on my phone at the time of my birthday saying to stop by because he had a card for me. Yeah, that's right, money! But money wasn't the reason for the sudden urge to see him. I could have picked that up anytime over the last two months.

I called my father and surprisingly he answered the phone. He never answers the phone when there are other people in the house, so this was a good sign. Not only did he answer the phone, but he invited me out to the house for a barbeque with him and his family. I guess I picked the right day to call. Since my car was in need of a new engine, I needed to get a ride to see my father. Thankfully my best friend lived right upstairs to me and I asked him if he would give me a ride. I used the card money as incentive of course and a free meal. It worked.

We showed up at my father's house as he was tending to burgers and hotdogs on the grill. As usual he was wearing his white t-shirt and blue jeans. He even reached into his back pocket to comb his still full white head of hair at the age of fifty-one. Old habits never die I guess. We were invited into the house by Ellie and were greeted by two tan and brown Pekingese dogs. Apparently she was trying to breed the two dogs. If you've never seen a Pekingese dog before they yap incessantly and are very small. They weigh about ten pounds and have hair that droops down to the floor. They looked like two dust rags with heads running around at our feet. I loved them immediately. We played with the dogs and caught up with both my father and Ellie's lives while sitting around their dining room table.

Truck drivers can make a good living, especially if they do overnight runs. I say this so you understand my father's new home was nice and Ellie took great care of the place. Dark oak cabinets with china dishes and knickknacks filled the walls of the dining room. The living room was divided into two sections with a brown leather sectional couch and matching chairs. Everything was first class in my father's new home. Compared to my life growing up with him, how he lived now was completely opposite. We never had money growing up. I remember having to eat potatoes for a week at every meal. Sometimes we didn't even have food. But now, this was a major change in my father. 

That day we told jokes and ate way too much. Like I said, Ellie knew how to cook. There were only four of us there, but we might as well have invited the entire neighborhood. From ribs, hotdogs, hamburgers, three different types of noodle salads, antipasto, all sorts of breads and desserts... there was so much food. Needless to say we pigged out. I had never had this much fun with my father in my entire life. There were no fights or arguments of any kind. In fact he was the happiest I've ever seen him.

Unfortunately everything came to a sudden halt when the phone rang. My father had been waiting for his call from work. For truck drivers, they get a two hour window from when they get called to being at work to drive their truck load. It was time to say goodbye to the puppies, Ellie and my father. My friend went to his car to get it started and get it cooled off because it was over ninety degrees, while I stopped at the front door with my father. I'll never forget it. My father was not an affectionate man with any of my family growing up, but I felt I needed to give him a hug. So I did.

 I hugged him tight and said, "I love you Dad." What came next nearly dropped my jaw to the ground.

For the very first time, in all of our relationship, my father replied, "I love you too."

He said it with a straight and serious face. A wall had been broken down and all the effort I had put into building a relationship with my father had finally paid off.

The last words I said before leaving were, "Please drive safe." Then we gave our goodbyes as I got into my friends car.

The very next morning I was woken up a little before eight in the morning. It was Saturday and my day to sleep in, so who would be calling me?

“Hi Danny.” The voice on the phone was Ellie's and the instant I heard her voice I knew something was wrong. Every muscle in my body came alive and I immediately sat upright.

I said, "Hi Ellie. What's wrong?"

She kept her reply simple and direct. "Your father had an accident. He’s dead."

I was in a state of shock but somehow was able to ask, "What happened?"

Ellie went on to explain as well as she could through her tears that during the night there had been a car having engine problems driving with its flashers on just over a hilltop. My father didn't have very much time to react with his tractor-trailer. According to the police report, he had driven his truck into the guardrails along the side of the highway. They said it looked like my father had purposefully done this so he could slow down his truck as to not kill the people in the car.

His truck did slightly rear end the car and sent it into a nearby ditch. Thankfully everyone was all right. However, my father must have gotten out of his truck, and on his way over to see if everyone was alright, he had a massive heart attack and dropped dead in the middle of the highway.  The police stated later that if my father had not blown out his tires in the guardrails the people in the car would have most likely been killed.

At the funeral I was the only person from my family who had reconciled with my father. Everyone was devastated. They had not wanted reconciliation nor did my father ever try to reconcile. Unlike me, their deep-seated emotional scars would find it even more difficult capturing true reconciliation or healing. Looking into all my family's eyes, I realized I had been given a gift from God; One last perfect day with my earthly father, a gift of reconciliation, of perseverance, and of love that I will never forget.

I learned a very important lesson through all of this. Anger and un-forgiveness only hurt one person and that person is me. I've been set free from the torture my family was, and is, still going through to this day. To quote an old poet, “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.”