Regrets, I've had a few....

Every Monday I try to post an answer to April' s question of the week. Sometimes it comes easily, yesterday it didn't. It was about regrets, I thought it was an easy one. I didn't attend college, sure, that's been a huge regret. But now that I'm older there's two trains of thought I have

1. It would've been great to get a real education in something I was interested in learning, but seeing that I don't even remember what I was interested in learning, was I really even that interested? Besides it's not that socially acceptable to have not been to college. I might have a good/real job right this very minute. And I'd know how to temper my use of the comma.

2. I know plenty of fools who have been to college and only gotten whatever job they have because of their degree (whether it was related to the field or not). They are no better or smarter than I am. They also have good/real jobs. Which might mean that we couldn't afford to live without my income, which would also mean my two kids (who wouldn't be here right now because I wouldn't have met/dated/married my husband) would be different kids and they'd be holed up in daycare.

Well, because of the kids thing, this really isn't my regret. Just a wishful what if.... So the regret that I posted to her comments was kind of a revelation for me, because it's something I don't choose to think of everyday. It's painful to realize that your father is gone forever and there will be no more Red Sox games/good movies/good books/funny jokes/delicious dinners to share. He died about 13 years ago, almost 14 really, at the age of 42. He was an alcoholic and that's how he died. His liver just gave out. My parents had divorced about four years before that.

My childhood was not a nightmare of alcohol induced beatings or screaming matches. By contrast it was happy, my parents really did love each other, I was an only child and due to lack of competition, my parent's favorite. :) We did normal family stuff. My mom made every effort to hide the fact that my dad consumed way too much alcohol. And it worked. For a while.
The worst of it was the weekend afternoons, he would kind of pass out in the chair. Then he'd be up in time for dinner, no biggie to a kid. Just a nap.

He got into his first bad drunk driving accident one Friday night. He ususally only drank at home so driving was never an issue. This was some work related party. My mom had to take me to the jail to do something. I can't even remember what. I just remember driving there at night. The people in the other car were hurt. Not too badly but still, hurt. I saw my dad differently after that. I just kind of ...despised him a little. He knew it too. My mom, who'd been dealing with this drinking since their first date when she walked him around their neighborhood to sober him up before sending him back home, had changed too. The cat was out of the bag. He was so, so sorry. But cards, gifts and kind words don't mean as much when you don't back them up with actions. He never stopped drinking. Their last argument consisted of my mom pleading for him to please stop drinking and him telling her that if he couldn't drink in his own home he'd go somewhere else. So he did.

Things were never the same after that. The drinking continued. Sometimes tempered with a few months of AA. He did try. But it's a lonely battle. He remarried, to a horrible woman. A nurse who used to steal meds to get high and drank way too much wine. She treated me like I was 8. I came home from school one day (I briefly moved in with them because my stepfather and I butted heads like you could not believe) and she had cleaned him out. A lot of the furniture and all kinds of things were just gone. She did leave him a note. I'll always wonder what happened to her daughter, who was 8 years younger than me and one of the greatest kids ever. I moved back to my mom's not long after that. My dad came to my high school graduation. I prayed he wouldn't drink. He hadn't made the divorce amicable and was not invited to the after party. He went home alone.

I'd go to his house and the bottles would be stacked up on the cellar stairs. Out of sight but not out of my mind. He met my boyfriend twice. We fell out of touch. I hated the drinking and now noticed how much it affected him and me. I'd look at his coffee or soda and wonder what he had mixed it with. And how he acted, was this him or was it the alcohol? I didn't trust any of it. He committed himself to the hospital because pnce, upon sobering up, he was hearing something in his ears that sounded like a fuzzy radio broadcast. Turns out when alcohol becomes part of your body chemistry it doesn't like to leave and this is one of the side effects.

Sobriety turned out to be too hard for my dad. His neighbor found him, on the couch, in early November. A drink within arm's reach. My mom and I pieced together the last year or so of his life through paperwork, a few pictures and some phone calls. It seems he was drinking all of the time. He stopped going to work a few weeks before he died, just looking at the checks he wrote out in the last few weeks, he must have been drinking, because it was all a mess.

I just wish he was here. I know that alcoholism is a disease and someone won't stop drinking unless they want to. But what if they wanted to but just needed a little support/love/or whatever from their little girl. Obviously there's guilt mixed in there with the regret. But even if he was drinking, and couldn't stop - literally- to save his life, I just wish I spent more time with him or told him I loved him not out of duty but out of truth.

So, to April, thanks for the forced introspection. I need to think of my dad more often, share him with my kids more than I do. There was way more good than bad. And now I'm off to play cards with my daughter.