Who Killed My Dad? 

“The greatest misfortune is not to have a true friend.” – Alexander Griboedov

First, let it be said that I did not attend my dad’s funeral.  That sounds cold, and it wasn’t personal exactly, but our relationship was problematic.  He was an unreliable guy:  one minute he’d plan to visit me on my birthday, the next he’d call it off, deciding instead to attend a  production of Annie directed by his niece, a Wiccan schoolteacher.  One does tire of the Wiccan cousins on my dad’s side of the family but perhaps they charmed him with toads or magic herbs. 

I cannot pretend Dad was a delightful companion.  One Sunday afternoon when I was 15, I returned  from a 25-mile Hike for Hunger.   “Where have you been?” He did not believe in the Hike for Hunger. He insisted that I had been with a boyfriend.  

“Do you want to see my blisters?” 

That was being “mouthy.” so he threw me down on the floor and beat me up.  It was terrifying, and confusing, my face was on the floor and I could hardly breathe.  I never collected the Hike for Hunger pledge money from friends’ parents, because I was so sickened by what had happened that I felt ashamed to collect.

Then there was my college fund.  Who knew I had one?  I didn’t know.  I had a loan, a grant, and a job, but during that final crunch of senior year the job became too much. “Well, there’s the college fund,” he said. A college fund?  Best not to ask why he’d never told me; best to accept the $100 or so and never mention it again. 

Here is the kind of dad he was:  he could not identify me in a photograph.  Once he showed us a home movie, filmed by a distant relative, and said, “There you are!” of some random child who was not me.  In another scene, there I was,  a happy little girl beaming at a picnic table, wearing a nice dress and with my hair curled, the way Mom did to impress his “feckless” relatives.  My husband thought I looked adorable, but neither of us bothered to tell Dad because HE JUST WOULDN’T CARE.

Anyway, let’s cut to the chase. My dad had a lot of enemies.  That sounds paranoid, but is it?  He and his late wife’s children were suing and counter-suing over his late wife’s estate in the weeks before his death. Decades ago, a woman sued hm for sexual harassment. When I was a child, he was sued for knocking out a guy’s teeth in a fight over a woman. (My poor middle-class mother went through hell over this.) He probably pissed off a lot of  other people too because he was so inappropriate in his speech. I assumed he and his relatives were fighting over an estate consisting of just a few items, a  car, an RV, and something called a pole barn.  Much later, and much to my dismay, I learned that there were other assets.

It was the email about Dad’s death that turned me momentarily into Sara Paretsky’s detective, V. I. Warshawski.  My informant wrote, “There was some kind of accident.  We’ve decided against an autopsy because of his age and health issues.” 

AUTOPSY!  Why on earth would they consider an autopsy?  What kind of accident was this?  Is an autopsy standard form?  Had someone killed him?

We hope not.  We sincerely hope not.  I can imagine some of the feckless relatives circling like vultures over his car, RV, and pole barn.  Dad had, in fact, warned me against some of his relatives, particularly the compulsive liar in the family. “He/she says a lot of things, but none of them are true.”  I should have paid more attention to that warning, but I had only seen the liar eight times in my life. Nine max.

I now have to pray for Dad every night, though, because I’m anxious and sad about what might not have been a good end.  He once told me a person was lucky if he had one friend in the world.  He was talking about himself.   A poet friend who passed through his life fleetingly told me: “He’s the loneliest man I’ve ever met.”

Like most daughters, I yearned for my father’s love but I’m not sure that emotion was part of his psychology. I don’t think he understood other people’s feelings. He was intent on having fun. I know he enjoyed his life and travels for many, many years. And then suddenly he was old.

Perhaps he lived the best life he could.