On Forgiveness and Redemption

My father died a couple of weeks ago. Ours is a story of forgiveness and redemption.

For the first 30 years of my life, my father was not a very good father. There are a few times as a small child that I remember activities with him that were fun, and they produced great memories. But after he and my mother separated, he spent far too much time drunk in his kitchen.

Me and my sisters would go over to his house on weekends, and we would pretty much fend for ourselves, because him and his new wife would spend their time polishing off a couple of bottles of rye whiskey. Some of the time, there was talking about this and that, which I enjoyed, still enjoy to this day. But for me, it was mostly loneliness. Finding ways to entertain myself because no one bothered to plan things to do.

I wasn’t much help in this regard, because I tended to be surly and unresponsive. Any attempts at activity would be met with lukewarm reaction at best. So, I’m sure that eventually my father just gave up trying.

When I was 14, I began to drink alcoholically. I was 14, so it wasn’t as if I could get my hands on booze often, but when I did, I drank to get drunk. As a little kid I was always happy to grab a beer from the cooler when one of the adults asked for one because then I could open…