by Mere

Created on: May 15, 2009

It is both with envy and sadness that I read and hear wonderful stories about fantastic relationships people have with their fathers. How I wish I could have had a father who was NOT an alcoholic and who did NOT make life a living hell for his family.

As a child I dreaded any holiday, including Christmas because it was a sure thing that my father would be drunk. Is that normal for a child? I don't think so! I remember Christmas Eve of my 7th year like it was yesterday. About 3 o'clock in the afternoon two of my father's bar room friends brought him home. He was so drunk that they had to carry him into the house and put him on the couch. I ran to my closet sobbing. One of his drunken friends followed me and said "It was OK" No, it was NOT OK. What a horrible memory to have programmed in one's mind.

I reached a point very early in my childhood that I stopped wanting a Christmas tree. It was a sure thing that my father would fall into the tree at least once every year while in one of his drunken stupors.

During World War II he worked in a defense plant in Detroit. He took the bus home from the afternoon shift. The neighborhood bar was right at the bus stop.How convenient! He would get there around midnight and stay until the bar closed at 2. Of course, he came home drunk each night.

When he was sober, he was the nicest and dearest man. How I would beg him profusely never to drink again. He would say "OK, Moochie, (his pet name for me) I won't get drunk again. I believed him with all my heart. Within a day or two my heart would be broken once again.

He drank away the money he needed to provide for his family, a wife, a son and a daughter. We had so little because his addiction was such a priority in his life.

I recall one particular evening he came home drunk....again! I went to my room for the night. The next morning he knocked at my door before he left for work. I would not answer him as I was getting ready for school. I heard him tell my mother in the kitchen "She won't say good-bye to me." That afternoon he had a fatal heart attack at one of his jobs. (He was a landscape gardener.)

When I saw him for the first time in his coffin at the funeral home my immediate thought was "He will never come home drunk again!" I was a freshman in high school at the time. A few times during a class I caught myself wondering "will Daddy come home drunk tonight?" Reality would set in and I then would realize that was all history.....very sad and traumatic history.

Learn more about this author, Mere.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.