2007

Pensively, I turned the black notebook over in my hands several times before opening it.  On this evening of the day of my father's death, I was at his home in his bedroom going over some of the things on his desk.  This notebook was the journal Daddy had been keeping for his therapist in his endeavor to deal authentically with his pedophilia.  The consternation that further revelation of the extent of Daddy's problem might be too overwhelming made my fingers slowly and gingerly unfold the pages of his confession.  There was a disclaimer at the outset.  He was eighty-four years old and could not remember every encounter.  Following was a list of all the encounters he could recall and as much about the events as was pertinent to the counselor.  Particularly, age, relation to Daddy, how he began the sexual encounter or "set it up," and what exactly happened.

Forty.  There were forty.  That he could remember!  Forty lives forever changed. Some were young adults. Others were children from the neighborhood, family members, children of friends, kids he had been trusted to baby sit.  The youngest was four.  No little boy or young adult male had been safe with my father.  His two arrests were only the tip of the iceberg.  His revelations of indiscretions included the process by which he would secure relationships with children he molested.  Daddy told of a young woman in the neighborhood who was outside often with her son.  Daddy made a point of stopping by on one of those sunny afternoons in order to discover the woman's situation.  Her boy was all she had.  Needed help with chores.  My father was happy to help.  Caught in his web, her child his prey, my father went on to describe how easy it was to be with the young mother's son alone.  Set-up after degrading set-up was revealed.  It seems my father was always looking for his golden opportunity.

Replete with descriptions of the actual sexual pleasure he received from some of these encounters, nauseating revelations assaulted me.  Even in the retelling of his sexual exploits, it was clear that my father had no real clarity about how his actions were affecting his victims.  He described a young child's behavior as "precocious," as if the child could make a decision about his relationship with my father. In his effort to be as honest as possible, the rawness of Daddy's recollections spewed visuals across the pages of his purgings that could only barely be digested.  His first conquest began shortly after his own molestation.  A boy in his own neighborhood who was slightly younger than the adolescent Jim became his first sexual liason, and it lasted for several years.  The army provided other opportunities for his homosexual exploration.   Homosexuality and pedophilia were  habits of mind and a covert way of life for Daddy by the time he married my mother.  Not a day went by, he would later tell me, that he did not long for the company of boys.  Craving the love of a man, the fragrance of a father, the praise of a male parent, my father was forever an adolescent heart seeking comfort for his woundedness and bloodying others in the process.

My initial reaction to what I tried to digest from the confessions of my father was a certain awe that we, his family, could have been so betrayed; then, that my father was pathological in his flagrant use of so many others.  I wanted to correct if for the forty.  Make it go away.  How naive of us to think that the only times he had molested children were the times when he was caught!  Of course, he had had a life-long addiction.

Secondarily, but rushing in and tripping over the heels of my first thoughts, was disgust.  How could he do that?  I could not understand his mind! To plot evil and draw innocence into its trap is heinous.  The lack of cognizance in Daddy's confessions was crushing.  Pedophilia was so integral to his interior landscape that he had to be "reminded" by a court of law and a psycho-therapist that it is wrong!

Copious notes from my father's journal were devoted to answering many times in various ways questions about how his victims must have felt.  With great difficulty and minimal clarity at first, Daddy tried to understand how the molested must have reacted.  His thinking was oblique, as though some large area of his heart and mind had petrified over the years, making penetration impossible.  I could only compare it to losing a thought that could not be conjured again though its retrieval is concentrated upon vigorously.  He could not remember what it felt like to be the victim; only the power in being the exploiter.   When answering the questions posed by the therapist on this issue, my father's notes became stilted, passionless, as if he were copying down what she told him to write so that he could go back over the notes later and try to decipher their meaning.

Astonishingly, one of Daddy's major purposes for recovery, as stated in his notes, was so that he could have a relationship with his great grandsons, my grandchildren! That gave him heart to move forward.  Never would there be a time, had Daddy lived, that he would have been allowed that privilege. Again, his vision was blurred by his inability to face the mirror that reflected to him what was evident to those who possessed clarity.  Still he would say to me, " I am what you say I am," as though I pronounced him to be a homosexual pedophile.  The two years worth of expurgatory notes suggested that my father was trying to own his addiction - a good step toward healing; a good, first step.

Finally, I laid the black notebook back on Daddy's desk. His life was completely redefined by the words written in his effort to be honest about himself.  Sighing deeply, I leaned back in his desk chair and wondered what to do with this expose.  I could not connect the dots.  Anger, disgust, compassion, hatred, longing, fear, relief, horror, confusion..everything but mourning.  Glad that he no longer struggled.  Thankful there would be no more victims of his addiction.  Undaunted by the task of viewing and identifying his body the next morning, knowing that would be the last time I would have to see my father on this earth.

I found my way to his shower and peeled off my clothing.  A pervasive dirtiness that could not be washed away was impervious to the soap and shampoo.  My heart was weighed down by it as I crawled into bed, and there was a heaviness on my chest as I tried to breathe.  Daddy was dead now, his addicition thrown off.  Cast off as his body was.  That was the only peace I found as sleep finally overcame the aching tiredness of my body.