My Dad

September 11, 2008

My Dad

No one has ever influenced me like the way my father has. Now passed away, his words are burned into my being. His ways were sometimes strange and hard to understand, but I feel that everything has happened for a reason. My father passed away February 15, 2008 from lung cancer. If I have realized anything at all from this complex tragedy, it is that some situations in life aren't quite as they seem.

It all started in the month of October in 1983, when my older brother Michael was born. Throughout the years he looked and even acted like our father. I came along on the cold day of January 10 1986. Michael was always favored being the first born. Feeling shunned away from my dad, I naturally became a sort of loner. Michael was always screaming and crying a lot, and I just kind of minded my own business. My mother and Father separated when I was about three years old, due to his violent behavior and drinking problem. He always had a short fuse when it came to, well everything I guess. Not to long after the parents had split apart, Michael, Mom and I moved away to my grandmother's house (who happened to die from cancer also). She was kind enough to let us stay with her for quite a while. She was caring and tried to help us as much as she could, but it could only go so far. My dad didn't come around during that time in my life, but my brother and I waited for him anyway.

We had lived with my grandmother until I was in the 2^nd Grade, or around that time frame. Then my mother met another man with the same name as me. He was a good guy and tried being a father to me and my brother. He would take us fishing, swimming and teach us things that we would need to know. My mom had a very bad drinking problem by then, but we still managed, and the whole time we were still waiting.

We were waiting for our dad, who by now seemed to be a ghost. Not long after mom's second marriage, they got a divorce. I don't really remember what had happened, but I do know it was my mother's fault. After that, the three of us moved again, right beside the school we were attending. Our dad started coming around a little by then. He would stop by every now and then to take us places and to visit. One day he finally told us that he had another child. A very odd feeling came over me, I was questioning myself if that was why dad wasn't around the last few years. Yet again my mother had met another guy. We had moved in with him when I was about nine or ten years old. The worst of all her relationships, he was a nasty old drunk. This time it got bad, this new guy would chase me and my brother out of his house at night and lock us out. His drunken nights would get so bad that we would fear for our lives. Years went on and my father would come and pick Michael up and take him along for days, and yet he left me behind. I wondered why I was being left out. The same thing went on for a long time, Michael actually having a father, learning things from him while I was here left alone. It seemed like nobody cared, so I started flunking out of school. I finally got to tag along one day with my brother and dad, only to be cast aside. By then my mind was going crazy wandering why he didn't have any patience with me at all, it was like he hated me. Michael getting all the attention while I was left at home trying to avoid getting beat by a drunk. Anger started to become a big part of my life, then my mom told me something one day, a talk my mother and father had. My father said that I didn't resemble him, that I was someone else's bastard child. My anger grew and grew. That's when it started, the mental battle that was about to take place within me. My hatred for him ever growing and building on itself. That was the time I became my own father. I felt that I had to be better than him. To surpass my father in any way possible was my goal. Michael and I lived quite reckless for a long time, and our dad stopped coming around again. He had yet another child other than us. Michael and I had met our little half sister Megan before, but not our new baby brother Cameron. My father's family packed up and moved away also, due to his behavior. It seemed like he never learned, or he just didn't care, yet he always had a strange sense of pride within him. He knew what to do when things got bad, and he was very intelligent. He had told us some stories about his army days, and the hardships he had faced. He would always try to tell us what to do. Having a bad life does not give someone the right to treat people bad, especially one's own flesh and blood. Time went on and Father seemed to disappear again. I had taken up the sport of boxing and was quite good at it, whether it helped my anger or it was just something to get away from everyone. I boxed for a few years and then I just didn't have the time any more. I was even brushing my girlfriend off and keeping to myself. This was a very hard time in my life. I quit school and got my GED in 2002, though I wish I would have graduated. I got a job working in a factory for a while, it really wasn't that bad, but time went on and I worked job after job. It was getting old very fast. My brother and I got a house together right outside of town, and our dad had come around and decided to stay with us for a while. It was kind of strange actually having him around. He was right there in front of me but yet I felt so distant from him.

Time went on and he would tell us stories of his life, and his thoughts and views. Then it hit me, he had a lot of the same thoughts and incidents that I had. We both started opening up to each other, but I didn't fully trust or like him yet. The day finally came when he got a construction job so he had to leave again, but before he left he apologized to me for saying I wasn't his son. In a strange way it eased my pain a little. Yet I still had to follow my goal, so without a doubt I had joined the army. I went through bootcamp in 2005 at Ft. Benning Georgia. It was hot and horrible, and quite miserable. I finally came home around September 2005. Being National Guard, I was called up to go to Louisiana for hurricane Katrina. I had seen things I never want to see again there. I helped everyone I could and went home after about 2 months.

Only a year later, me wanting to be so much better than my father, I had volunteered to deploy to Iraq from June 2006 to November 2007. The place smelled so bad, and everywhere you went you were watching your back. War is such a struggle on one's mind and body. I talked to my dad on the phone a few times while I was gone, for some reason he wanted to see my brother and I really bad. But I could do nothing but wait to go home. My time there was misery, I hated everyone and everything, but I managed to keep a few good war buddies. As it got close to going home, I lost my mind a little, not caring about bombs or anything else any longer, I just wanted to go home, but one day something shocked me. We were driving down the street patrolling when the thought of my dad dying popped in my head. It wouldn't go away for days, but it finally went away. The last few days in that sandbox were awful, but the time came when we finally got on the plane. When we stopped In Germany, I got a phone call from Michael, he said that Dad was very sick. I thought about what went through my head a few weeks back, so when I got home I went to see him. He looked real bad and he knew he was dying. My father never opened up to me like that before. I stayed in the hospital with him for 2 days, the whole time we were talking about going fishing and hunting when he got out of the hospital. I never felt as happy as I did at that moment. Everything was going to be alright, but the doctor came in sometime the next morning and told him he was diagnosed with lung cancer, I felt like falling apart. He was told he had about 2 weeks to live. So we were going to make the most of it. I took him everywhere. We went shooting, fishing and even just sat on the river bank talking all night. He had told me the reasons he acted the way he did. He told me that he was so proud of me for all of my accomplishments. My dad lived for about 3 months and we made every minute the best. I had finally realized that I wasn't fighting to be better than him, I was just trying to make him proud of me the entire time. I asked him why he treated me the way he did. He said "Look at the man you have become. You wouldn't be the strong independent person you are now", and he asked for my forgiveness. I forgave him for everything because at that moment everything was right, we were all a family at last. He died gasping for breath the morning of February 15, 2008. Before he died he looked up at me and smiled. Everything would be ok now. As time went on my brother and I got over his death, everything fell into place. My brother and I became closer, and I finally got into college like Dad always wanted to but never got the chance. As for Megan and Cameron, I'll be on my way to Florida to see them soon. They don't even know of his death. I have to go and tell them the story of their dad, and the great man he was. For My Dad Michael Leon Hall R.I.P.