My dad was an alcoholic. I don’t talk about it much because misery should be left in the past, right?
The American dream is built on reinvention. The pilgrims became new people when they settled a stolen world. We reinvent ourselves every time we move to a new city or change jobs, hoping that this time we’ll be the person we aspire to. My dad never reinvented himself. He was born and died in Skokie and was blue-collar through and through. He was one of the few people whose past, present, and future self were the same. My mom said he’d been different when they’d married, but I’d never met that guy. I knew only the cruel drunk.
Maybe if he’d traveled, he wouldn’t have used the bottle as a way of escaping whatever demons tormented his day-to-day. My mom always tried to feign normalcy, and I guess me being an only child helped. I was portable, easy to ship out of the house to friends and family before the liquor monster came home. His drink of choice might have been beer at one point, but by the time my first memories formed he was on to the black nectar, Jack Daniel’s and Coke, and later he ditched the Coke.
On our wedding day fourteen years ago, when my high school sweetheart looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her and I still thought the world might give me a good life, my dad outdid himself. We were twenty-four and I was home from deployment in Afghanistan. We’d planned the wedding for almost a year and had booked South Park Church and the DoubleTree on Skokie Boulevard for our reception. We were getting married in our hometown, so everyone we knew was invited, and even though my mom had finally left my dad three years earlier, she wanted him there. She always prayed for his redemption. Maybe she knew how much I longed for a decent father.
People say I look like him, and that scares me, particularly when I think about how I’ve veered toward his path. Booze bared his flaws, so I could see there was much to dislike. Especially about the way he treated my mom. He never hit her, but he coerced her and made her fearful of life with and without him. I hated him for what he did to us, but I loved him, too, and now that I’ve slipped into my own deadbeat rhythm, there’s more love than hate. Or if not love, then sympathy at least. Bitter experience has taught me how easy it is to fall so far.
I don’t know why Mom wanted him at the wedding. I don’t know if she hoped he’d finally be the dad I needed, or if she felt obliged to defend him against my darker emotions, but she pressed for his inclusion, so I invited him on the condition he’d behave himself.
He showed up in a purple velvet tux because “a man’s gotta see off his only son in style,” and not only did he fail to behave himself, after spending the whole day drinking and being the loud, aggressive guy everyone pretends isn’t there, he got up to dance and leered over Toni’s girlfriends. After half an hour of attempting the running man, the hop step, and other classic dance moves, his alcohol-soaked, pickled heart gave out and he collapsed and died in the Versailles Conference Suite in the DoubleTree on Skokie Boulevard in front of the mobile DJ booth.
Our wedding came to a sudden end, and instead of going on honeymoon to Catalina, we had to cancel our reservation to help Mom pay for the funeral. Toni and I made a promise we’d get a honeymoon one day, but something always came up and we never did.
I buried my dad two weeks after Toni and I exchanged vows. Hardly anyone came to his funeral. He died a lonely man, having alienated most of his friends over the years, and my last memory is of him gyrating suggestively behind Angie, a disgusted woman half his age.
I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you know I fully understand the impact booze can have on people’s lives. It’s a wrecking ball that keeps swinging. Toni and I never really celebrated our wedding anniversary because of what happened to my dad. His passing always hung over us.
If you asked me to pick between his death and the robbery committed by the six Donald Ducks, I’d say the robbery was worse. Dad’s death brought an end to a miserable existence and traumatized those few who loved him, whereas the theft of my blood money robbed Skye, a total innocent, of a better future.