A living eulogy for you, dad.
I don’t even know if you’re alive right now. I often wonder if I’ll find your name in an obituary, because part of me needs to know if you’re still out there.
Maybe you’re sitting at a table somewhere, holding cards, waiting for someone to play against.
We used to play cards, Crazy 8s mostly, with a regular deck. You never let me win, or anyone for that matter. It’s strange looking back. You got angry at everyone else who beat you, mom especially. During poker games with the family, you raged if someone else won, accused people of cheating. But with me? You were never angry when I won. You were even proud when I beat you.
You had an intricate system for scoring. Even Crazy 8s wasn’t simple. It couldn’t just be win or lose, it was also much you won or lost by. Different cards in the losing hand were worth different points, each assigned different values. You tallied everything across multiple rounds, tracking wins and margins.
Your mind worked in systems like that. Everything measured, everything calculated, everything assigned value. You taught me how to play.
You used to say I had your hands, miniature versions, shaped like yours. I wished they looked like mom’s. But you were adamant, even emotional, that they were yours. We held cards with those hands. We played games where you saw yourself in my strategy, in the way my mind moved through possibilities.
You turned 72 in March. I thought about you that day. Wished you happy birthday in my head. I even typed out a message in my notes, never shared. Never sent.
There was a time I hoped you’d die at 69, an ironic link to my zodiac sign, a way for the pain to mean something. A symbolic mark of justice. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Now I just wonder.
I used to wish for your death because it felt like it would close the door. But when I realized I still loved you, it broke me.
I thought I’d processed everything. The trauma, the abuse, the painful memories.
I was wrong.
The love was worse.
Do you remember the day we rigged the deck? We both agreed to do it, a fun exercise in strategy. Each of us left the room while the other stacked the cards to create a “perfect” rigged game. Then we played those hands.
I went first. I was just a kid, so my rigged game was an obvious power grab. I stacked it with all the strong cards: 2s, jokers, 8s. I coordinated suits, numbers, high-point court cards. It was definitely a win, a quick game.
But yours? God, your rigged game was intricate, layered strategy. It wasn’t just a power grab. It was designed to predict any counter move. It was a long game. I ended up with a ton of cards (points) in my hand, perfectly placed to be there. Even though your deck looked less powerful than mine, you won by far more points. It was flawless.
It was fun. It taught me about strategy. And it made me curious, most of all amazed at how your mind worked.
Looking back now, I see another layer to it. That rigged game was how you approached everything. Layered strategy, predicting counter moves, patient setup, winning by more points.
That’s what you did with my whole life, wasn’t it? You planted narratives about Mom being “crazy” from the first time I ran to her. You studied books about brainwashing and psychological domination. You always knew when I sought help, always found out, always raged, yet faced no consequences. You designed a game so far-reaching it rippled across every piece of my life.
Your rigged deck plays out in flashes of the cards I lived.
The welts my grown brother left when I confided in him at five.
The sound of him screaming, interrogating me until I broke.
The forced recantation. The tape recording.
It’s in the investigation where I said I didn’t want to talk about it, the red flag they ignored. It’s in my mom crying outside afterward, pleading that she had to protect me. It’s in the coldness of being told there was nothing to protect me from. It’s in the influence of my aunt at DHS, the one you later had an affair with after my uncle, your brother, died.
You rigged the deck before I even knew we were playing. You broke the system before I could even try. That was your game. And it worked. For years, it worked.
The wild card I didn’t see coming was love. I had to face that too.
When I realized I still loved you, it hit me so hard I couldn’t stand it. Seven days of agony, nearly driving to your door, nearly buying ice cream, nearly knocking just to see you one more time. Hoping for one last malt. One last hug.
I needed a different ending to the chapters of my life with you in them. I wished it wasn’t over.
But I didn’t do it. I didn’t drive to your door. I spoke my heart into the wind instead. I spoke the truth I’d once convinced myself didn’t exist. I let it bleed out.
I told you that I loved you. I hoped you’d feel it somehow. I hoped the wind could carry it to you, even if your ears never heard the words.
I miss things you probably never even think about. I miss when you carried me inside from the truck when I fell asleep. Sometimes I pretended to sleep just so you’d do it. I think you knew. But you did it anyway, until you couldn’t.
I miss making malts and having ice cream with you. I miss driving nowhere, just to see some little town we’d heard about. I miss you being proud of me. I miss the ways you showed up, going to my games, taking such good care of my uniforms because you wanted me to look bright. I miss Halloween costumes, the movies, the arcade games we strategized and beat together. The arcade tickets we built up for the best prizes. I miss that first Beetle. I miss when you taught me to drive, even though I was way too young.
I miss the card games too. The shuffle of the deck, the sound of cards being dealt, the quiet concentration, the way we could just be together in that space.
We were intrinsically linked by our cards, I realize that now. That was real connection, even if everything else was contaminated.
I remember getting embarrassed by you too. The bright yellow truck’s beep when you reversed, your dirty work clothes when you picked me up from school. I remember making a mean cartoon of you, and how you asked if I was trying to hurt your feelings. I regret that part. I regret how it made you feel.
I know none of this erases what you did. The truth you never admitted, the stories you spun, the rage, the yelling in the truck, the lies and denials. How you forced me to tiptoe in my own house, never able to say the real thing. How you raged if I spoke it anywhere else.
I remember telling you so purely when I was little, “If you did, Daddy, I forgive you.” You went silent. But you never said it.
I remember at 14, begging for therapy. You were against it. My sister eventually helped me get it anyway. I hid behind a pillow during that first session, pouring my guts out, knowing my therapist would have to report it, knowing you’d find out and rage. I did it anyway.
I remember the last phone call after I turned 21. Your words spun in circles. Fish grease, prostate pain, Bible verses, blame for Mom. You told me you never did it. I know better. I always did. I always will.
The last time I heard your voice wasn’t even the last time we spoke. It was a voicemail I found by accident after I’d blocked you, hidden in a blocked messages folder. I only meant to read the transcript when I clicked it. When it played, I broke down. I shut it off sometime after “hello,” but before you finished saying my name. Even that was enough to crack something I’d boarded up.
You sounded older.
There’s another thing I learned from our card games: I could still beat you in regular play. When the deck wasn’t stacked, when the game was fair, I had my own strategy. It was both learned and different from yours, but it worked.
You taught me to see patterns, connections, to think moves ahead. You taught me that the cards in your hand matter less than how you play them. That part of me may be inherited. But it’s a part I choose.
You left parts of you in me that I have to live with. My hands shaped like yours, my mind that cycles through patterns, that sees connections and systems and assigns value to everything.
I see you in the back rooms of my mind, in the music I shouldn’t know but do. 70s songs are like a bridge to a version of you before you became what you did. A version I never knew. I sent that version hope. Healing. I told him to choose better. I sent my heart backward through time, where it could reach. I was trying to save you before you stacked the deck. But I couldn’t.
I carry all of this because I loved you. Still do.
I keep the memories, even the bad ones. I keep the ways you made me feel special, the times you amazed me, and all you taught me. I carry the good parts because they were real too, even though you twisted them into weapons and control. But I bury the rest.
I know when your time really comes, it’ll wreck me. I know I won’t be okay, and I know I can’t stop it. I know I can’t see you again to get a better ending. I can’t get that last malt, that last drive, that last hug.
Even though I walked away, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It killed me to have to.
I never wanted this. It never had to be this way. But it is. You created this reality, and I chose a path to live despite it.
When I realized I loved you, I was angry at you in a new way. You made me choose, dad. You lost me, and I lost you.
You called me the light of your life, the last of your line, the apple of your eye.
But I’m not your little light anymore. I’m mine.
I’ve held onto that light within me. Even when you tried to sync my breathing and heartbeat with yours, to make me an extension of you, to possess what you named.
Even when the system failed me, when adults didn’t believe me, when I learned at five years old that telling the truth brought violence and no protection.
Even through the depression, the crippling fear, the years of begging for help you denied me.
Even through loving you, which was worse than everything else combined.
I’ve kept it burning.
The table is empty now. Your chair sits across from mine, but we aren’t there anymore.
The father I loved was the one who carried me from the truck, who played Crazy 8s, who was proud when I won. I needed that father, but I mostly saw him in the moments between your manipulation.
Even with the hurt of everything else, those moments were real. Real enough to miss, love, and grieve. And I do.
I grieve them while you’re still breathing.
I grieve the game we could have played if you’d chosen differently.
I grieve the father you might’ve been if you’d been honest.
I’ve folded, dad.
This is how I say goodbye while you’re still breathing somewhere. Or not. This is my last hand. My last card to play.
I miss you.
I love you.
I can’t go back.
And I don’t want to, even when my bones do.
I’m still a light.
And I’ve fought to keep it.