The Heart of the Matter

I know, I know….

It’s been quite a while since I last posted something, and I apologize for that. But trust me when I say that it’s not from a lack of trying, or even from a lack of content. I have plenty that I’ve been wanting to say for a while, but life and its challenges have been really messing with my body and mind as of late, making it nearly impossible for me to concentrate long enough to sit down and put my thoughts into a cohesive bunch of words.

If I were to be fully transparent with you, I started this piece back in the summer of 2022 while on the plane home from visiting my sister in Minnesota, but the idea of sharing it has been scaring me ever since I started putting it together. But the reality is that something happened during this particular trip that forced me to really face my past.

With a build up like that, I’m sure you are all wondering what I could possibly be talking about. So, without further ado, let me begin to rip the Band-Aid off by first quoting from an Instagram post I recently saw:

Has anyone noticed that when an adult child chooses to not have a relationship with their parent, it’s always “but they’re your mom/dad” or “you only have one mom/dad,” and never “WOW, what could a parent do to cause their child to make that decision,” or “but they’re your child. How could you treat your child that way?” Why is it that the responsibility of the relationship is placed on the child and not the person who raised them?

It's no secret that I had a very complicated relationship with my father. To say we weren’t close would be an understatement, and I think the fact that I had to take a DNA test to prove to police that he was my father says it all. Those who know me know that most of my stories of him usually start with remember that time when dad was high or somehow involve a time when my father was using. In fact, I have said in a previous blog (Oh Father) that even knowing how addiction is a disease, I think that dying at the age of 60 without really knowing your kids as adults or your grandchildren is such a waste of a potential life.

Ever since losing my mother, I’ve been making a conscious effort to let the past and whatever bad memories I had of my parents slowly fade away. Unfortunately, I came to realize that I really don’t have many great memories of my father. In fact, the only one that I truly can recall is when he took me and my brother Harrison to see the movie E.T. The Extra Terrestrial at the West End Movie Theater back in the early 80’s, and I fell off my seat when Drew Barrymore kissed E.T.

As sad as it is that that is literally the only good memory I have of him, I had been holding onto it and trying to look at my dad more positively. But as I mentioned, something was brought to light during my trip to Minnesota that changed everything for me.

My sister and I were sitting around on a Saturday and decided to go through an old box she had from her year in Israel. For context, she was there from August/September 2000 through June 2001. This detail is actually important to know and will play an important part in this story. I should probably also tell you that during this time period, my name was still Jack (or Jackie to my family), as you will see that name pop up in the context of this story.

Getting back to the box, one of the reasons we wanted to go through it was because it contained letters written to her by me and members of my immediate family, including my father. Now, for anyone who didn’t really know my dad, he apparently liked to write, but could not spell for shit. And knowing this fact about him, my sister and I were looking forward to an afternoon of amazing belly laughs.

So, there we were in my nephews’ bedroom, me on one bed and my sister on the other, reading these letters when my sister stopped and said something like I don’t think you should read this one. Of course, that made me extremely curious to see what it said and when I finally got my hands on it, I dove in.

The letter in question was written in January of 2001. Up until this point, my father’s letters would be about himself, my sister and two brothers and our mom, but never a mention of me. Well, that was all about to change when my dad went into a tirade about what a bad person I was, and how he purchased a Chanukah gift for me that he asked my brother Hymie to give to me, and I returned unopened.

Amongst the highlights in that letter were:

·      I will die alone due to my inability to deal with anyone and how I cut people out of my life.

·      My brother Harrison called me for my 26th birthday that year and it was the first time I was ever nice to him. Harrison just shrugged his shoulders and said how much he hated me.

·      I “embaraced” him in front of everyone at Harrison’s wedding by telling him to take his hands off me.

·      He has pity for my ignorance.

·      I am not of sound mind and he is “discusted” for my lack of respect for him.

·      He hopes I don’t know how twisted I am and one day I get into “counceling” to help with the reasons why I rejected him, or anyone connected to the Gindi name and I don’t embrace my heritage.

·      I have a friendless life and when I get a friend, they are far below the level one would think Jack would hook up with.

I’m not gonna lie; I was definitely taken aback by the vitriol being thrown my way. It was never a secret that I felt a certain way about my dad, but I never went in on him as he did towards me in that letter. It was as if you could see the utter hate seeping out of his pores with each word. Unfortunately, his disdain for me continued in the next three or four letters sent to my sister. And it wasn’t just a paragraph or two in each letter; it was PAGES.

At this point, I should probably explain what I meant before about the importance of knowing the timing of these letters. In December of 2000, I lost my Grandpa Freddy, whom many of you will know from my blog Missing You was the most important person in my life. He passed away two days before Chanukah, which means my mom would have been sitting shiva that week. I had just started my first job in New York at that time, so other than his funeral, I didn’t see my mother or my family while she sat shiva, which means I DIDN’T SEE MY FAMILY DURING CHANUKAH THAT YEAR. Whatever gifts I purchased I gave to my mother when she came to my grandfather’s apartment the night he passed (I lived with him at the time) to give to people, and I don’t believe I was given any presents. So, I have no idea what my father was talking about in the letter when it comes to this gift. In fact, I even asked my brothers about it, and they didn’t have a clue either.

Unfortunately, that first letter didn’t end there, and upon further reading, I came upon this paragraph:

I feel very sorry for this boy. He carry’s around a lot of anger in his life. He must be a very unhappy person. G-d help him. I’ll tell you that there is no reason good enough for a son to reject and disrespect his father as he has, I don’t care what he says I did or said I’m still his father. I know my dad hit me more than one time too and the truth is I wish he hit me more then he did, I may have turned out better then I am, if he did it for more reasons.

When I first read this, I didn’t think much of it other than my father just spewing more venom. But when I got back to New York and read it to my husband, he pointed out that my father said he was hit TOO, meaning as well. It was in that moment that I realized my dad had basically admitted to something without saying the words, and with that admittance, it opened the door for me to vocalize and come to terms with parts of my past that I was not willing to say aloud.

Things like the time my father threw me out of the house in my underwear late at night while they had company because I had lied about something. Or when hangers were thrown at me for getting a disciplinary note in school after punching a kid in the face for calling me a homophobic slur. Or the Yom Kippur where he didn’t know where I was, and when he found me sitting on my grandmother’s porch talking to my aunt around the corner from our home, he picked me up by my throat and threw me to the ground (I should probably add he was high here). I think it’s clearly safe to say that in all these instances, the punishment definitely did not fit the crime. But I digress.

I was also able to finally come clean with my siblings about how I ended up having my nose fixed (it’s not majorly different so you really can’t tell unless you were there). Until this point, the story had been that I walked through a glass door, and I had shards in my nose that needed to be removed. But the truth was it happened when my family was moving, and my father had disappeared for the morning. When he finally did show up, he was high as a kite, and we realized that he had gone to Newark to score. I confronted him in the front yard of the new house, and we ended up getting into a physical altercation that ended with him punching me in the face and breaking my nose. I was pretty much living in New York with my grandfather at that time, so the only people who knew the truth were me, my mom and my grandfather.

PS, just to go on a quick tangent and tie up another loose end here, I didn’t see my father much after that incident. In fact, I believe the next time we were in the same room together was the infamous wedding of my brother where I “embaraced” him in front of everyone when I yelled at him to take his hand off me while posing for a family photo. It was a few years later, but at that point, there was no love lost between us.

Now, let me make VERY CLEAR that as horrible as these things sound, and how in today’s world they would be seen as abusive, I am not willing to say that I am a victim of physical abuse, nor will I say my father was a child abuser. Other than the nose incident that happened when I was older, the truth of the matter is that I grew up in the late 70’s and early 80’s, where things were very different when it came to discipline. I have been known to joke that in those days, time out was when you got to breath in between your mom hitting you and your dad coming home from work to hit you. There was no going to your room for two weeks to think about what you did as there is today. I was a product of the times I grew up in, as were my parents, which is why I believe my dad couldn’t understand “how a son could reject and disrespect his father.”

If I’m going to be completely honest, the subject of my dad has always been very difficult for me to process. What I am willing to say, and have always said when it came to him, is that my father was not very nice towards me, and he treated me differently than my siblings. If I were to really articulate my feelings about my dad today, I would have to say that I never had the father I wanted or needed, which I think he made abundantly clear when he told me that he wished I was never born the last time we sat down together. But as awful as our relationship was, I would like to believe a real dad was in there somewhere because there were glimmers of it when it came to my siblings. 

The last two years have weighed heavy on me. Not so much because I lost my mother, but all the things that came to light after her death. I had already known and come to terms with the fact that my dad never wanted me, but the realization that, in the end, neither of my parents really cared for me was a tough pill to swallow. And if I’m going to be honest here, these realizations have been messing with my head a bit.

Finding that letter was another piece to the puzzle. With one single word, my father unknowingly explained why the relationship we had was what it was. Without realizing it, he validated how I felt all those years. And finally seeing this letter not only allowed me to completely let go of any animosity I had towards him, but it also gave me what I needed to forgive myself for feeling the way I did all this time.

I’m finally ready to close that chapter of my life and let it go once and for all. With that said, I will no longer publicly discuss the relationship I had with my father, or lack thereof. I think the subject has been beaten to death (no pun intended), and it’s time to move on to bigger and better things.

I want to thank all of you for joining me on this journey. Bearing my soul in this way and admitting some of the things that happened to me growing up has not been an easy process, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this blog.