Rolling stones and wise moss

Ten years ago today was the last time I spoke at any length with my father before he died some three years later.  The base was closed due to 9/11 and I finally agreed to meet him at the Perkins restaurant on North Limestone in Springfield.  It was a huge mistake.  My father, emotional child that he was, decided to go on the attack and I walked away knowing I never wanted to see or speak with him again.  It was one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced in my life, the absolute certainty that a parent was now dead to me.  He's been literally dead for over seven years now and I still wrestle with the pall he cast over my life, and probably will until the day I die.  I've lived for years regarding certain events as having major impact on my life, such as Peggy breaking up with me, or Andrew and I's friendship ending in the mid-80s; but as time passes I lean more toward regarding the broken relationship I had with my father as probably the most significant and influencing factor of my life.  I remember sitting in the basement in the evening of the day I learned he'd passed, looking at old photos, and realizing then I would never get out from beneath his shadow.  And how completely sad that made me feel at the time.  And writing this blog update with my eyes watering, remembering the hours moping around the house on Greenmount at ages six and seven, suffering from depression at even such a young age, I wish more than anything else that life would allow for do-overs.  So that I wouldn't waste so much of this one trying to earn his approval, to just once hoping to hear him tell me he was proud of his son.  But I can't get those years back, and I definitely never heard him give me an ounce of love or respect.  My desperate need to forcibly extract what simply wasn't present within the man during those years only kept me around him far longer than I should've allowed myself to be, and gave him more opportunities over the years to inflict additional pain and hurt upon me.  My mom tells me he adored me when I was a little boy, but I don't remember that ever being displayed, and I can only assume their divorce started an emotional detachment that allowed his malignant, damaged soul to begin hurling the toxicity toward me that he always appeared to throw at the world.  As a father now myself, I'll never understand it.