Dad 5/2012

 The one person I knew this would bother was my father. He is 75 until the coming October. Here my failed plan for suicide rally bothers me. I never expected for him to deal with my incarceration or me to face him.

Successful in his business, he has to be having a difficult time understanding how his eldest and only son could screw up so badly. The soon-to-be-ex sat on the opening of these confessions. Two weeks after arrival in Anderson and they remain untyped and unpublished. If you are online and reading this, then you may understand my father's bewilderment.

Odd that I worry about him. I did little worrying over him between 10 and 19. I cannot even remember seeing him between 1973 and 1978. To my latter-day embarrassment, I did not invite him to my Eagle Scout ceremony. 

Things got better between us after 1978, thanks to TJ.

Sorry I lost it last year. Sorry I could not tell you or anyone else, I was losing my mind. Sorry I never became whatever you hoped I would become all those years ago in Summitvillle.

I do not want to see you because you are the one person alive to who I really cannot explain what went wrong. Maybe, I really cannot explain what went wrong. I have shamed my friends, but you have hurt deeper even than shame. Only the soon-to-be-ex has a claim for hurt as deep as you.

Since the prosecutor prides himself on never having anyone sentenced to a minimum sentence, and since the prosecutor appears to control sentencing, I do not think I will see you again in this world. I cannot maintain any bit of composure thinking on this subject. I do not see how I can do so in your presence. 

Figure this out: I tear up also thinking of Summitville. I remember much of those days - the pen knife taking out the splinters in my hands for all I thought you were going to cut off my hands, and the Ferris Wheel where I screamed to be let down, and your arguing with Mom, and you taking me along to a funeral in the rain, and us fishing in the pond west of the town. I fight not to cry - not a good thing to do in my current surroundings with my current living companions. You, and Gilbert also, have this effect on me.

I will have no more chance to make amends to you than anyone else. I am writing. Maybe all this will do some good - either to explain or to deter. The quiet helps - my brain no longer feels as twisted as taffy or as spun about as cotton candy. Without all the pressure to do, and to maintain a certain facade, I think it helps my writing. Maybe I can do something to overcome the embarrassment I have caused you.

One last thing, I might as well admit the ring you gave me was stolen by a Muncie druggie.

sch

[I did see my father one last time, during my time in pretrial detention. Before leaving, he hugged me, and he fought not to cry. I could not recall him ever hugging me before then. I am glad he did not start bawling the way he did when he learned my mother died. Because I would have joined him. He never read what I wrote here, dying on June 20, 2018. We talked on the phone during my stay at Fort Dix FCI. While incarcerated, fellow inmates asked why I never tried to move closer to home. I told them I would never want my father to see me in prison. Never could I have stood seeing him in the prison visitors room, having lowered himself to be there, knowing how it would have hurt him to see me there. My second-oldest nephew will not speak to me until I apologize to the family. On one level I think he is a bit overstepping his place, but then I cannot say an apology is not due from me. That is one of the several reasons for what you will read here. I decided when I got my grasp on lucidity that I needed to spend what time was left to me atoning for misspending my life. I doubt my nephew capable of understanding the work I have set for myself. It will be all he gets for an apology. What needs repair extends far beyond his thin skin. He has no idea how typing this affects me. sch 9/26/2022.]