When I was a child my dad was an Army officer and would often be gone for 6 months, a year or sometimes 2 years at a time. As a kid I had no idea of what being a soldier was all about other than through the movies and on t.v. - hardly a ringing endorsement of the realities of war.

When my dad was gone, mom had to step up and take command. She would go from little or no knowledge of family finances to knowing everything she could about insurance, bills to pay, homes & cars to maintain and 4 kids to raise all on her own. I often wondered who had it harder - dad in combat overseas, or mom in combat at home.

Dad was sent to Viet Nam in the early sixties when the situation wasn’t good, but before it was ‘really’ bad. We had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder that we would use to send tapes back and forth to dad in Viet Nam. We’d listen to dad’s message and then tape over it and send our own message back. I still remember mom getting the mail and calling all of us to listen to the latest tape dad had sent.

I grew up with a sense of history. We lived in historic places and through historic events. Some of my earliest memories were of living in a beautiful limestone house next door to the ‘Custer House’ that made up the officer’s housing on the Ft. Riley Army base in Kansas. The Custer house was representative of the home where General Custer lived back in the day before the Little Big Horn. Italian stone masons constructed the buildings in the 1850s. It was between our house and Custer’s that my dad taught me to ride a bike without training wheels.

It’s kind of funny how memories work. What seems like a small event now is burned into my mind 40 some years later. It wasn’t a small event at the time. Dad didn’t get down on the floor and play with us a lot so any time spent doing something with him was special. Which may explain why I took photos of my son riding his bike when I taught him to ride without training wheels. I’ll never forget how he kept telling me to run along side of him, hold on to his bike and not let him fall. He took off like a shot when he realized that he could ride without my help. Another small moment burned into my mind and heart.

Dad’s reserved, military bearing and the way others respected him - always seemed to defer to him - made the child in me a little fearful, the adult in me respectful. My sister later told me that all of her boyfriends in high school and college were afraid of him too.

The relationship I had with my parents wasn’t as close as what I wanted for my children. I didn’t want my kids to fear me. This isn’t to criticize my folks. I’m convinced they were like most parents who do the best they can under the circumstances. We’re all products of our environment.

I wanted my kids to have a lot of good childhood memories. We’d go for bike rides, to parks & playgrounds, visit family & friends, play games and read stories, etc. Even the day to day things like yard work or fixing something in the house, I’d find some way to involve them even if they were only playing nearby. I enjoyed being a dad and I thought I was making a difference in their lives.

When my wife filed for divorce the most devastating thing for me was not being able to see and care for them - for the kids and me to just be a part of each other’s lives everyday. Their mom loved them but she just wasn’t as involved as I was and every Tuesday night and every-other weekend just wasn’t enough.

One of the gifts a black dog gives you is tunnel vision so that the only thing that floats through your mind’s eye is “Why”. Why am I here? Why did this have to happen? Why do I feel this way? Why do I have to suffer like this? Why, why, why? I asked a lot of “whys?” during and after the divorce. And then I came across a book by Albert Ellis on cognitive therapy - or what he called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Dr. Ellis was the first person to challenge me with “Why not?”

It seemed kind of cold-hearted when I first read it. Why wasn’t he more sympathetic? Dr. Ellis seemed to be the epitome of a line I heard in a movie, “Sympathy is between ’shit’ and ’syphillus’ in the dictionary”. In other words sympathy may be a nice sentiment but it doesn’t help, it keeps you stuck. Dr. Ellis would talk to patients who had some terrible things happen to them. One I remember was a young woman whose brother or sister had been murdered. She was in a deep depression and crying - and this was years after the crime. Dr. Ellis just continued to confront her with the fact that yes, it was a terrible thing that happened but that is how life works. There is no reason why these things happen - they just do and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we’ll regain emotional health. We’ll still be sad but it will be appropriately sad; it won’t be an overwhelming depression that derails our life.

The biggest challenge for me has been my relationship with my daughter. We always had a close relationship but when she turned 14 all that changed. Something wasn’t right. It was much more than normal teenage angst or rebellion. It went from having a good relationship to nothing overnight. She wouldn’t talk or see me and in time extended that to my entire extended family. It was such a dramatic change that I had to force my ex-wife to get her into counseling. The counselor said she believed that my daughter had something traumatic happen to her but she wouldn’t talk and she couldn’t force her to without re-traumatizing her.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that? My ex was on her 3rd marriage and working on her 4th. I was very concerned that something bad had happened with one of them but I was up against a wall. No one would talk to anyone.

All this counselor could do was to tell me a story of a young woman who was depressed because of her lack of a relationship with her dad. Her dad was always interacting with her brothers, not her, so she was convinced he didn’t love her. She withdrew from the family.

In time she managed to get the courage up to actually talk to her dad. He was crushed that she thought he didn’t love her. He explained that he loved her every bit as much as her brothers but he didn’t know how to relate to a girl. He’d grown up on a farm and was a farmer now, so her mom did the ‘girl’ things with her and he did the ‘boy’ things with her brothers. It was just that simple. He was a product of his environment doing the best he could.

How much unnecessary suffering is there in the world and how much more with a black dog?

This was a great story with a happy ending but it really didn’t apply to my situation. I thought I was the opposite of this father and besides that, what about my daughter? I was really worried about her and what she had gone through - was still going through. All the counselor could do was urge me to be patient. She said that my ex may well be behind my daughter’s strange behavior but that with time she would probably return to me. This was very disheartening and I thought poor advice, but what could I do? I couldn’t make anyone do anything. I couldn’t make anything happen.

It’s difficult to look at old photos of my daughter without getting choked up and shedding tears. I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing her. When thoughts about the reasons behind all of this heart ache come up, the only thing I can do is remind myself “Why not?” There’s no reason why someone else must suffer but I shouldn’t. All I can do is be patient and keep reaching out to her.

Seven years later nothing has changed. My daughter came to my mother’s funeral mass and cried uncontrollably but left immediately afterwards. That’s the first time we’d seen her in years. Aunts, uncles & cousins all hugged her, told her they loved and missed her but all she would was say “I know.”

Family and friends that know the situation try to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault, that my daughter and her mom have issues that only they can work out. They’re right but the black dog keeps the rumination alive . . . an endless loop of “What ifs?” and “Whys” This has been the single biggest issue surrounding my black dog. If any of my readers can give me any insight into father/daughter dynamics, I’d appreciate it. I know I’m not the only one out there who’s gone through this.

For my black dog this has had the affect of feeding the grizzled old beast a sumo wrestler’s diet. It just makes him fatter and fatter, impossible to move. It’s been a tremendously difficult part of my life that is right up there with my parent’s Alzheimer’s. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it but I think understanding it isn’t as important as I once thought, but learning how to minimize the pain and suffering is.

A man went to the Buddha insisting on answers to several questions, but the Buddha instead put a question to him: “If you were shot by a poison arrow, and a doctor was summoned to extract it, what would you do? Would you ask such questions as who shot the arrow, from which tribe did he come, who made the arrow, who made the poison, etc., or would you have the doctor immediately pull out the arrow?”

“Of course,” replied the man, “I would have the arrow pulled out as quickly as possible.” The Buddha concluded, “That is wise, for the task before us is the solving of life’s problems; until the problems are solved, these questions are of secondary importance.”

How do we pull out the arrow? I found relief by following Ellis but just as quickly found that while this type of therapy may be simple, it wasn’t easy - especially when your black dog starts nipping at your heels. It takes work but it goes a long way to breaking the negative mental grooves that depression cuts into your mind. The trouble is that depression makes it difficult to do those things you actually enjoy, so what do you think it’ll do with something difficult?

We’re all a product of our environment, our personal history, but we don’t have to be chained to it. We can learn to step back and get a bigger picture of life and our place in it. Depression is not you, it’s an illness to overcome and with hard work you can overcome it. When you’re overwhelmed, confused and your mind is swirling with “Why?” open your eyes a bit wider and ask “Why not?”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under family.