That sounds so melodramatic: communication dying. But it is important and it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in slow increments until there is nothing left to say.

Remember the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle”? It’s a sad song, I’m actually tearing up writing this now, about a father who didn’t have time for his son while he was growing up and a son who has no time for his dad now he’s grown. It’s karmic, really.

My dad wasn’t around much while we were growing up. He worked a lot and worked hard, I’ll never say he didn’t. He worked sales at a department store and that meant long hours so I was in bed when he came home, but he was always scheming too. There was always some way to make cash, usually a multi-level marketing scheme that never panned out, but he never lost faith in them, either. 

He was always restless. Always wanted to be away, away, away, and traveled away, away, away as often as possible. Never wanted to buckle down to authority. Always the rebel without a cause.

Yet he had this curious desire to have the family all together, especially as he grew older: family vacations or buying a big house or compound where multiple generations could all live together. As I grew older I thought these insane ideas, which I never considered for a moment, and I’m sure my sisters would agree without even asking. It smacked of this bizarrely nostalgic and patriarchal notion – head of household with all of his progeny under his roof – but one moment’s thought would have revealed that this would not have worked for one second. My spouse, for one, would have divorced me.

My youngest sister traveled with my father once, many years ago. She was in the UK and dad was traveling over. They met up and my sister was able to manage about 48 hours with him before they went their separate ways, which is 24 more than I could manage even then, I think. He was always so single-minded about what HE wanted rather than what a group wanted that there was no way to take any pleasure in group activities with him.

I did not always have this distant relationship with my father. While not worshipping him in any way, I respected him and shared an interest in antiques and collectibles as a hobby. I’d visit and have a conversation, chat, have dinner. But he began to change. I’m not sure if he felt he hadn’t achieved enough in his life, didn’t have the freedom he wanted, didn’t have enough money, or felt his age, but he changed. 

We began to disagree over many things. He would forward these truly awful emails sent to him regarding political beliefs I did not share but he apparently thought I would, which goes to show how little he knew me. We would argue about them when visiting face to face. He would complain, whine really, about mom and how she was losing her memory. And this was well before she is the way she is now. She would forget small things but perhaps he saw the future coming better than we did. Maybe that’s why he wanted us all together so we would take care of our mother and he could do whatever he wanted. Have his freedom.

He said one time when I was hosting Easter that all of mom’s sisters had dementia of some sort and that it was hereditary, and, basically, this was the future for my sisters and me.

Yes. He actually said that. As if this existential dread isn’t in my head already. Thanks, dad.

You could easily counter that I am as likely to NOT be prone to dementia since I have inherited half of his gene pool, which is no blessing since most of his side have died from heart disease or cancer in their 70s while my mother’s side died of old age in their 90s.

Which is better? Who can say.

So. Communication. My father was never up-to-the-minute on what was going on in the household when we were growing up. Too caught up in his own affairs or just not home, he just didn’t pay attention, and my mother, my sisters, and I always talked with each other using shorthand. We never needed to spell everything out every single time we talked because it was already hardwired into us. If a reference was made to… whatever… we would always know what the reference meant. 

Once we were all out of the nest, we went our separate ways, of course. Established ourselves and our lives independently from our parents. But I lived close to my parents in the same state and even, eventually, in the same town so I would visit my parents often. They moved 20-odd miles away from where I lived in the late 90s and at about the same time my sister moved back to the state and bought a house in the same town as my parents so the bond was re-established. 

But it was really always about staying connected with our mother. She was the one who we went to visit. When we’d refer to going to the house it was, and is, “I’m going to mom and dad’s.” or “Are you at mom and dad’s?” I think it is significant that we never say dad and mom’s.

My communication with my father has become superficial. We argue about virtually everything, no matter how I try to introduce a subject. He’s competitive about taking care of mom in the sense that if you mention something in passing concerning her behavior he’s got to top it. It’s always worse for him. At this point in time, I don’t think I could talk with him about whether the sky is blue. So, I don’t. We hardly talk at all.

And the sad thing is: It will get worse. He will get to a point where he will have to depend on his daughters for help and it will be hard to give. It will be done, of course, but we won’t have to like it much.

And so back to Harry Chapin and that longing for something different which can never be:

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
“When you coming home, son?” “I don’t know when”
But we’ll get together then, dad
We’re gonna have a good time then.

Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle”