I found out 20 years fater his death, that my father was an alcoholic.  I was 14 when he died and to my knowledge, we did not have alcohol in our house.  My mother was vehemently opposed to alcohol of any sort, and though she was kinda crazy, I'm pretty sure she was right on this score.  My home was an alcohol free zone. 

My feelings about my father are a mix of ambivalene, fondness, nostalgia and wistfulness.  When he was nice, my father was my daddy - hero and all around fun guy.  When he wasn't, he was one scary rage-filled son of a bitch. 

 My fondest memory of my father is our first year in the town I grew up in.  He had gotten a job as manager of the local bank in a tiny town in California called Idyllwild.   Our first Christmas there, my mother took me to see Santa Claus.  Up until then, I think I pretty much had the usual "what the hell" reaction to most Santa's.  But this day was different.  This was my daddy's work and I was pretty sure he would keep me safe. 

 So, I sat on this Santa's lap and looked deep into his blue eyes behind black plastic glasses as Santa boomed "What do you want for Christmas little girl, Ho Ho Ho!"  I smiled and touched his cheek and said "Oh Daddy!  It's you"    For some reason, my father masquerading as Santa did nothing to snuff out my absolute belief in the "man in red".  Rather, to this day, I carry the fondness of that moment in my soul. 

 A few years later, the rages started.  He would come home and storm around, scream and throw things if he'd had a bad day.  This was when I would hide from him to see what his mood was.  The minute I heard his car, I was like my dog now, completely attuned to his mood.  If it was a decent, happy daddy, mood, I would come out and greet him.  But if scary Terry O'Quinn dad from Step-Father emerged, I would stay hidden until the screaming stopped.

 The last few years of his life, two important things happened, the first, my father suddenly became nice.  The change was so gradual that I didn't really notice it at first.  But the Christmas before his death, nice dad just couldn't be ignored.  My mother had bought me a "boom box", not quite the giant boom box I'd envisioned (remember, it was the '70's) but a snarky little red tape player, so I could be boom-boxy, sort of - but she'd forgotten the batteries.  I braced myself for the recrimations and the nasty asides about how some people could do nothing right.  Instead, he shrugged and said "well, good thing the pharmacy's open..." and smiled.  WTF?? 

The second event?  he lived on Rolaids.  He carried rolls of the little round things with him everywhere.  He spent a lot of time at the doctors, but I didn't think anything of it. 

Then one July morning, we were told that he had to be rushed to the hospital for deep chest pains.  He died 4 days later, Pancreatitis.

After his funeral, my my mother discovered that he knew he was going to die, or as Monty Python so aptly put it, become an ex-parrot, er father.  This revelation stunned me for about 20 years, until finally, someone asked me to define the cause of pancreatitis.  I had no idea.  Thank God for Google.  There it was in black and white... Pancreatitis - mostly caused by chronic alcoholism.

I'd had years to get over the fact that we, I , couldn't prepare for his death, cause he didn't tell anyone about it, that the alcoholism revelation seemed pretty minor.  What it did, however, was explain the rages, the screaming, tantrum-like rages.  Maybe that's why I have never been able to be around people who drink to excess, maybe something in me sensed, subconsciously, that alcoholism played quite a role in my early life.

Ain't life interesting?