He taught me that relationships only work when everyone is getting out of the relationship what they need. Not just romantic, either. It’s been an important lesson that’s stuck with me my whole life, it still reminds me to be attentive to other people’s needs and not just hide in my own head.
My dad was a dairy farmer. While I ended up in IT, a field he knew nothing about, he supported me the entire way. He did not understand my field of interest beyond the fact it was something I was interested in.
On the flip side, everything I know about machinery maintenance and repair I have from him. In my current field (an odd mix of It, industrial robotics and heavy machinery… On ships), this background works well, as it gives me the diverse background needed for such a diverse work place.
I don’t think there are anyone else in the company who can do VLAN and LACP trunks AND troubleshoot misbehaving hydraulics.
I think farm life and the military have put me in much the same situation.
Any good memories of my Dad are overwritten by the child abuse. I would’ve been better off being raised by a single mother. Today is… complicated.
My dad did so much right, but his one failing was financial. He was an insurance salesman and had plenty of money when I was very young, but at some point it all dried up and he seemed unable to make more. He didn’t starve or anything, but at a certain point my brother had to step in and buy his house or he was going to lose it.
So now, I’m very cognizant of my spending and always having a good cash reserve.
But, he was also extremely generous when he did have money. His favorite way to spend money was on the people he loved and to make them happy.
So now, I also give freely. If it makes someone I love happy, and I can afford it, I’ll give them whatever I think might make them smile, if even for a day
I came out to him over christmas 2 years ago and that’s the last time he’s spoken to me. His last words to me before he read my letter were “Love you always”
This is the type of story I was expecting on Lemmy
I’ll be your dad, if you want. 🫂
My dad, my brother(13) and I (16) were on a resort scuba dive (we borrow their gear, and get a ride on their boat, and follow their leader during the dive). Descending down a line, with my dad following the dive lead, then me, then my brother.
About 60 feet deep, I see my dad jerk suddenly, followed by a bunch of bubbles. I see him grab his octopus… Another spasm and more bubbles.
I watch as he swims down to the dive leader, and grabs his octopus, taking in and releasing a breath. He signals to dive lead he needs to surface. Dive lead grabs his octopus and replaced it with my dad’s original regulator… Another spasm, and he begins emergency surfacing. My brother and I follow. Dive lead has a Merry dive all alone.
At the surface, we find that the rubber bits on my dad’s equipment (regulator, and octopus) had deteriorated, and broken at depth. He had lungs full of water, and spent the next half hour barfing and coughing it up.
That’s about all I got, still brings me to tears twenty some odd years later to just think about it
I had to look up what “octopus” means in terms of diving equipment to alleviate myself of a mental image of each of you diving with a little sea creature friend snuggled up on you, which for some reason you’d grab if distressed.
Thank you. I was really confused and had to read it a couple of times. A first read made me think the dad started jerking off with an octopus and this went downhill.
That would be nice, maybe this would work? Blavingad
I hope you all sued the resort.
That negligence nearly cost your dad his life.
It was in Mexico. No dice 😑. That being said, we didn’t have to pay for any of the dives, and they offered to buy dinner for him. He was ill for a day or two, so we didn’t get to exercise it
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I was a loser who didn’t seek a real job until I was 25, and didn’t get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I’ve never seen him so proud of what I’ve become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.
He had a heart attack and died two years ago.
As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father’s suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.
I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he’s around.
Love you, dad.
I don’t have many happy memories of my father growing up. All he knew his entire life was hard work and he leaned into that, because his dad died when he was eleven. I am grateful to him for a few things he did that made a major impact on my life:
- He and my mom got my eyes fixed when I was four years old, before which I was legally blind.
- He put the first $1000 I ever saw in my hand to pay a college tuition bill so I wouldn’t have to quit.
- He made sure I had everything I needed growing up in terms of material needs.
But there are a wealth of shitty memories too. He was drunk for most of my childhood and adolescence and verbally abusive. There were times he’d show up to my baseball or soccer practices and games and beer cans would be falling out of his truck. (Never had an adult intervene there, though.)
Most annoyingly, he and my mom have “borrowed” my car for a year to work for DoorDash. They’re too old now to get jobs anywhere else and have to survive.
The best thing I can say about him now is that I know he regrets all of it. On the rare occasions I have him over he always has a gift of some sort. It’s usually something small, because they’re very poor. Last time it was a container of oatmeal. It’s his way of saying sorry, because his stoic, 1940’s and 1950’s upbringing produced a man who doesn’t know how to actually say he’s sorry.
When he died, we all could finally breathe.
Unfortunately for mine, that stubborn son of a bitch is still hanging around into his 80’s, while the rest of his miserable family had the decent common courtesy to kick it in their 60’s & 70’s. I went no contact about a decade ago, but I still get to hear how much of a piece of shit he is from the rest of the family.
The only positive that came from him is that I turned out to be a better father than he did. I have a good relationship with my nearly adult kids.
I remember when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4 so this would’ve been like 1975-6?, sitting in the truck with my dad waiting for something. A song came on the radio, and I looked over and realized that my dad was crying. It was the only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry, but when I asked him he didn’t try to hide or deny it, he just said ‘You’ll understand one day.’ I listened to that song over and over again for years as I grew up, and slowly understanding dawned and it really made me value my relationship with him (and with everyone, really), and made me realize that it’s okay to feel stuff even if society tells you that ‘real men don’t cry’ or whatever.
some fathers suck
that man is a racist, misogynistic, child beating, wife beating, cat killing, rapist piece of shit.
my very first memory, punching him in the nose and bloodying it when I was a 4yo because he wouldn’t stop picking on me and calling me a chicken-shit. He was proud of me and stopped picking on me after I finally hit him because I wasn’t acting like a chicken shit. He was likely drunk.
I dunno if he’s still alive but I hope he’s sad and lonely today because nobody on earth likes him much less his children.
I have so many stark lasting memories of my dad, good and bad it’s hard to pick the one with the greatest impact.
Maybe the time I watched him have an allergic reaction to an ssri that ended in 6 cops beating him unconscious and dragging him to jail.
Maybe the time he unprompted pulled $800 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady at the laundry mat who was stressed about paying her rent that month.
Maybe the time my friends and I showed up at 2am with bath salts and he did a little toot with us.
Maybe the time he sat with me in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night playing chess while I cried about being broken up with for the first time.
The only one I can think about are financial advises: 1. Do not ever spend more than you have and 2. Never sign something on the street or a the door.
Both have been very useful in life.
The day he left. Watched him pack up his shit and stood at the end of the driveway in tears watching him drive away. He moved out of state, rarely called, almost never visited. I was seven years old.
As a father, I could not dream of doing that. The only thing that piece of shit was good for was an example of what not to do. I love my kids so much, I cannot understand how much of a heartless fuck you’d have to be to just piss off like that. If you’ve ever done this to your kids, you are a good for nothing piece of shit.
Hope the flames are keeping you toasty you rotten bastard, I’ll be up here enjoying my own kids quite a lot!
