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My Dad is coming to visit tomorrow. I haven't really seen too much of him in years.  I talked with him on the phone. He's 72. Kinda scary. My memories of him as a child run from love to hate. He was my dad...but he was also a wife beater. I hated him...but yet....I love him. He's not an evil man...just at the time, in the sixties and early seventies...an insane drunk. But he's not that person any more. He cries about his past. He lives in shame. I don't want him to die thinking I hate him...because I don't. He took me to movies. Taught me to shot a shotgun and ride a dirtbike. Bought my comic books. Made the best meat and beans inna pan. Taught me to fish for suckers outta the crick. He also beat my Ma black and blue...and us kids. I dunno....just felt the need to say something.  I dunno.

God only gives us one set of parents.  They may be good, bad, or indifferent, but they brought us into the world and shaped us in more ways than we can know.  If I can offer one small piece of advice, it would be to make your peace with him.  Enjoy what time with him you can, because it is fleeting and regret is eternal.

I'll say a prayer that all goes well.

Good luck RC, I hope you can find the right words that can really capture how you feel about your Dad.

Thank you. I  thank you. i don't have a lot of freinds since I quit socializing with drunks. I live very much the life of a hermit. I consider everyone on this board a freinfd I can talk to. If not...I would not discuss such a personal subject. Sometimes it just helps to say it.

Hey BELA, my Dad died 16 years ago... and all I can say about the stormy relationship we had was that I felt just the way you do.  I wish I had an opportunity to at least hash it all out.  My Dad is gone, but your dad is still a young man (my Mom, who lives, was 83 on thursday) and even reformed as you pointed out.  You have a wonderful opportunity to connect with your father and forgive him.  The greatest gift you can give yourself is to forgive someone else. 

I still have my Dad ... he is not the Dad now I grew up with, he's a mellow grandpa. But my Mother and here it is Mother Day weekend, I have no idea where she is, haven't seen or heard from her in years, I stopped looking and fretting over it years ago. I do not even know if she is still a live.

Good luck with you Dad RC, nothing ever good come from reliving the past. It's best to try and start anew than to try and fix what was broken.

 Thank you both. It's all wise advise. I'm not very good with relationships. My wify doesn't even want them over. I don't know why. She won't tell me. But I WANT them over I NEED this. You guys are great. I am sorry I bugged you with my personal nonsensense.

Good luck to you, RC.  You seem like a decent guy, and I can't imagine having that kind of past to forgive.  But I think the advice to forgive, is good advice.  If you can.    I lost my dad a few years ago, and that is a hard thing.   

For me, Dad was always where the buck stopped when I needed guidance, or even good advice, on the big things (career direction and things like that)... you don't realize what kind of lead you take from your dad, until he's gone.

Yeah, that's what I would have said if I was good with words  :smile:

Good Luck RC, hope all goes well.

Only God can really pass judgement so if he knows he did wrong in the past I say let go and enjoy now while you still have it! :teddyr:

Very wise words.

My dad was a difficult fellow when we were growing up but I'm glad we became friends (we were always more alike than different) before he died - and we even discovered a shared love for PLANET OF THE APES and B movies. His last Christmas present to me was a big box of DVDs, including KILL, BABY, KILL and VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET.

I hope you and your family have a great time with your dad.

Good luck, RC.  I'm lucky to have a good relationship with my parents.  My mother didn't have a good relationship with her parents, who were abusive alcoholics, but I got to watch her forgive them and move on.  They never apologized to her, or even admitted what they had done, the way she always hoped they would.  But I can't imagine how she would have turned out if she hadn't been able to put it behind her. 

Sounds like you have a good and balanced grip on the situation.

The only advice I would give is not to have unrealistic expectations.  Maybe this meeting will heal everything that went on between you in the past; maybe not.  Take it, and enjoy it, for what it's worth.

Well...Dad came over today with my stepma,Mary Jo...and we had a GREAT DAY!!!! They brought a cheese cake,and we drank coffee and looked at old Christmas pictures from the 70's. Gawd....what goofy clothes we all wore! Theres even an old photo of me on my 12 birthday holding up a Bela Lugosi Remco Dracula doll...ooops-ACTION FIGURE- :lookingup:(heheh!)

It was the best day EVER!!! Karma to you all! :smile:

Remco?  Not Mego?  Let's see... 1962...?  12 years...?  1974 (Azrak Hamway - AHI - or Mego).  Remco's Dracula is several years later, maybe 1979...?  Scan the pic!  I'd really like to see you with that... "action figure."   :teddyr: 

Okay, the old collector in me aside, it sounds wonderful that you had a good meeting with your Dad!!  I saw my own Mom today after nearly 3 years (she was 83 Thursday).  My niece turned 16 (Wednesday) so most of us were at her birthday party today including many old friends (but not ever' body...)  :lookingup:  Family stuff can be tough, but I can't help but love 'em.  I had a great time, too!!

It feels good to know that if two people haven't seen each other in years they can still meet, have a nice time, and hopefully say anything that needs to be said.

I'm very happy for you, RC!!  I thought about you while I was up at the river today and hoped your day was going well.

I'm glad  the day went well for you RC. I lost my Dad 20 years ago and mother 14 years ago.  There's a lot of things I wished I could have worked out with him, but it seems we always put off the things we should be talking about until it's too late.

I think is was Mego...Remco-Mego! Cripes....I don't really remember the company!  :bouncegiggle: I do remeber I thought it was real cool! I think I also got a copy of Denis Giffords Pictorial History of Horror Films that day. (Or that mighta been a different young birthday!)

Regardless...thank you ALL very much!  You are very much the GREATEST!!!!

Coming from a violent childhood myself I find it hard to be objective when the abuser says he's sorry and wants to make amends.

Love and respect have to be earned regardless of the label attached to the person.  Hence, me not speaking to my mother or my middle sister any more and the fact that even though I've dealt with the past, it would still give me an inordinate amout of satisfaction to crack my deads**t stepfather over the skull with a cast iron frypan.

The forgiving part is up to of course, but just be careful it's real forgiveness you feel and not just pity for an old man or guilt because he's your dad.

So, good luck and just be calm and stay focussed and remember, he can't hurt you any more.  You've emerged from the past a healthy decent human being who has stopped the violent cycle in its tracks.

You are a very wise lady. I would give you ksrms....but I can't before six hours. Thank you for your support, I really do feel that thie membebers of thid board are good freinds. Latetly I have lived like a hermit. My old freinds were drunks and druggies. Now I'm a Stone alone.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=S2Em7uB-KN0

 :smile: Hi RC: Added to this thread a little late, us guys from the Dark Continent are always late.  :teddyr:

I know friends on here see me as a joker, the guy who loads up a film projector blindfolded, Captain Underpants, the guy terrorized by hyraxes and remakes of Space Mutiny, :buggedout: etc. I am cheerfully that and much more,  but I do get serious sometimes, like now.

A little personal history: I was abused and abandoned by my ^%$#@  biological parents and dumped in a hospital when I was still small: nothing would stop me now kicking the living crap out of them for all the psychological hell they put me though in the last thirty years. I have had no contact with them since then: they may even have passed on.  :hatred:

I was adopted by a childless family: two damn good people who were not only that but also gave a damn about an orphan and gave him a second chance in life. They are the ones I look to and look up to and they tried and succeeded in keeping me level headed. Make no mistake, they are my folks and I love them. They introduced me to cinema: what can I say?  :teddyr:

Those other two bastards, however.... :hatred: :hatred:

I consider you to be my friend as I have said before and I am really glad that you had a great day with your Dad. I think you're a far far better person than me for actually having the guts to want to meet with him and try and work things out: I would want to perform an operation on my biological parents with a blunt rusty object.

Take care, my friend and warm hugs and blessings from South Africa.  :smile:

I went through something similar but instead of my father, my brother raised me and he had a difficult time controlling his habit with herion. There's a lot of love there, but also a lot of animosity. Its difficult to find peace and a common road between the two emotions. Best of luck to you

Grace

I'm really happy your worst fears were not realized.  This was almost a magical reply to your first post.  Maybe this is a new future for your family.

 Unfortuantely, or maybe fortunately, I can't relate with these stories too much. My folks are in robust good health ad we enjoy a rich and loving relationship.  I do have a brother who has decided to cast us off without word as to why, but thats really all.  My wife lost her father at a very young age (she was 11) to a long illness.  I think that effected her more than she'll admit out loud.  Seeing that, I feel doubly fortunate. 
-Ed

My parents got divorced in 1975 when I was about 11 years old. We moved from a house to an apartment with our Mom. My Mom didn't like him so much that she wouldn't allow visits and refused the alimony that would come along with those visits.

We grew up very poor through our teenage years and struggled till I got a full time job and could buy my own food and cloths.

Only saw my father twice for no more that a couple hours total through the years then we saw him the day before my Mom's burial when we returned to our hometown in New York State to bury our Mom some 6 hours from New Jersey and happened to bump into him when making a quick stop somewhere. He didn't give us any info on where he was staying nor a phone number and since our father was a rather taboo subject while my Mom was alive none of us asked much more about that since we had the burial the next day. We had lunch with him at a restruant before we returned home to New Jersey. He only said he'd be in touch, but it's been 2 years and we haven't heard a word.

I remember great times all the time with my father during our early years from Auto Racing, Minor League Baseball, Fishing, Drum & Bugle Corps, Hockey, Annual County Fair, Circus, Pro Wrestling, Movies, and more. We were always doing something. Then suddenly nothing.

It was strange meeting him suddenly the day before our mothers burial and then seeing him walking away after having lunch with him. 

I remember the supernatural occurrences around the time of my Mom's burial that gave me the feeling that everything was "ok" now, but we still haven't heard from our father since. My brother doesn't seem to want to hear from him at all, but that could be due to loyalty to our Mom. I'm ok with it myself, but not sure what to make of it. Our meetings have been too brief to get anything kind of grip on things. Nothing was pursued beyond everyones curiosity. It was a good meeting because he gave us family info and I was able to later contact long lost relatives, strangely they don't even know my fathers whereabouts. He wouldn't give out much info about himself.

Maybe one day. Not sure why, but maybe.

Glad to hear RCMerchant meeting turned out good.

I hope someday you see your Dad again. I know the feeling about unknown relatives....about 7 years ago my Dad hit me with the shocker that my older sister Susan was coming to meet me. I never even knew I had a sister Susan. Dad had gotton some woman pregnant in Arizona before I was born....I met her and she's a nice lady.

Remember how I mentioned in a previous thread that I hadn't talked to my dad in almost 2 years?

I stopped by his auto repair shop the other day.
I was worried that he would be super p**sed at me for voluntarily not talking to him for so long, but you know what he said?
He said, "Well hello there stranger!" and held out his hand for me to shake it.
Instead, I gave him a big hug.   :smile:

I thought it would be very awkward reconnecting with my dad after all this time but it wasn't.
It was like no time had passed at all.
And it was good timing on my part because it was his 64th birthday!   :cheers:

We talked about a bunch of things for about an hour.

He even promised to fix my car as long as I call my stepmom (his wife) and apologize for telling her to "f**k off".
(I initially stopped all contact with them after she insulted me on the phone back in 2006)

So now I have to call her and apologize.

---

By the way, you guys were right about my car.  
My dad stepped on the gas pedal and immediately diagnosed the problem.
One cylinder isn't firing and the problem is either a spark plug or plug wire.
I have to take it to his shop sometime this week so I can make it to the Troll 2 screening in Chicago on Friday.

---

I have to thank you RC...
This thread was the kick in the ass I needed to reconnect with my dad.   :smile:

Karma for you my good sir!

Dam....that's too  super cool!!! I'm very happy for you!  And thanks for giving me credit...but it wasn't me....it was YOU. You can do whatever you want....all it takes is hope and taking a step. Congratulations!   :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :smile: