Chapter 14 - WHAT ROBERT FINALLY SAID WITHOUT ASKING FOR FORGIVENESSDad wrote me from the facility where he was serving the custodial part of his sentence.
His first three letters remained unopened.
The fourth I read.
It began badly.
I hope one day you understand the pressure I was under.
I put it away.
Two months later another arrived.
I read that one too.
Better.
My therapist says explanations are where I hide from responsibility.
Apparently therapists everywhere were ruining family excuses.
Then:
I hit you. I helped restrain you. I locked you in a casket knowing you were injured and pregnant. I lied to the people in the house about where you were. I did those things.
I stopped reading.
Cried.
Returned later.
He wrote about Grandpa.
How finding the shortfall in 2006 felt like discovering his father was mortal.
How angry he'd been.
How terrified.
How Grandpa begged him to preserve the business until there was enough cash to restore everything.
Then:
I thought I was stronger than him because I could fix his mistake without anyone knowing. Eventually not letting anyone know became more important than fixing it.
That was the clearest thing Dad had ever written.
Then:
When you found the records, I did not see my daughter asking a legitimate question. I saw the person who could force me to become the son of a dishonest father in public. I hated you for making me see that I already was.
I sat with that sentence for a long time.
He continued:
The chair mattered because it was his. That is embarrassing to write. I hurt my daughter over upholstery because I had spent decades treating objects attached to my father as more sacred than people who were alive.
No request to come home.
No demand to meet Grace.
Then:
I do not expect forgiveness. I am trying to become someone who would understand why he is not entitled to it.
I kept the letter.
Not because it repaired us.
Because it was the first thing my father gave me that did not contain an instruction.
When he completed incarceration and moved into supervised release, he did not return to the family residence.
Mom had already moved.
The house was sold.
Partly because neither could afford or emotionally tolerate it alone.
The private wing and funeral-home property were legally separated during restructuring.
The furniture was divided.
I took nothing.
Jason took Grandpa's old wall clock.
Mom took photographs.
Dad asked for the chair.
Nobody objected.
That surprised me.
Maybe we should have burned it.
That would've made a satisfying story.
Instead Dad put it in a storage unit.
Later he donated it to a local historical society along with other Carter Funeral artifacts.
May you like
No dramatic destruction.
Just a chair becoming a chair again.
