shamusyoung.com

T w e n t y S i d e d

2011-08-25 · 00:00 UTC ·5 min read

Brief

This deeply personal essay explores the complex legacy of a father who suffered a life-altering stroke at 29 that left him physically disabled and cognitively impaired in specific ways - he retained his vast knowledge of literature and mythology but lost the ability to learn new information effectively. The medical intervention of 1971 required destroying healthy brain tissue to remove a potentially fatal blood clot, leaving him with permanent left-side paralysis and epilepsy. Rather than adapt to his new limitations, he abandoned his family and spent nearly a decade in North Carolina living as a homeless alcoholic, a dramatic fall for someone who had been pursuing graduate studies in English Literature. The author reflects thoughtfully on how his mother's decision to never speak ill of his absent father - never revealing the alcoholism or abandonment - allowed him and his brother to form their own relationship with their father when he eventually sobered up through Alcoholics Anonymous. The essay becomes a meditation on redemption, forgiveness, and the long-term consequences of how divorced parents speak about each other to their children, ultimately revealing that the father found purpose in helping other alcoholics recover before his death from cancer at 59.

Why it matters

A personal memoir about the author's father who suffered a devastating stroke at 29, abandoned his family for a decade of alcoholism, then found redemption through AA:

Key details

  • [medical] 1971 brain surgery to remove blood clot left him with left-side paralysis and learning disabilities
  • [family] Despite having a master's degree in English Lit, he abandoned wife and children for decade of homelessness and drinking
  • [recovery] Sobered up in mid-80s through AA and reconciled with his sons before dying of cancer at 59
  • [parenting] Author credits his mother's refusal to badmouth his father as key to eventual reconciliation
Cleaned source text

title: T w e n t y S i d e d

content_type: article

publication: shamusyoung.com

published: 2011-08-25T00:00:00

source_url: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12687

word_count: 1182

Jim, to everyone who knew him.

Six months before I was born, he suffered a stroke that very nearly killed him. Cerebral hemorrhage. He was 29 years old. He collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. A couple of days later he woke up. The good news was that there was no obvious brain damage. The bad news was that all that blood had formed a clot in his brain that would kill him sooner or later if it wasn't removed.

I'm sure if this happened today they would remove the clot with lasers, or send self-replicating nanites in after it, or maybe just use the transporter and beam the sucker out. But we're talking about 1971 here, which means they had just enough medical knowledge to know that this was not a job for blunt tools and fire.

There was no way around it â€" to get the clot out they were going to have to go through some brain tissue. That brain tissue would be destroyed, and he would suffer some level of brain damage. So, the choice was to live with this time-bomb in his head, waiting for it to kill him at any moment, or to go in and destroy parts of his otherwise healthy brain. It wasn't much of a choice. They did the procedure. Afterwards the left side of his body was paralyzed, and he suffered from epilepsy. As a result, he would need to take anti-seizure medication for the rest of his life. He eventually recovered limited use of his left leg, but from that day on his left arm hung limp at his side, and he never made use of it again. When he sat, he’d lift it into his lap with his right arm and drape it over his left leg.

Dad hung around for a couple of years, sired my younger brother, and then split. He went to North Carolina and spent nearly a decade sleeping on the couches of his hippie friends and drinking his life away. He even mentioned being homeless for a stretch. That's not really the trajectory you’d expect from a guy who was basically one credit away from his master's degree. (English Lit.)

It was an odd sort of brain damage. He'd spent all of his twenties in college, and his brain was packed with a vast body of knowledge, most of it revolving around literature and mythology. (Which is probably how I ended up with “Telemachus” as my middle name.) However, after the stroke he had fantastic difficulty learning new things. Since he otherwise seemed like a man of above-average intelligence, it was often infuriating trying to explain things to him. It was hard to reconcile his apparent intelligence with his apparent thick-headedness, and it made the other person feel like he wasn't paying attention, or didn't care. It took me a while to understand that he wasn't being obstinate, he just had a few isolated spots in his brain that no longer worked properly.

Mom never spoke ill of him. She never openly blamed him for leaving. Never explained to us that he’d run off, preferring drunken free-living to his family. He was just gone, and he probably wasn’t coming back. She always explained the divorce in terms of the two of them not getting along, and she never mentioned his alcoholism. This let my brother and I form our own opinions. We never had the angst-fueled rage that some boys experienced towards their absent fathers.

To this day I am filled with sadness when I see a single mom tell her children, “You have your father to thank for this!” whenever something goes wrong. I understand her frustration, and she's probably right, but the damage she's inflicting on her sons is far worse than whatever hardships they might be dealing with at the moment. A woman might spend years telling her boys what an unreliable, lazy, duplicitous slob their father is. Boys tend to be hungry for knowledge of their father â€" good or bad â€" and will take these lessons, and plant them deep. The woman does this because she's angry at her ex-husband, but the damage she inflicts is against her own boys. Young men are often filled with thoughts over how they compare to their fathers. Am I like him? Am I different? Am I just as bad? Better to discover that your father is a bum than to be told so every day.

My father did sober up a decade later, just as Mom remarried. He never said so, but I strongly suspect the two are related. He left us, thinking he just needed to hit pause on his life. He needed to go get his head together, man. Just deal with this whole disability thing, get it out of his system. Then he’d come back and do the whole family thing.

Suddenly a decade had gone by. He was 42, his wife had married someone else, and his boys were nearly grown. He might have paused his own life, but everyone else had kept going.

Dad, sometime in the mid-90’s.

He returned and made peace with my brother and I. He joined AA. Straightened his life out. Because Mom hadn’t poisoned the well, we were able to reconcile with him. Yes, my childhood was harder without him around, but he acted out of ignorance, not malice. In truth, he never really understood what he left behind. Having become a successful father, I can see that the greatest damage he did was to himself. My childhood was a pain, but I'd go through it a hundred times over rather than give up a decade with my own children.

He was never a father to us, but he was a friend and we visited him regularly from the time of his recovery in the mid-80’s to his death in 2000. He lived just long enough to meet the first of his grandchildren before cancer took him at 59. At his funeral, a number of people came up to me, shook my hand, and told me that Dad had saved their life through AA. They said this in earnest, and I believe them.

He lost a great deal â€" probably more than he ever understood â€" but he found redemption in the end, and saved others from his fate. Not a bad deal.

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Reader Comments

SougoXIIIsays:: SougoXIII says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 4:31 am Whoa, Shamus. I honestly don’t know what to say… Thank you for sharing this with us. Reply

SougoXIII says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 4:31 am

Johnsays:: John says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 11:13 am I agree. Thanks for such a personal and moving piece. Reply

John says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 11:13 am

Lalalandsays:: Lalaland says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 3:04 pm I too am lost for words, thanks for sharing Reply

Lalaland says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 3:04 pm

Eärlindorsays:: Eärlindor says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 8:56 pm I agree. That. Is a good story. I look forward to the rest. :) Reply

Eärlindor says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 8:56 pm

DaveMcsays:: DaveMc says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 8:57 pm Yes, indeed. Nicely done. Reply

DaveMc says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 8:57 pm

Spookysays:: Spooky says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 4:37 am Your father sounded like a good man, even after everything that life threw at him. And your mother, like you said here, dealt with the issue extremely well. I believe that no one can say that they did a bad job at raising their kids, sure they might not have been the perfect family, but the results are here (i.e. Shamus “Telemachus” Young, and his brother – although we know less of him than the author of this blog) and they speak for themselves. A very touching piece, thanks for sharing this Shamus. :) PS: On a side note, your middle name went on fitting quite well given the original mythology (the son [of Ulysses] that kept on search for news about his missing father that had been away on the Trojan war) and the actual events on your life. Reply

Spooky says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 4:37 am

DGMsays:: DGM says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 2:08 pm The name is appropriate in another way. According to the wikipedia entry it refers to the fact that he didn’t go to war. Didn’t Shamus say he was the first male in his family in a few generations to not serve in the military, on account of his asthma? If I believed in prophecy, I’d have to give his father credit for it on that one. Reply

DGM says:

Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 2:08 pm

ClearWatersays:: ClearWater says: Thursday Aug 25, 2011 at 4:39 am That link to Telemachus is a bit broken. Reply