Grumblings
Before I send the wrong impression, a disclaimer: I love my dad, and I am lucky to have him. I am glad he moved closer, and I know it was the right thing. /end disclaimer
But yesterday, he pissed me off so much. A little back story: The 29th of October was the 14 year anniversary of my mother's death. Its always a hard day for me and for my dad and brother too. We all deal with it in our own ways but it kind of sours Halloween a bit. So yesterday dad and I are in the car heading to Auburn for appointment. He begins his usual story-telling ways and I calmly listen. Somehow the subject of my brother comes up. My brother, for those that don't know, has autism and OCD. He's very high-functioning but has struggled his whole life, particularly in his childhood, tweens and teens because Autism was relatively unknown. Long story short, for many years before and after mom's death, dad had a very hard time dealing with my brother and his diagnosis and was sometimes verbally and (very very rarely) physically abusive to my brother. He refused to see that Steve was sick and my mom stood by helplessly as my dad belittled and screamed at my brother. Fast-forward to yesterday's car ride. Dad starts talking about how he used to work at Pineland Center, where they take care of kids with mental disabilities, and that's why he was "so good with my brother because he had the practice." He goes on to start subtle putting my mother down (which he does more often than not) saying "she didn't understand but I had to keep telling her. And now she wouldn't be x, y, z blah blah." First of all, this is a load of garbage. My dad was more or less awful to Steve growing up, and it took Steve moving out of the house and me giving dad an ultimatum when I got older for dad to switch gears to acceptance and support. Second, bad mouthing his dead wife in front of his daughter so close to the anniversary of her death is so disrespectful.
He has this way about him; I think its just how he is. He builds himself up by putting others down, pointing out their faults, etc. Almost every time he talks about my mother, its telling me some story about a time she did something stupid, or didn't understand something, or when he had to come to her rescue, etc. He's perfectly nice about it, but its always pointing out her shortcomings. For years, he's said nicer things about my friends than he has said to me (still does; last week: "I bet you wish you had a nice thin figure like Aimee) and I put up with it because he's my dad and its not worth fighting over, and I know it is his coping/defense mechanism. We've had this conversation before but it never goes anywhere. It makes me worry about how he'll come off to the new people he meets at his new apartment building. During yesterday's car ride, he also said some really degrading things about nurses he used to work with and referred to a black man as a "negroid." And that wasn't even the worst of it.
We've got a major generational and cultural gap, but as a wise friend of mine told me today, it can't all be blamed on that. Its hard for me to realize that he may inherently be racist/sexist. He's never mean, and he seems to always be well-meaning, and the bad-mouthing is just how copes with things. But its really hard to handle, especially this time of year. its not worth it to try and change him- he's 73. He's made a lot of progress in dealing with my brother and his illness and other things but it just makes me so mad sometimes.