My father died in 1984 around Thanksgiving. I don't really know when he died. Prior to his death he had "disowned" me and my two sisters who have the same mother as me. My relatives on his side of the family sought to "honor" his decision to banish us from his life by not telling us when he died. I'm not precisely sure when he died, but in my mind, at least, it happened after about three weeks of his drinking, alone at the "family" farm. The stated cause of death was "aneurysm." The whispered cause was pills and booze. Within the last year in an interaction with one of my younger sisters with whom I don't share a mother, I realized that I probably had a misunderstanding of his date of death and that he likely died before Thanksgiving. And I can't remember when I found out.

I do remember the anguished look on my mother's face and the suffering in her voice when she told me that he had died a week or more earlier. I remember the hurt I saw in her as she explained that a man had called anonymous to tell her to tell us that he had died and been buried and that he and others in Ozark thought we should know. He said he would not identify himself out of fear of reprisal from those who had chosen to keep his death hidden from us (my family). I listened and felt the grief and hurt of my mother, but I would not cry. I remembered to myself his admonitions during the beatings not to cry - "Don't cry! Or I'll give you something to cry about!" I realized that there was absolutely no chance that I was going to cry.

I remember driving the seventy or so miles to my older sister's apartment in St. Augustine. I remember the pain in her "NO!"s of denial as she slumped to the floor of her apartment sobbing and crying and wailing after I told her of our father's death. I remember her anguish at realizing the complicity of our family in denying her a chance to say good-bye. I felt her sorrow and I loved my sister, but I couldn't cry with her.

This morning as I lay there in bed with tears rolling down my cheeks, I remembered the beatings with the razor strop that left my legs so bruised that the marks were disturbing the other children in my nursery school. I was sent home with the understanding that I shouldn't wear shorts. I remembered the time I came gleefully to greet my father on the back patio to find him in a lounge chair with a pellet gun and beer cans (full and empty) shooting at the squirrels up the tree in the center of the patio. I remembered the invectives and profanity he hurled at the squirrels and the rapid realization that I was in danger. I remember the sting of the pellets through my shorts against my legs and stomach. And I remembered his admonition - "Don't cry you little pussy or I'll give you something to cry about!" I remember years later in high school as the depth of my depressions were just becoming known to me and as I struggled to live while thinking constantly of my death the words; "I got shot" cycling repeatedly, obsessively through my mind with no understanding why or where they came from. I took them to be predictive of how I would die.

This morning I remembered lying in the dark with this unwanted weight pressing against me, aroused, rubbing, hairy, hurting. I remember the always present but never stated in this context - "Don't cry (or tell) or I'll give you something to cry about."

I am thankful this morning for my tears and for those who have made them possible for me again.