I heard from my father this Christmas season, which may not sound unusual to most of you. But I never knew my father; he bailed on the family when I was two years old and never looked back. That was in 1949. He was a construction worker who ran heavy equipment all over Alaska and in northwestern Canada. He worked on the Canol project and on the Haines Cut-off, on the Naval Base at Kodiak and on the Dew Line. He was also a mine worker in Juneau at the Juneau-Douglas gold mine.
My father was a heavy drinker and it finally claimed him in about 1963 at a relatively young age. He died an ugly death by throat hemorrhage and is buried in an unmarked grave in Fairbanks. My mother never talked about him, and I never met anyone from his side of the family. My siblings remember him well, since they were both pre-teen when he disappeared over the horizon. Mostly, the stories are not attractive; a largely absent figure who liked to party and drink. My brother recalls a large man who was a self-taught piano player, and someone who worked hard for his money. But my siblings also recall someone who rarely sent money home, who kept his family on the verge of starvation and eviction, who had little patience with children.
About ten years ago I started doing genealogy research and had some real successes, but my father’s side of the family remained fairly obscure, and I was unable to unearth family members to talk to, even though I knew my father had a sister. Then, last week, I got a phone call. It was one of my aunt’s sons, now 68 years old, who had seen my lineage report on the Internet. After some preliminaries, he told me he had some photos and “a letter I think you’ll be interested to see”.
Well, in the course of my research, I’ve come to not expect people to follow through on their promises; so it was a nice surprise to receive a package in the mail a few days ago. The promised letter was in there, written in pencil from my father to his sister from a work camp in Norman Wells, Northwest Territories. Written in pencil by my father. In his handwriting. In 1945. In the course of the letter, he talks about his time in Alaska, starting in 1935 or so; about his work, his travels, his hopes, and his family. It’s a four-page document and it covers a lot of territory. It presents a picture of a man like any other man, not the ogre I had envisioned (that came in about four years, apparently), and not the callous bastard who abandoned his family and never made contact again.
I don’t know what demons took him 60 years ago, or why he never contacted me in all those years. I suspect my mother had something to do with that. But at least now I have a bit of closure with the man and can feel some charity toward him, if not forgiveness. For that, I am thankful this Christmas. It’s a nice gift.
Yes, a nice “gift”.