Today's post is addressed to a specific audience.
One of the areas in which I have taught over the years is the subject of spiritual formation. In this discipline I cover the effects that family of origin has upon the shape of our spirituality. I find the best way to teach is grounding the theory in my own experience. It seems to me that this is the most helpful approach. Seeing what it looks like grounded in another person's life, students can then easily do the necessary translation. Consequently, I have shared my experiences of growing up in a home marred by domestic violence. It was always a difficult prospect because I live in a web of relationships. Not only was the perpetrator still alive, but I was still in relationship with him and there were other people involved in my story. Trying to know how best to manage the telling of my own story whilst being bound up in the stories of others is complicated.
As I shared my experiences in teaching contexts, I have been profoundly moved as students hearing me tell my story find their own voice and in turn the courage to share their story with others, often with me. In many instances I have then been utterly honoured and humbled when some time later I would be contacted by former students who would share their own formative stories of attempts at transformation, reconciliation and some kind of resolution.
I have connected with many ex students and people who have heard me speak via social media. If that is you, reading this post now, you are my audience today.
Two weeks ago, my father fell and sustained a massive brain injury. After about two weeks in ICU and then a palliative care ward, he died because of this injury and from complications associated with it.
Towards the end of his life, I spent close to three days, two of those alone, with him. During that time, I wrote. Some of the writing included some of the stories that I have shared in my teaching work. I thought that what I had written was going to be dadâs eulogy. After writing it, and then reading it to him, alone, holding his hand as he lay dying, I felt the writing had done what it needed to do for both of us. I felt that when it came time for his funeral, I no longer needed to say anything. I felt that what needed to be done was done.
As it turned out, the Catholic priest who has been a long time friend of the family had the occasion to read what I had written. After having some time to digest it, he called me the day before dadâs funeral and asked me to give dadâs eulogy. On Friday, the immediate family gathered for dad's funeral where I gave the eulogy.
For those who have found some help or hope in my story and my attempts to reconcile a difficult past, I post dadâs eulogy. May you find it helpful and hopeful.
(Please be advised that the following includes a description of family violence. If you are or have suffered family violence and are seeking help, in Victoria please contact Safe Steps Victoria at https://www.safesteps.org.au/ or 1800015188 or seek relevant local help.)
What I am going to read here is a shorter version of something I wrote as I have reflected upon my relationship with dad over the years. I actually read the longer version to dad, as I sat by his bedside, holding his hand, about a day before he died. I shared my writing and experience with Fr Vic. He encouraged me to share this shorter version on this occasion. This version is as a result of his guidance. Thankyou Fr Vic not just for your support today, but for being a gift to our family over many years. Inħobbok ħafna sabiħ.
I want to tell three stories about Charlie. The first story took place at our family home in St Albans one hot summer Saturday morning. I was probably seven or eight years of age. This morning, as was often the case in our house, dad exploded in a fit of rage. As a young child, I was terrified by the sounds, his actions, about the prospect of one of us being hurt, because in previous situations like this, and subsequent ones, getting hurt was not uncommon. I remember mum shepherding us children out of the house and onto the driveway, where we stood around the car, hesitating. It took me a few moments before I realised the reason mum was hesitating was because we had nowhere to go. Eventually mum packed us three kids into the car, and we drove around the streets of St Albans for about an hour or so, before heading back home, hoping that Charlie's rage had run its course.
Iâve come to learn that one of the most important experiences in a child's life is an experience, a knowing that they belong. If a child is to have any chance of moving into some kind of healthy adulthood, it is a vital experience. In that moment, standing on the driveway, feeling like there was nowhere I belonged, and that there was no safe place for me, a traumatic wound was inflicted upon a young child, a wound that I have carried with me through my childhood and teenage years, into adulthood, into the present.
The second story I want to tell about Charlie occurred a couple of years later. We were at home and one of mum's sisters called on the phone, obviously in significant distress. I remember dad angrily, but quietly springing into action, heading out the door, returning a little later with my three terrified cousins, all covered in the paint that was a result of the shenanigans that had reduced my aunty to tears. Dad ordered them into the bathroom and cleaned them all up. Later, we had dinner together, where my sisters and I joked about what we thought was an hilarious incident. Not long into our meal, our cousins thought so too. I vividly, distinctly remember all of us, mum, dad, my sisters and my cousins, all sitting around that same kitchen table together, sharing a meal, laughing, being together.
The final story involved my distinctive red BMX, as well as some other details that I have never shared with my wider family until today. As a 13 year old, one Saturday morning a friend and I took off on one of our epic bike riding adventures. We met two girls at a park. We started talking to them. I was pretty obnoxious and rude so the conversation ended rather quickly. My friend and I thought nothing of it and we continued on our way.
Later that afternoon, my sister and I, accompanied by one of our cousins headed on down to the local milk bar, they on foot and I on my distinctive red BMX. Whilst my sister and my cousin went inside, the weekly Saturday night Greek Orthodox church service had just finished. About a dozen well dressed Greek boys emerged from the church building. When they saw me, they raced toward me and surrounded me, trapping me against the milk bar window.
I quickly realised that these boys were friends of the two girls we had met earlier that day. The girls had told them of my appalling behaviour. Thatâs the bit I havenât shared with anyone else until this day. This was all my fault. The boys recognized me by my distinctive red BMX.Â
The leader of the pack, frustrated by his inability to provoke me in throwing the first punch, hit my left eye with a chunky ring, damaging my vision for a few days as well as giving me the biggest black eye of my life. I desperately willed myself not to move. It was like I was frozen in time.
And then I saw one of the most beautiful things in my life to this day. I saw Charlie's yellow Land Rover four wheel drive, dangerously screaming through the busy intersection and then bouncing wildly into the car park, horn blaring. Before the car came to a halt, dad flew out of the cabin, barefoot, dressed only in his singlet and unbuttoned shorts. He was swinging this packing hook, a brutal metal and wood hook used by dock workers on Melbourneâs waterfront. Like a terrifying bat out of hell he flew at the boys who fled the scene in abject terror. I can still see the looks of fear on some of their faces. After they had scattered, I collapsed onto the ground shaking, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
What had happened was that my sister could see the scene unfolding from the inside of the milk bar. As soon as she realised what was happening she phoned dad. Within seconds, dad was there. My dad, most likely, had literally saved my life. My father's anger rescued me.
Each of these stories have left a significant mark, a significant legacy in my life.
The first story tells of Charlie's lasting legacy of anger, and the violent ways in which he expressed it and the wounds that it inflicted, leaving scars upon my body, and my soul that I carry this day, and for the rest of my days.
The second story also leaves an enduring mark upon the shape of my life. For most of our married life, Lisa and I welcomed young people, often at risk young people, into our home. We have tried to live our lives in such a way as to give people that critical experience, an experience of what it is like to have a home, to belong.
The course that my life has charted, seemingly without any intent on my behalf, this significant part of who I am, whether I like it or not, whether it makes sense or not, is because of an unskilled, overworked, underpaid, migrant shift worker, struggling to make some kind of life. On his one day off from a gruelling job on Melbourneâs waterfront, on a day where he by rights should have been trying to simply catch his breath and catch a break, he instead opens his meagre home to his wife's children, without thought, without hesitation. Yes dad was angry, at them, at the situation, at the circumstances. His anger led him to what he concluded was simply the only appropriate response. This angry act, that led to hospitality, as dysfunctionally as it played out, has also powerfully shaped the course of my life. Because of what dad did in that moment, to me every problem looks like a problem of belonging, and I feel like the only possible response is one of hospitality and welcome. I feel like I have to be this way, not because someone told me this is what we do, or because I feel guilty or obligated, itâs because it feels right. It is because someone, my father, showed me what to do.
Over the years, I have discovered, not from dad mind you, but from others, that dad quietly invited people into their home on several occasions.
The third story is perhaps the most difficult for me. For the first time in my life, I felt his anger, aggression and power not as something to fear or flee from, but something that could make me safe. This part of who Charlie was has also powerfully shaped the man I am today. There are many who have confided in me that my commitment to them, my commitment to their safety, the lengths I am prepared to go to in order to protect them, keep them safe, the ways in which I help shepherd them through the moments where they have had to deal with the consequences of their unwise choices; these people have told me that they have been transformed as they have witnessed my anger at their injustice and my acting on their behalf.
When I hear people speak of me in this way, I know, without any doubt, that this part of who I am is due once again, not to what dad told me I should be, rather it is because of who, and how he was in this world. This kind of life is not a consequence of following his advice, it is as a result of my instinctively following his irresistible example.
Countless times, it feels like I have come close to losing my mind when I try to reconcile these three stories, these three parts of who Charlie was, and what each part represents. How can a man in one moment terrify his young son, yet in another be such a breathtaking example of care and concern? How do I reconcile these three seemingly irreconcilable stories? To say that Charlie was a collection of contradictions would be the understatement of my life.
There were times in my relationship with my father, where I was able to move beyond my own anger and bitterness and move towards him. There were moments where I actively tried to understand. I tried to ask him to tell me stories about his childhood, about what it was like in Malta, what it was like to migrate to the other side of the world, what it was like being a foreigner, trying to find work, facing the prejudice of race and class, trying to make a life?
I donât feel as though we were ever able to connect. I donât know if I understood him. I donât know if he understood that I was trying to understand, that I cared.
My relationship with Charlie was a constant up and down. When I no longer feared him, his contradictions brought us into conflict for the majority of my adult life. There have been stretches where I have chosen not to be in his life, because it was simply too painful. The last time we spoke prior to his brain injury was another one of our arguments.
But I am noticing something. Iâm aware that the confused look that must have adorned my face when trying to figure out my father's contradictions is mirrored back to me in the faces of those around me. I see the look upon the faces of my partner, my children, when they see me in one moment acting with great courage and nobility, and in the next when I act with selfishness and cruelty. I realise that as I move between being a beautiful human being and a terrible one, often with a speed that can be deeply disorienting to those around me, I realise something. I realise that I too am a man of contradictions. I realise that I am my father's son.
When I become aware, often too late, that I have made choices and decisions that hurt those around me, and I crave nothing more than their understanding and their forgiveness, I realise, I am my father's son. I realise, if people are ever going to accept the contradictions that exist in me, perhaps I need to accept the contradictions that existed in Charlie.
Hear me carefully, I am not saying that domestic violence is ever acceptable or excusable. Domestic violence is unacceptable, it is inexcusable. Period.
The Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl, said:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. - Viktor E. Frankl
The task at hand, my task, is to find that space between stimulus and response, to reflect in that moment, and in that moment, to make a decision to choose not to be the worst parts of Charlie, but to choose the best parts of Charlie. My task is, in that moment between stimulus and response, is to realise that one of the greatest gifts my father has bequeathed to me, is a righteous anger that, if harnessed, can be a gift to the world.
My task is not to try and reconcile the contradictions. My task, which is not too different to Charlie's task, when he made his way to Australia as a teenager with nothing and attempted to make a life, my task is to take the hand I have been dealt, and to do my best.
Dad, for the ways in which you have wounded and broken me, I forgive you.
Dad, for your examples, for the great and beautiful gifts that you have bequeathed me, I am forever indebted, and I am forever grateful.
