My Fathers: Letters of Healing on a Quest for the Truth

By Len Prazych

 

Can a 15-second "incident" that happened to an 11-year-old altar boy in his parent's bedroom a half-century ago forever change the course of his life and the trusting relationship he had with his _two_ fathers: his biological one and the beloved parish priest who sexually molested him?

In "My Fathers: Letters of He

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Book Publishing Solutions
• Release date: Sep 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781962204798

Book preview

MY FATHERS

Letters of Healing on a Quest for the Truth

© 2023 Len Prazych

Memoir

Contents

Preface

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Friday, April 2, 2021

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Sunday, August 22, 2021

Sunday, September 15, 2021

Sunday, September 29, 2021

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Sunday, November 21, 2021

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Friday, December 31, 2021

Preface

Can you keep a secret? Can you keep a secret for fifty years? Could you take a secret to your grave? Some people can, as I share in this memoir. But some secrets—and the often-unpleasant truths behind them—need to come out and be shared with those left behind: the living.

I’ve seen how secrets and truths, if left buried, undiscovered, and untreated, can fester, metastasize, and literally eat a person alive. I’ve seen how mental, emotional, and physical illnesses, including PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), addiction, and cancer, can result from secrets unshared or unconfessed. And I’ve learned how confessing one’s truth through writing one’s story—the acts of journal writing and letter writing are indeed forms of therapy—has the power to heal, allowing the writer to process their experiences in the hopes of building a fulfilling and productive life. I’m living proof of that.

But why write a memoir? And why now? These are the two questions I’m most frequently asked when I tell someone about my book. When I share that my story is about the relationships I had with my biological father and my other father, our parish priest, people are intrigued. They want to know more. They are also intrigued with my quest for the truth; never mind that it’s taken me fifty years to pursue it.

Knowing my story had to be told, I had to decide what form it would take. I began writing it as a novel. That didn’t work. I thought autobiographical fiction might be the way. That didn’t work either. I realized these two forms wouldn’t work because I couldn’t get close enough to the truth, which was the point of my writing at all. Then I tried autobiography, but that form too allowed me to avoid fully embracing my truth. Besides, I hadn’t lived the charmed life or achieved the fame and popularity of those who publish autobiographies. I was just a lower-middle-class Catholic boy from Bayonne, New Jersey. Why would anyone but those closest to me care?

It was while writing one of my near-daily journal entries, my chosen method of psychological self-care, in which I was remembering (grieving?) my recently deceased father that I stumbled upon the idea of letter writing. I began my next paragraph with the words Dear Dad and promptly finished one letter, then another. I realized I had even more to say. More had to come out. It did. Further, I realized that writing those letters to my dearly departed dad somehow made me feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually better about myself and my quest, even though I knew he—and my other father—would never read them. I didn’t stop writing until I felt I’d said what needed to be said and shared the secrets that needed to be confessed. I unburdened my soul and yes, it felt good.

I believe it’s never too late to share secrets. Stories beg to be told, secrets need to be shared, the truth needs to come out, and to borrow a tired cliché, the truth will set you free. I always thought that if my parents didn’t die before I published this memoir, then reading it would probably kill them. Thankfully, I’ve been able to share my story before my secrets killed me.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Dear Dad,

I hope you’re okay, wherever you may be. Your firstborn here, Little Lenny. Your first nickname for me. If you are where you always prayed you’d be, you’re in heaven, at last, with God, your Holy Father; His Son, Jesus Christ; the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus; the Holy Ghost (I don’t know who He or She is related to); the apostles; all the saints; and everyone else you’ve known, loved, and lost in your lifetime. Especially, most especially, Mom, your loving wife of sixty-one years, who died three miserable years before you did. I’m still here on earth, working through things.

Right now, I’m working through a stack of mail from the US Post Office. I got a letter from Serenity Care, the hospice agency, reminding me that it’s been one year since you died of congestive heart failure, aged eighty-seven, at the Arista Care Nursing Home in Whiting, New Jersey, about two miles from the home you’d said you wanted to die in. Like the letter I received from them six months ago reminding me you were still dead, it was accompanied by a glossy tri-fold brochure emblazoned with the words So You’re Grieving? and contained a message about how people grieve in different ways, how it doesn’t happen all at once, and how it can take months or even years to mourn the loss of a loved one. Presumably, to help me get over the loss of you. Nice of them to keep thinking of me, but after a full year without you, I think I can say that I’m okay. I hope you’d be happy to know that, though I still have a few things I want to get off my chest.

You should know that the hospice nurses at Serenity were great for me, and I think, for you too. They really did take some of the work of helping you die off my tired shoulders. You resisted the idea of hospice at first, maybe because you believed you’d live through this congestive heart failure thing—another speed bump, as it were. After all, you’d survived everything else: prostate cancer, Parkinson’s, pneumonia, and near the end, maybe even a bit of dementia. It’s still hard to believe you’re gone, even after a year, but you really had a good run. Not everybody gets to outlive virtually everyone else they know. Knew. Kudos!

I can’t say it was all a breeze those last three months, trying to convince you that you couldn’t care for yourself at home, even with Richie, your middle son, living with you. He wasn’t going to wipe your ass when you shit the bed again and neither was I. Even love has its limits.

You refused my multiple attempts to convince you to live near me in Saratoga Springs, New York, so I could visit you regularly. Then you shut down the idea of a great assisted living facility right in your own backyard. You were going to die in your own house come hell or high water, you said. And I admit I was angry at your stubbornness when I was making all these sacrifices to help you. Who’s sounding like a parent now?

But I gotta give you credit, you knew what you wanted and you almost succeeded. If you hadn’t gasped to Richie that you couldn’t breathe after that trip to the bathroom, he wouldn’t have called the EMTs, and you probably would’ve died right there on the living room floor the way Mom always threatened she would. But Richie did call the EMTs, who took you to Community Hospital, pumped you full of oxygen and antibiotics, sedated you, and then admitted you for what we thought was your last stand. You had double pneumonia for God’s sake! At first, we thought you had COVID-19 because every other old person, excuse me, senior citizen with comorbidities, in New Jersey had it. We were lucky they even had a bed for you.

So why this letter from me? And why now? As you know, or maybe really didn’t know, I’ve been a writer for most of my adult life. Not in the sense of writing books and being famous and all. I was a sportswriter, then a commercial writer—PR, marketing, advertising, things like that—and now I publish a weekly magazine for the corrugated box industry. Sexy stuff! Even as I write this, I guess I can see how what I’ve done for work was a mystery to you. Maybe you were too embarrassed to ask, although I was always quick to explain before your eyes started to glaze over. Maybe you just never cared that much, but you were kind enough not to say so.

I’ve also kept a journal for most of my life. You might know this as a diary, a place where you write your thoughts, ideas, reflections, and dreams; a place where you can work things out in your head by writing them on paper or a computer. It’s my way of organizing my thoughts, planning my life, and figuring out where I am in the world. It’s something that helps me understand the people in my life, including you. For me, journal writing is a kind of meditation: that thing that brings some peace and satisfaction to my life. My journal is a place where I can be sad, happy, acknowledge my pain, celebrate my victories, and grieve my losses, which incidentally, include the loss of you. I think, maybe, that my journaling has allowed me to grieve you a little easier and not feel like I need to do it all now. Grieve you, that is. I think I’ve already done it.

I’ve written about you and written letters to you in my journal as a way of trying to figure out, reconcile, resolve, whatever, what I see as my complex lifelong relationship with you. I doubt that you’ve ever felt the same because every one of my attempts at trying to connect with you resulted in another brief conversation, another door slammed in my face, another opportunity for a real father-son relationship squashed.

This letter and all these letters I began writing, contain things I’ve always wanted to share with you and say to you. I thought that maybe in the limited time you had left, when you were lying in bed in the nursing home waiting to die, you would find room in your heart to finally take the time to listen to your oldest son, the one who carries your name, Leonard J. Prazych. Your middle name is John and mine is Joel, so I am not a junior. But I guess I have to give you another pass. You were old and your body was failing. You had Parkinson’s and maybe dementia was setting in. You were grief-stricken and brokenhearted over Mom. Or maybe it was some combination of all of these.

My point is that I never got to hear the things I think a father might say to his son when the father doesn’t have much time left to clear up long-simmering differences and miscommunications, resolve old arguments, or even agree to disagree. Whatever. You were tired, you were ready to die, and maybe anything we had between us just wasn’t that important to you. You may have thought everything was okay and that we were okay. But we really weren’t. Not only did I not have a sense of real communication with you, but I never got the impression that you even understood what my questions were. You had other things on your mind, especially during those last months when you were preparing to meet the Man Upstairs, as you’d referred to him for as long as I can remember. So, what kind of son was I to ruin my father’s last weeks with petty things that should’ve been addressed a long time ago? A selfish son. Little Lenny.

I envisioned giving you this letter so you would have something to occupy your time, and then maybe, just maybe, we could talk about it on one of my visits. It would be my way of clearing the air, getting some answers, understanding you as much as I could before you died. I was tired of hearing about how close you were to winning a bunch of money on your scratch-off lottery ticket, what Mom did or didn’t do in the visions of her you were having almost nightly (another Parkinson’s symptom), or the fact that almost everyone you’d ever known was dead or close to it. You were eighty-six, after all, but couldn’t figure out why you’d lived that long. I couldn’t either.

Since you apparently hadn’t cared enough to respond to anything else I’d ever written to you, I thought that, stubborn old Polack (Mom’s words, not mine) that you were, you probably wouldn’t respond to what I’d written you now. Then I had the idea of reading them to you while you sat there in your hospital bed wondering who the person sitting in front of you was. Another foolish idea of mine. What was I expecting? That I might finally crack the emotional veneer I suspect you spent your lifetime hardening? In my fantasy world, yes.

In that fantasy world, you would question me; you would try to learn about me and why I was so difficult and different, why I fought you so hard on your beliefs, your strict Catholicism. Although you couldn’t or wouldn’t say it, I felt like you’d given up on me a long time ago. In my imagination, you would listen to and understand what I was expressing, what I felt, and how my life had been affected by our relationship. And yes, by your religion and its rules and its priests and their sins. Nothing else mattered. Religion ruled all!

In my fantasy, I would watch you think about what I’d written in my letters. I’d wait for you to question me to be sure you’d got it right, then come back at me with your thoughtful answer, one that justified your attitude or lack thereof. In my fantasy, I also imagined you saying the two words I’ve never, ever heard come from your mouth: I’m sorry. Dad, I never did get my apology from you.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Dear Dad,

It was 7:39 a.m. when I saw my iPhone awaken today. Arista Care. Uh-oh. Even though I’d received several calls over the past months since you’d been in hospice, and according to your team you were getting close, my heart jumped a little thinking that this might be the call, the one in which I heard the news that you had finally passed. Know what? I just realized I’m tired of using the word passed to describe dying. You died. That’s what you did, you died at 9:35 a.m.

The calls were more frequent in those last three weeks—you had an infection, you were retaining fluids, your blood pressure was dropping, you’d fallen out of bed (what?!)—yet you somehow managed to keep on living, bouncing back as it were. You were rallying, yeah, that’s the term used when the person destined for the great beyond spends a few more ounces of their dwindling life-force reserves. Anyway, you were conscious and pretty lucid just a of couple days prior, when I’d last seen you on our weekly video chat.

Lest you wonder why I was at home in Upstate New York, four hours north, and not at your bedside (or minutes away at your house), Arista Care and every other nursing home in the country was under lockdown because of COVID-19. These hotbeds of death prevented me from seeing you in person and prevented everyone from seeing their loved ones in their last hours. This was one of the most horrific things, especially early in the pandemic, when hospitals were so overwhelmed with sick patients that some people didn’t get to see their loved ones at all, even after they died. The dead were shuttled off to some refrigerated trailer before being buried in mass graves! Horrific and sad! If a family was lucky, their loved one made it to a funeral parlor, where the body waited, sometimes for weeks, before there could be a burial. If there could be a burial.

So, I couldn’t see you in person. The hospice nurse sat you up in bed, positioned the phone in front of you, and left for a half hour while you and I chatted. I got to see for myself how you were fading, heard how your voice was getting weaker, saw how your eyes were less bright than they had once been. Your hair was slicked back and curled at the ends. Your thin, wiry beard was flowing, mostly around your chin. You’d told the nurses you wanted to stop shaving and instead let those whiskers of yours finally grow wild! You were dying. What did it matter?

We talked about the same thing we’d discussed the week before and the week before that: What’d you have for lunch? Chicken again? You didn’t like it last week; you still don’t like it this week. Got it. You really didn’t even care about eating any more. But they said you had to eat because you needed to maintain your strength. For what? I remember thinking. So, you can live longer and thrive again?

But you’d said you wanted to die. I tried to tell the staff this, but of course, they wouldn’t have any of it. It goes against God’s law—a facility cannot withhold food and nourishment (although you can refuse to eat!)—and it goes against the basic business practices of operating a nursing home facility in the age of managed care: keep the beds full, keep the money coming in. I wanted them to just let you die as you wanted to,