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My Father Did Bad Things. I Still Believe He Was a Good Man.
Pop’s letters from Vietnam remind me how fiercely he fought his demons
My father was a good man. I really think he was. But when I was growing up, he was also violent. Frightening. Depressed. Alcoholic, and not in a fun-at-parties way. Often mean. Sometimes racist, as liberal, left-voting white people can casually be. He could be — as even the people who loved him most acknowledged — an asshole.
But he could also be heroic, as he was for me and my little sister, who adored and feared him. Pop was certainly a larger-than-life figure for the kids in our neighborhood, who he would load into the back of his pickup and take to 7-Eleven for candy runs on payday. He was tender, funny, and good-hearted. He was also sad — pretty much all the time. He survived Vietnam, the death of his firstborn daughter, the early deaths of both of his parents, and the loss of his younger sister, all before he turned 30. He deserved better. For as long as I knew him, he battled depression, PTSD, and alcoholism. He died of cirrhosis at 47, when I was 21.
I really think he was a good person — or at least, he died trying to be.
He was young to have shot at so many people he was ordered to kill, young to have…
