My Dad and Me.

When my mother named me she did not know the confusion my name would cause.
Thomas was my grandmother's maiden name Douglass was my mother's maiden name. There was no escaping the Bruce cause my mother married Edward Eugene Bruce.
People always think my first name is my last name. There was a really important reason why my mother did this to me and that had a lot to do with the fact that my mother and father separated before my mom new she was pregnant with me. So! After I was born mother, asserting her independence from my father, and give me her mothers maiden, and her own maiden name.
You see, my dad was a gambler and a womanizer,and I would not doubt that her mother who was divorced twice, and my mother's oldest sister also divorced twice, convinced my mother to kick him out. Back to Pennsylvania he went.
They really did love each other. A year and a few months later my father convinced my mom to take him back.
When he returned, to his surprise my mother instantly presented him with a male child. Me!
This must have really done a number on him. It took him years to accept the fact that I was his son. Years later he confirmed this by trying to make right years of ambiguous.
I can only imagine that he wanted to love me, but couldn't because he had been gone for more than a year. I just couldn't be his son.
The things I suffered as a result of my mother not including him in giving me a name more suitable to a Bruce child.
NOTE: This entry went out before it was ready for viewing and most of it was deleted. If anyone read that last entry please forgive that draft and understand that things can happen that I am not proud of. Simply because I try to do too many things at one time. Sorry!

I am trying to make the point that my relationship with my dad was very strange indeed. He took me places to meet people that he knew. To get a consensus from them on how much they thought I looked like him.
Years later he told me about this and how torn he was with the idea that I might or might not be his son. While he was telling me this story my mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner.
He started to cry as he told me that he thought my mother had had an affair, and she got pregnant by some random man.
I looked at my mother as he talked.
I was trying to read her emotions as she listened to our conversation.
At one point she had the look of horrible disbelief on her face.
she looked at me with pity. In the end I walked away very frustrated that my dad could not see his own likeness in me, his own son.
My dad never hit me and I can't say why, even though I tested him more than any of my other siblings ever  intentionally did. Sometimes he acted like a dad and at times he didn't.
My aunt Sis, my dads youngest sister, told me that my father was a very mean person. When I asked for more details she tried to tell me something, but the words never left her mouth. Sis was always nice to me, but we really never talked to each other as adults until a few years ago at a family reunion. She knew something about my dad that she was afraid to share with me. A couple of years later she died and my fathers secrets died with her.
I am not trying to vilify him, but he had a drinking problem, and alcoholics have a hard time seeing things as they really are.
My father did things that a father should never do to his son. But I forgave him and he got help.
Then he could give me the love that a proud father, gives his son.
We talked like there was never a problem between us.
He became a Mason. He wanted me to become a Mason too, but it was much too mysterious and secretive for me. On the night the Masons gave a party to celebrate that he moved up in the ranks of the Masons. Third degree or something like that. A very important position. That very night after the celebration, he suffered had a heart attack and died.
I was called home by my sister Roberta, but she hadn't told me what the matter was.
I arrived to a house filled with light, but no one was around, not a sound. I walked past my parents room and before I had past the door and saw my father's lifeless body laying there as if he were asleep. His pose was a natural pose, just like he was sleeping. I could see his peaceful,  stress less  face laying on its side.
I crumbled on the bed next to him. Holding his still pliable cool hand. I immediately missed this man I recently could actually call my father. Better late than never I guess.


My father would have been also proud of me for being a store owner who represents his family in a good way. He was not always easy to figure out, but he really did have a generous heart, for all who asked for his help. He gave when he could.
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