There was a time a few years back when he asked me to forgive him. It was during one of his numerous attempts at a Twelve-Step program. I can't remember now what step in the program I was supposed to be. It doesn’t matter. I couldn't do it. No doubt my unwillingness to comply contributed to his failure. I'm sure as he brought that next drink to his lips it was all because of me. Because I couldn't forgive.

That's why he always drank; because of something someone else did or didn't do. He drank because his boss fired him, because my mother left him again, because my brother died, because I couldn't forget.
But then he turned himself over to a higher power. He gave up drinking and he needed my forgiveness. It was all part of the program. But his higher power couldn't make me forgive of forget and so his foot faltered on the riser of the next step. And then he got angry.
"Don't you think I've suffered enough?" he asked as if his drinking was some sort of Old Testament plague inflicted upon him instead of the hell he insisted upon dragging the rest of us through.
"No," I had answered, “not yet."
"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?" he wanted to know.
"I'll let you know when you're in the ballpark."
That was one of the few conversations I ever had with him when I felt like I was in control. There was something satisfying about him needing something from me for a change. Something I knew I would never give him.
"You have no heart," he said then.
This from the man who had stunned the mourners at my brother's funeral with the slurred words, "It should be you we're burying here today and not your brother."
It was no secret he loved my brother best. I was too much like my mother to suit him. But I never knew before that day how much he hated me. And I have no heart.
We didn't speak after that. For me, it was as though I buried my father right along with my brother. As far as I was concerned my father was dead. But some dead never stay buried and that was the case with dear old Dad. Fifteen years later I got a call from the Emergency Room of City Hospital. My father was dying.
I guess you're wondering why I went. I can't answer that. I tell myself it was just curiosity or maybe after all those years of wishing him dead I wanted to be there to bear witness when the event actually happened. But Dad didn’t die. True, all those years of hard drinking had taken their toll and he looked awful. Anyone else in such bad shape wouldn't have stood a chance. But you never knew my father. He was the type to keep going out of pure meanness. All that alcohol only served to preserve that son of a bitch I had come to know as my father. But he was changed.

He was sick. His brain cells were destroyed from alcohol and he suffered from dementia, meaning he had no idea what was going on around him. Oddly enough he still knew me and he was sufficiently confused as to seem happy to see me. Apparently, he didn't remember the bad blood that had flowed between us. He couldn't live on his own the doctor had told me. He'll need to be institutionalised.
I made the arrangements and he was admitted to the home. Compared to the other inmates he was on the ball. He could eat without drooling, he could follow a conversation as long as it only had to do with what he had for lunch or when he could have his next cigarette, and he remembered absolutely everything that happened before 1972. I visited him once a week to collect his laundry, bring him cigarettes and make sure he had everything he needed. Sometimes he would pull out the chair next to him and invite me to sit and tell him what I had been doing with myself, other times he would stare off oblivious and say nothing or simply ask me if I had a cigarette and dismiss me as worthless if it happened I didn't. We did this every week, for five years, and then he died. For real this time.
We buried him this morning. Or I did anyway. Besides the funeral home staff and the priest, I was the only one there. We buried him next to my brother. He would have liked that. Dad, I mean. I don't know how I'm ever going to explain it to my brother. Somehow, it just seemed like the right thing to do. Bury him where he would want to be buried. Make sure there's a priest. And finally, forgive him.

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