February 3-4, 2015

While I never read the book nor saw the Disney adaptation, I do know this much: Old Yeller is a dog and he dies. That alone is cause for stormy tears in this quarter. However, this being an entry in My Parkinson's Diary and not a chapter in Shit That Makes Me Cry, For Sure, it will chronicle not the death of a dog, but rather the demise of our family's Old Yeller, the dad who loses it about small things while the big stuff rolls right off his back.

My Mom and Dad both had a capacity to be Old Yellers. In fact, the place I could hear those voices most clearly was in nightmares, revisitations of my childhood in which my mother shouted how the world would not look after me or my father just exploded when awakened from a Saturday afternoon nap. Make no mistake, such upbraiding was coin of the realm for anyone with parents who themselves grew up during the Great Depression, and in fact, neither of them said particularly abusive things, called me stupid, worthless etc. Rather they were simply prone to occasional instances of emotional overload during which they sent forth a torrent of words delivered first and foremost in a tone that signified loss of control. That tone of voice is with me even now as I write these words: "Christ," it says, "How much more of this am I expected to stand?"

I put off being a dad for so many reasons, some having to do with the time and circumstances not being right. I don't know if I thought I had all the time in the world, but I knew for a good bit of my twenties and thirties that having children would almost certainly lead to the kind of train wreck I had witnessed in my parents' marriage. Yet when I finally found the right partner, the choice to have a family was no choice at all; in fact, considering the deep and abiding love that had found me, it seemed the only decent thing to do. Still, somewhere in my mind's ear that tone persisted, rippling like the spot where a small thing had drowned in a pond.

So, unsurprisingly, the story of how I became Old Yeller became a rather common tale of the forgiveness of self that comes with being a parent. As our family's story unfolded, we found our way to certain touchstones that could be placed under the general expression "Hanley Family Values." Chief among these was the requirement of restorative justice. The Great Man's way of putting this became the Great Commandment of our clan: "We don't hurt people in our family and if we do we make it right." Even as they acknowledge the inevitability of the fall from grace, these words refuse to accept that "These things happen" or "I was trying to do my best" as cues that we need to move on and forget the transgression. No, in much the same way that people in my faith tradition practice the sacrament of reconciliation in which we go, periodically, to confess our sins to a priest and acknowledge our need for forgiveness from God, Hanley Family Values require the honest expression of remorse and the offering of the simplest yet most valuable words to one who has been wronged: "I'm sorry." It is no exaggeration to say that I pray everyday that a simple apology can make a difference to those whom I love.

Even so, none of this exactly equals the deep forgiveness of self that I imagine would be both cause and effect of my really and truly doing away with Old Yeller. But now I find that if it is not too late to make the decision consciously to change my ways, Parkinson's Disease has gone and made that choice for me. Over the years the boys have found comical my tendency to blow my stack over small offenses such as knocking a full glass of milk over on the table (plenty of use to crying over spilt milk has always been my theory apparently) while retaining an unerring, almost eerie emotional equilibrium in the face of what might seem to be more serious matters (losing a brand new pair of glasses, inflicting a dent to the rear bumper of Dad's prized MINI Cooper). But the not-so-sad fact is that even the stack-blowing jackass that was Old Yeller has not been able to withstand the strain of Parkinson's, as witness yesterday's rather pathetic dissolution into semi-syllables as I attempted to express my frustration at having to venture onto treacherous roads owing to Jack's need to make every snow day a social occasion. In the aftermath I realized that Old Yeller was gone at last, though not before imprinting my boys with that awful tone of voice along with the hope that love can make a difference, and leaving in his place a stammering man struggling to make himself understood.