The effects of a son without a father

If you are man and have lost your father to death, or your father checked out and walked out on you in your childhood, then you can relate quite well to this story. When I was six years old I lost my father to death. My father put a gun to the side of his head and ultimately took his own life. But he took a big part of my own life with him that day.

I dont have alot of memories of my father, very few and far between. I only can remember him now through others memories, and through photographs. I have been told by many that my father was a good man, a christian, and a man who loved his family dearly. The last statement is something I have wrestled with so my entire life and more specifically after my own children have been born into the world. How could someone be so selfish as to check out and leave a child behind to fend for themselves. I cant say that it is harder for a son to loose his father then it would be for a daughter. But as a man, I needed him, I needed him to take me on a journey and be there for me for everything that my childhood, teen years, and adulthood would throw my way. So many things happened to me that were the direct result of his selfishness and this has caused alot of bitterness, never understanding, and hurts.

For so long I bought into the idea that my father was mentally sick, what my family had lead me to want to understand. My father was a welder for Norfolk & Southern. A very hard working man, and a dedicated man. I remember alot of times as a child going with him to do side jobs. When we wasnt working his fulltime job he could usually be found doing side jobs. Mowing lawns, cleaning offices, and trying to make money to provide for us as a family and equip my mom to be able to stay at home with me and my brother. We had a nice home, stable life, as much as I can remember. I am told that my dad got into some wrong things at work, which is what ultimately started his downward spiral into depression. Something I too myself inherited from him. Anxiety, depression, and fear of control is things that he passed down to me. And alcohol abuse was apparent in his life as well.

My father and a few others that he worked with at the railroad started to remove items from job sites and store them in our family barn. Removing=stealing. I dont really know what all was taken, but I have been told that my dad went through a transformation in his spiritual walk. Once this revealation happened in his life he started to change. He decided to give up alcohol and walk away from it on his own. I can remember attending church at Vinton Wheslyn Church on a regular basis with him and my mom.

Things had started to change in him I am told, and the guilt of stealing from his employer had caught up and convicted him. He came clean with his supervisor one day at work. The railroad sent employee's with him to retreive these items from my family's barn. My dad admitted to the theft of these items and came clean. A noble jesture for a man, and especially a man of faith. But he was not alone in this venture. Others on his "gang" I will call them at work had there hands in it as well. Fear starts to set in these men, that they too will be indicted and that my dad will eventually rat them out. This caused a great deal of turmoil for my father at work. He was immediately pushed out of the in crowd and was no longer a part of the "gang". But he still had to face these men every day and they had to face him. I am sure that this made for quite a stressful time everyday in his job.

These men turned on my father and made his life a living hell at work. I remember the multiple times he was off work with patches over his eyes. They enjoyed inflicting pain on him anyway they could, emotionally, but more often than not physically. Many times when my father would return from a break and as a welder, pull his shield down to protect his eyes, the shield would not offer protection. It would cause enormous pain when small schards of metal would be thrown into his face. See the guys at work would pick up the small shavings of metal and throw handfuls of it in his shield. Sometimes he would find it and others he would not. Sometimes they would right behind him and catch him off guard and place it in there right behind his back. Numerous eye injuries would occur to him. But vividly I remember a time when he was held down by these men and his leg was broken on a railroad track.

These men did many brutal things to my father, but he never was smart enough to know when to say when and walk away from it. He was a man, and men dont run from there problems. So many things happened to him through this time, lawyers were involved over things and phone calls were made to our family home. Warnings of me and my brother being kidnapped from school if this was not dropped. So many things that drove my father over the edge. I was given a suitcase by my mother when I was 18 years old. My dad journaled alot of stuff in small notebooks. Near the end of his life, he was so paranoid and was constantly afraid for his safety, our safety, and the fear of being followed.

I will never forget the day that my father died. It is something that still lives in me everyday and I can recall it just like the memory of my children being born. I remember my mother crying, all of my family started to pour into the house. The day it happened is still very fresh in my mind. My father was supposed to be at a side job that afternoon, the person called the house to look for my dad. Oh the days of no pagers, cell phones, etc... etc.... Immediately I remember my mother getting concerned. After that phone conversation, the gun that my mother had bought for him was found to be missing. My uncles and family starting searching the area for many places he could be. Our family land known as the mountain place, other side job locations, looking anywhere he could possibly be. I remember standing in the front yard of Martha Turner's house and looking at every car drive down the road and getting my hopes dashed because it was not my father's Black F150 with white spoke wheels driving down the road. I can still remember the sound of that truck firing up from the years my mom kept it after he had died. Night had begun to fall and the reality had started setting in that things were looking bleak.

The phone call comes in, my dad had been found. But the outcome was not good and he was gone. I will never forget all of the people in our frontyard that night, the memory of a Roanoke County Sheriff's deputy car having to come physically to our house and notify my mother in person that Dave "Pete" Richardson Sr had taken his own life on the property of Norfolk & Southern. The truth was told to my family on this day. But the truth was never revealed to me and my brother. We were told that he had an accident at work and nothing more than that. We were young and innocent and didnt need to know the gory details I would assume.

The days after my dad's death are very blury to me. I can still remember helping my mom pick out my favorite pipe for him. My father enjoyed smoking a pipe, and memories I have of going to Milan Bros downtown with him are fun memories. I chose a pipe that was special to him. My mom now says that he had to save up to purchase the one that is now in his hands. I remember that day, going into the store and watching him purchase this pipe. I always enjoyed going there because of the smell of all of the different types of tobacco and I would always be given a plastic pipe of my own. Enjoying those and trying to be just like my dad, you could put detergent in them and blow bubbles with them. But mostly I remember all of the spit that would accumulate in them.

I remember chosing the Polaroid picture of me, my brother, and my mom on the beach in Myrtle Beac that was placed in his casket. How much fun that trip was and how the adventure of riding the entire way down and back to the beach was so awesome. He threw a fullsize mattress in the bed of the truck, created a bed for me and my brother Darrell and we slept for most of the way down. The bed cover was on the truck of course, and memories of how loud the noise was driving down the old two lanes roads to the beach would be when the sprinkers would shoot water out onto the traffic and the thundering boom it made hitting the bedcover. I chose this picture because of what that trip had meant to me as a child and how fun it was to be at the beach with my family and all of the memories from staying there and getting to spend time with my dad.

I remember picking out his suit that he is buried in now. A nice baby blue suite that ended up matching his casket. Going to the funeral home for the first time and alot of that is a blurr. I remember seeing my dad in the casket, seeing the pipe I had chosen, the picture, and all of the people who wanted to hug me. I remember thinking that he was asleep and telling my mom to wake him up and her trying to do her best to explain it to us. The most vivid reminder I have of all of the funeral was the ride from the funeral home to cememetary. Riding in the yellow buick with my grandfather and grandmother, my brother, and mother. Falling right in behind the hurse and getting yelled at by my grandfather to stop being a baby and stop crying.

The day of the funeral I remember going back out to the cemetary and picking flowers off of the vast amount of flowers that were sent. My father was a well known and respected man, had alot of friends and never met a stranger, well that is what has been told to me from my family and numerous people have approached me over the years and said I had to be Pete Richardson's son. We look almost identical and the way my life has played out reflect alot of things in him.

Like I said earlier, my family decided that it was best for me and my brother to not be told the truth until we were old enough to understand it. I lived my entire childhood and teen years with the knowledge that my dad had been hit in the head by a piece of metal that had fallen off of a shelf at work and this is what killed him. That story and the truth are two totally different things. I was 19 years old, standing in the kitchen of my Aunt Doris's house when I finally asked my mom the question that she never wanted me to ask. "Mom, what really happened with Dad?". I was 19 years old and my brother was 17 years old. I will never forget the look on her face and my Aunt's face as well as my cousins Lisa, Dean, and Dee Dee. We had moved in with my Aunt that summer because we were forced to sell the home I had known my entire life because of my ex-step-father.

My mom that night finally came clean with me and my brother and told us the truth of what had transpired the years before that. The day my father committed suicide was on my mother's birthday. The night before he did this he gave me and my brother both a bath together. Tucked us both in the bed and fell asleep in the bed with me. My mom woke him up later in the night and he went to bed with her. The morning that my father left for work, he reached over and gave my mother a kiss goodbye and asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She told him that she didnt need anything that she was happy with just having him and the kids. He told her that he was going to give her a birthday present that she would never forget and walked out the door for the last time.

He drove to work at Schaffers crossing back his black Ford F-150 into a secluded part of the parking lot next to a large stone. Alot of questions surrounding this will never be answered. Norfolk & Southern police dept handled the entire investigation and questions are still unanswered to this day. But he pulled out a blue plated 38 caliber snubnosed revolver, put it to his temple and shot himself once in the head. The bullet never left the cavity of his skull and the autopsy revealed that died on impact of the bullet hitting his brain. But so many things that never added up have never been solved. Was he met by force and pushed into this happening? His shoes were completely filled with blood, the blood spatter in the cab of the truck was questionable. He had packed a lunch for this day at work, and his body sat in the cab of the truck hunched over for the entire duration of the work day. Several people had parked near his truck that day and his body was not discovered until after 8:00 PM that night.

So many questions, but no answers as it always is in a suicide. No letter, no note, just a simple selfish act of checking out when you want and not giving anyone the closure that is so required in the death of a loved one. But it wouldnt change anything. My dad checked out, he was either taken from me or he took himself from me. I dont buy into the uncertainty surrounding it. The books and notes show a man troubled and a man worried. But why not walk away from it? Why not give up on the railroad and find another job with no stress, no worries. This is one of many questions I have for him.

I dont know if it was right of my family to hold the news back from me and my brother for as long as they did. I know it changed my brother alot. He already was upset because he had no memory at all of my father. He didnt have the few memories that I have of good times and the image of him alive. I still think holding this from us for so long is what ultimately gave my brother the thoughts in his head that it was ok to take his own life as well. Suicide is the single most selfish way you can die. You leave those in your life that love you and depend on you with no answers and they are left to constantly question the reasons why you do it. My brother left a note, but it didnt reveal anything to us.

My dad checked out on me. He was not there to be the model of a father that I so desparately needed for my life. I was left to go at this on my own, with no stability, no direction. I didnt have what all of my friends had. I didnt have a dad that was my baseball coach, went to boy scouts with me, taught me how to fish, how to hunt, how to be a man. Instead that was left solely on my mother. With me having two children of my own now, I see just how important having both parents be involved in your life is. How there are so many things that I do and provide for the girls. There mother is there for the girly things, but I am there for the love, disciple, and the push. The push to take them out of there comfort zone and put them into situations that will make them excel. A mother by there very nature is a nuturer and will always shadow there child away from things that could hurt them.

I had always thought that I had recovered from this wound and was complete with the circumstances but counseling has shown me that I am not even close. I still have the wound and I carry it with me everyday. In the book Wild at Heart written by John Eldridge he talks about how a father's love and for a son to know he is the beloved son is so important. I never had that acknowledgement in my life. I have always looked to women in my life for affirmation that I am doing what is right. That is all I have ever know because no man in my life with the exception of my grandfather ever cared enough to try and instill masculinity in me as a young man. It is not my mother's fault, she had a heart of love as a mother. She cannot do or provide the things and oppourtunities that a father figure can for a young man.

I remember the nights that both of my daughters were born. Being in the hospital with new life in my own hands and being mad at my dad and my brother. Mad because they too robbed Hannah and Emily. They will never be given the right to know Uncle Darrell or Granddaddy Pete. The lord has blessed them with another man in my mother's life in Roger or better known by Hannah and Emily as "Mammie" that has treated them with great care and compassion, and they will never be thought of by them other than there grandfather. He came in and saved the day for them and has been crucial in there own lives.

Roger came into my life at the age of 19. A very hard time in a young man's life for him to try and get close to another man as a father figure. Roger and I are not on the best of terms alot of times. We just cant seem to understand one another and alot of it has to do with our own pasts. My character and role model of a father or husband was destroyed by my ex-step-father Kerry Plunkett. He probably did the most damage to me in my life and that is going to be in another blog. But it all goes back to my dad. How this selfish act of suicide defined my life and my brother's life as men. The foundation had been poured by him and he left us at the most cruical point in our lives when we needed him the most.

This is what upsets me the most with my dad. He had an option out, he could have thrown in the towel and gotten away from all of the hurts and struggles that he endured at the railroad. A job is nor should it ever consume you this much. I have learned valuable lessons from this tragedy. This was the main reason why I didnt have any second thoughts of turning in my badge as a police officer. But the truth is, I knew I didnt have it in me to be a police officer. It stretched me way out of my comfort zone. It put me in a world of alot of unknowns, a world that I was not prepared to be in, and it was largely because my dad had not taught me how to be a man.

That may sound like a bashing again, but when I took on this job I was not prepared for the amount of masculinity, attitude, and pig-headed macho men that were the uniform everyday. This is a much harser reality for a man to say "Do you have what it takes" and question it. It was a much different job then what I ever thought. I regret not taking that challenge all the way, but I also dont regret it completely either because I was able to walk away from a job that could cause me alot of pain and walk away clean. Why couldnt dad do the same thing.

As a father of two girls I now know what it is like to be a parent. How much work it involves, and how much benefit you can get out of it. Being able to give them the things I never had in my life as a child is what drives me to be the person that I am as a parent. I am so blessed to have them every other week after my divorce. Most men never get the chance's that I have and alot of days I feel like I take advantage of it alot and dont do as much as I should. But I am still here, fighting the fight and doing what I can to make them happy and support them in everyway I know how.

I dont know what I am trully feeling right now towards my dad, I feel cheated, left behind to fend for myself, and still have unanswered questions about how he could just decide on his own accord we were not important enough to him to fight for to be here. I kinda feel hostile towards my mother in some way, that she waited too long to tell us. I know I shouldnt be mad at my mother, but I am disappointed. There are so many things that I never got to experience as a young man that now having experienced them for the first time in life they bring me so much happiness.

I was kept away from my family that hunted and did things outdoors. Mainly because guns or hurtful things would be involved in it. My mother did this out of protection as a nuturier as every mother should, but it robbed me of alot of years to learn to be a man and really feel like a normal man. Being in the woods with other men holding a shotgun and waiting on a prey to appear is the most exzilarting thing I have ever experienced. I have only been once in my life but was hooked the first cool day in November I was given the chance to go.

I am still in the depths of this wound in my life and seeking out direction on how to find the closure in it I need. Hopefully if you are a father or a mother that is reading this today, you can take from this the importance of a father figure in a man's life. Not just a father figure, but a man who wants to be an active part of a young child, young man's life. We need to be taught the ways of this world, the ways to be a husband, ways to be a father, by there examples.

We tend to follow the examples that have been given to us and think this is the way it is supposed to be. The example I had was not a very good one and I see how it affected me and how it molded me into the person I had become. I have to find the closure necessary to realize the example give to me is not the one that I need to rely on. This is going to take some time to accomplish, but it can be done.

God is the ultimate example to each of us as to what a father should be. God wants to be our father and the person who guides us in the path we need to live. It is so hard and so difficult to think this way. I am learning to trust in him more, and learn to look at the trials in my life as a form of discipline. God uses these trials in our lives to mold us into the person he wants us to be. I have finally stopped asking God "Why me? Why did this happen?" and learn to ask "Ok, what do you want me to see in this?" What are you trying to teach me?"

When you take this approach to your life things start to make more sense. You learn from your first mistake and this keeps you from making the same mistake. Man is it hard to trust and follow God. It is probably the most challenging thing I have ever done yet in my life, to believe he has something better in store for me, even in the midst of a tragedy. But I hope to one day be able to stand on the mountain top and look back at the valley and remember where I started and where I ended up. It is a work in progress to say the least.

So many times I have wanted it fixed yesterday, but I have learned that it is all in God's timing and his timing is good. Do not interpret his temporary silence in a time of struggles as a sign that he is unsupportive or not working on it. This time is a faith builder and a faith tester and a time for you to grow in him.

Stay tuned for the outcome in this blog, I am still searching for the answers to how I heal from this and get the question answered once and for all. "God, what do you want me to learn from this? What do you want me to see?"