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Healing Journeys and Dick Pics

At 38 years old

By C.D. HoylePublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Healing Journeys and Dick Pics
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Today I saw my father’s penis for the first time. His being deceased makes it all the more impressive, I suppose.

The weathered, Blacks Photography envelope, containing the photo is labeled ‘Buffalo 1987’, making my dad 38 years old at the time.

I am 38 years old as well, today. On the day I saw my father’s penis for the first time.

During the last few months, I’ve been cleaning out my dad’s condo. He passed away after a short illness in the summer of 2017. My Stepmother followed suit just two years later.

When COVID hit I found myself in a desperate housing situation. Unable to earn an income in my career as a Massage Therapist, while still needing to provide care for my son. I was only able to produce rent for the first few months of the crisis. Luckily, my stepmother left my sister and I the gift of her very good friend as the executor of her estate.

With the executor's help, I was able to arrange to live in my dad’s old condo to help ease my financial burden, as well as organize the condo for sale when the time of probate is over.

As I clean up, and sadly, discard, most of their recorded memories, collections, clothing, and endless paperwork I have been able to know them with greater intimacy than they allowed for in life.

My dad was a private man. Often, when I’m in the thick of shredding documents, I can hear him clear his throat before launching into an explanation over why he kept every notice ever stuck on the door by the condo corporation or why he always got his photos developed in duplicates. Neither of them would have liked this process, or me heading the endeavour, of that I’m certain.

My stepmother was room temperature in her warmest moments with me. Not that way with everyone, I’ve always sensed she had a particular distaste for me. It may have been drawn from my frequent and loud laugher, joyful nature and resemblance to my mother. But mostly, I suspect, it came from the fact that, as a child, I was a daddy’s girl. She was a woman who only had eyes for her one true love; and consciously or unconsciously, she made it difficult for my dad and I to prolong our special relationship after she moved in.

Their union impacted all my dad’s most important relationships because of the priority it demanded. I now know how hard it was for my mom to watch us slowly disconnect with Dad over the years. I know how much courage it took for my aunt to voice her concerns and subsequently be cut out of his life. I know it was my dad and stepmother against the world and all-in for each other.

Thankfully, I’ve found evidence of their happy relationship all around me. Handwritten poetry dating back to the late 80s and moving forward through the years, cards, and letters. The last poem I found was a welcome home note from a week-long trip my Dad took with his golfing buddies down to Akin, SC annually, The Rude Tour. The first few lines expressed how much he was missed and how the condo was so quiet without him and ended in a catchy rhyming scheme:

“My Darling, it’s been such a long while;

Please be waiting in bed

with nothing on but a smile”.

There was also a ‘contract’ drawn up to declare what the winner of their fantasy football challenge would be entitled to. While sparing the details of the arrangement I will disclose it was a nine-point contract. The first and last points described the loser preparing dinner/drinks and then breakfast of choice the next morning. This contract, with seven unmentionable points, was stored with the poetry and love letters in dad’s nightstand. Her earliest notes to him were signed, simply, The Brunette.

I’ve discovered they were hot for each other. Other than the notes, the pics, and some old cards, the only other intimate things I found were an extensive lingerie collection and three pages torn out of an 80’s porn magazine. There was a lot of blush, bush, and hi-gloss genitals. All Brunettes.

So, today, when I came across the photo, which, now in a garbage bag at the transfer station, will live-on forever burned in my mind; I was not as shocked to discover it existed as I am that there was only one. My dad seems to have always had his photos printed in duplicate.

I sent my sister one of the pics leading up to the pic; one where our dad was wearing nothing but the purple velvet drawstring bag off a Crown Royal bottle and is posed across the bed. I wasn’t going to suffer the image alone; I have a sibling for reasons such as these.

“Noooooooooo” she replied, then, “Why??” followed closely by “this is a work phone”.

Laughter and apologies later, she remarked what I had been thinking, “His smile in that pic - wow - that’s my takeaway. He was incredibly happy.”

When people find out where I’ve been living and what I’ve been up to these last few months, they ask whether it's sad and hard to be here. I genuinely think, no; I’m better off having gone through the decades of photos and plucked out the ones that made me laugh or cry, ones I want to show my sister and my aunt. I have smiled and even laughed outright over some small treasures I’ve found. I’m happy to have been the person to shred 30 years of precisely kept documents. I’ve needed this time to reconnect to the man I knew so well, yet hardly at all. In many ways, I have been healed by the process.

At 38, I find myself separated and in a new relationship as well. I can connect with my dad, laying on that bed, smiling as his lover takes his photo. I can even relate to my young stepmother, at the time, wanting to be with the man she loved but not knowing her place in his life and the lives of his children. I better understand how the failure in our bond may have been in never making space for her; how, in sharing one man's time collectively, we set the stage for competition. We never seized or created opportunities for any of the little moments it takes to build trust and trust is what it means to have a relationship with a child. Showing up and being consistent.

At 38, I am proud of myself for being there for my stepmother's final weeks in the hospital. For holding her hand, and channeling any of my dad that I possess within me, to be there for her. I complimented their love and how she was there for him. I repeated the things I heard her say to him during his final days, during hers.

At 38, I have friends who are trying to blend families. I have friends who want children of their own while their partners say they are done, already having children from previous relationships. I have friends getting married, I have friends getting divorced. I have friends struggling with infertility, another who is pregnant with an unplanned baby. A friend who got sick and died.

At 38, my dad was in the throes of all life has to offer as well. Even though his relationship wasn’t great for me; it was for him. They thoroughly enjoyed 30 years of loving the life they made together. I’m grateful I got to catch a glimpse of it. I’m happy to have stumbled across numerous sunset photos taken from the very same balcony where I, myself, have been filling my Instagram feed with sunsets. Decades worth of notebooks from the trips they took. All my dad’s clothes and belongings still taking up half of the space of their life years after his death, signs of how devastated she was to lose him.

At 38, I know what kind of relationship I want to model for my son. I know that loving me means loving him and my understanding of love is that it never divides or subtracts, it multiplies.

At 38 I’ve found a relationship that lights me up, sparks my creativity, holds space, inspires some serious ghostbusting (a story for another time), and, yes, even has me writing poetry.

At 38, I have secured all my nudes.

Family
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About the Creator

C.D. Hoyle

C.D. Hoyle is a writer who is also a manual therapist, business owner, mother, co-parent, and partner. You will find her writing sometimes gritty, most times poignant, and almost always a little funny. C.D. Hoyle lives in Toronto.

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