When Families Clash: The Evil Mother/Daughter In Law Myth

When I got married in 2000, my parents weren't there. The reason behind this was the fact that my mother and my wife just could not get along. Certainly there were other things behind that, but in order to heal, I've had to put them in the past. My father and I were stuck in the middle of two warring factions, each one thinking that they were in the right. And my father and I had to choose sides. And choose we did.

My father chose my mother's side; as she was his life. They had been married for over 40 years and one would expect him to choose his wife's side.

Likewise, I chose the side that I felt understood me and what I had gone through. Years of being subordinated by my mother to college students that had no familial relationships; (they were placed on a pedestal; I was the son that could do no right); a feeling of self-worthlessness, and that made up for a bitter cocktail that set me up against my blood-family. In anger and in bitterness against my blood family, I chose to stand by my wife.

When I was in my 20s and single, I couldn't relate to my father as I wasn't a married man and I didn't feel like I was completely grown up. When I had gotten married in my 30s, he and I would have been on equal footing, a meeting of equal minds. I had hoped that in my marriage that my father and I could look upon our wives as our loving spouses and be "one happy family". But it wasn't to be.

Put it plainly and simply, I feel robbed. I feel robbed of my time with my father. I feel robbed that I couldn't spend time with my father in any shape or form as married men; that we (the two of us couldn't go out to a coffee-shop, grab a coffee and sit down and talk to each other as men; not as father and son, but as men). We should have been able to have that time together; to see each other as grownups, not as my father viewing me as the child who in his eyes never was able to grow up.

As men, our roles are to take control of the family; to guide the family in a direction meant to bring prosperity and a secure home. Our goal is to bring family harmony to the hearth. And if that means telling your spouse that in no way shape or form that you are going to condone family disunity, then that is something that we should have done in the first place. As men, it was our role to step in and say to our wives. "That's enough...this stops NOW!" We both failed to do so and in that regards, we were robbed of our (my father's and mine) time together.

And now my father isn't here anymore for us to be able to have that time together. So think on this. Is petty family squabbling worth squandering precious moments together? Is a few moments of satisfaction of "one-upman-ship" worth a lifetime of pain. Think of that the next time that you feel that your mother or daughter-in-law is the face of evil. I'd give anything to have that time with my dad; the rapport that he and I would have as married men; as equals, but I know that I never will now. And I feel robbed.

Dear Dad #1...

Dear Dad,

I'm seeing eagles; more often now than before you passed away. I don't know if you're sending them to me or what, but every time I see them I see a surge of peace come through me as if you were standing there beside me.

Things have changed around here. Mom got hit with a real shock when you died. You know how Mom and I didn't get along too well before you passed away. We mended fences. I heard the "Tanomu Yo". Dad, I'm taking care of Mom. Whatever help she needs, she gets. And Mom has become the Mom that I had when I was young. She's there for me when I need her too.

Heather is due in another month for the fourth and last child that we'll ever have. I'll be 60 by the time that this youngest one (to be born in August) is 20. I think that's enough. We hope it's a daughter. You know, Dad, you were so pleased to have three male grandchildren to carry on the family name. But y'know, Dad, there's a soft spot in my heart that wants to care for a little girl, that one of these days, I'll be able to walk down the aisle and hand her off to the man who will become her husband...and scare the living daylights out of him...saying "You make her cry; I'll make YOU cry!"

There's nothing that I can really say that verbalizes the depth of the loss that I'll always feel. You were always there for me, Dad and even though sometimes it didn't seem like I appreciated it. Deep down, Dad, I always did. I miss you still...and always will for the rest of my life.

Always,

Your son...

The Reason I Still Grieve (The Loss of My Father)

Some people have asked me why I haven't "gotten over" the death of my father yet? Asides from making me extremely angry; that question has prompted me to answer why rather than lashing out in rage and resentment.

When I was 8 years old, my mother went off the rails emotionally (due to emotional scarring during her internment during the Second World War). My dad and I had to pick up the pieces. He was my emotional rock, because as a child, I couldn't understand what was going on. He became my one stable point in a sea of emotional chaos; he protected me. He tried to do that; all while carrying a job and making sure that our financial needs were met as well.

No, I wasn't entirely protected...I still got the fall-out from it when my father was at work though. I had to protect myself then. My mother was suicidal most of the time. She either tried to throw herself down a well or tried to OD on medication. Yet through all of that I somehow managed to try to maintain good grades in school and get through. Yet every day in the back of my mind even after she seemed to get better. "Is this the day she's going to flip her lid?"

If there was one constant, it was my dad. He tried to make a life for me. He, above all, tried to hold himself as an example for me. Though the world may crumble around you, you stand strong and do what you have to do to hold back the tide. That's what a man has to do.

Every day I'm wondering if I am holding back the tide or whether I'm failing miserably. I'm wondering how I'm holding up this facade of being "strong" when I feel weak inside. Everyday, even though I don't think I've given myself enough time to grieve properly, I get up in the morning, take my kids to school and bring them home; try to offer my children a stable place that they feel protected...and try to get through the day and make my way in this world.

I told my dad I loved him, just before he went and he knew it, but did he know just how thankful I was for him, his guidance, his acceptance of me; his love for me that he rarely ever said but tried to show in actions rather than in words? That, I don't know, and it will forever haunt me that I could never verbalize it at the time of his death.

So don't try and rush me through my grief. Just let me grieve in my own pace and in my own time. I haven't neglected the family, I haven't stopped paying attention to the kids except when they annoy the hell out of me. I haven't stopped eating, I haven't sunk into the depths of depression where I have no will to live (I have things I need to do with my life yet to even think of dying). I may be a grouchy son-of-a bitch, but I've always been one. That has nothing to do with my father's death.

Just understand that I miss my Dad, that I will always miss him, until the day that I die and that from now on some days will be better than others...but there will always be an underlying sadness that just doesn't "GO AWAY". Above all...don't tell me to "GET OVER IT"! Death isn't something that I can just get over...especially the death of a loved one who was an integral part of my life, who practically had to raise me as well as be the breadwinner of the house when the other half wasn't emotionally there. My wife was close to her mother, I"m close to my dad. And when I lost my dad, it was like losing a part of me.

The "Heirarchy of Grief" - "My Hurt's Worse Than Yours; My Loss is Greater Than Yours"

When my dad died in December of 2009, there were people who genuinely mourned his passing along with me and then there were others who strove to try to minimize my loss by saying "Well, he had a long life; at least he wasn't murdered or had a long, drawn-out illness or what not...etc, etc. etc..."

To the former, I say "Thank you for your concern and patience"; to the latter, I say. "Look, I don't give a shit about the what-ifs and the barbed-platitudes. I just wish I still had my Dad around."

I'm tired of seeing a "grief competition" or grief ownership. Why does every loss have to be a competition of who had the greater loss? Why do the victims of violence get to "lord it over those of us who have lost their loved ones by natural causes"? To me it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference. They're ALL dead, they ALL leave behind people who miss them deeply and will never, ever be the same again. "I'm sorry that you hurt but don't minimize my pain either regardless of the circumstances!" I think Pamela Cytrynbaum got it right in her Psychology Today Article: The Heirarchy of Grief - Who Is The Biggest Loser

Society has created a "step-ladder" of entitlement to sympathy.


In society there seems to be a heirarchy of grief and loss, where those who stand at the pinnacle are the ones who've had loved ones murdered with there being a heirarchy even there. Mothers who have lost children to violent crime stand at the very pinnacle of that heirarchy. Everybody has to bow down to those who have lost their children to a murder as if that epitomizes the very essence of loss and grief. Those who mourn their parents are at the very bottom of the heap. Does that mean we ache less than the mother who lost her child through murder? I don't think so. Why should we be made to feel guilty for our own grief just because the loss of our loved one didn't meet society's criteria for grief...by getting themselves murdered by a criminal?

"Well, think of what your mother is going through." Yes, I can and I'm sure she hurts just as much as I do. We lost someone who was very important in our lives. It doesn't matter how, it doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter WHAT AGE...he was.

"Be strong for your family and help your mother through this time." Well, buddy, do you not think that having lost my father, that I shouldn't take time to grieve myself. That I should just squelch down my grief and turn around and help someone else because..."my, oh my, her grief is much more than yours..."

And people say this without thinking how their words affect other people. It's annoying at least; enraging at worst.

So I ask society in general. Why should I minimize my own loss; why should I bow to someone else's loss and forget my own because society says that I should pay more heed to the grief of a widow of a veteran or the surviving families of a murder victim? I feel that everyones' loss is personal and important to their respective families regardless of the circumstances, and telling me to subordinate the loss of my father because so and so's son or daughter was murdered is an insult to my father's memory.

Remembering my Father: Yasutsugu Chikamori

My father was a good man. He was also a walking contradiction. He was tough, but gentle, stern, yet kind; concerned about money and how it was spent, yet generous to his family. From what I could say to God (Kamisama), he was a wonderful father. He was not perfect. No person is. And I’m not a perfect son either. We had differences of opinion as I got older; some would say that some differences were quite acrimonious. He felt I had a future in piano, I didn’t. He did not like the fact that I had quit music, but I felt that I had no talent in it.

But I feel that he had an opinion and a valued opinion at that. He recognized in his final years that I had some talent in photography and encouraged me to pursue it if I felt that it was what I was meant to do. After all, he did cultivate the seed and I will pursue photography as a business and make it a success in my father’s memory.

My first memory of my father was of him holding me. I was a little baby not yet a day old as he wrapped his strong arms around me. Throughout my life he has been my inspiration and my guiding light.

My father was a pillar of strength for this family. My paternal grandfather died when my father was 6 which left him to be the sole family supporter. My father was 6 when the war started; 11 years old when it ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He saw the flash of the bomb from across the strait from Kyoto, far enough away to not suffer flash burns to the retinas of his eyes.

He married my mother in 1956 and emigrated from Japan to Canada. My maternal grandfather was like a surrogate father to him, and he learned the trade of gardening. My father had a natural green thumb and anything he touched grew. He also went to work as a glass-cutter. That cost him his dream of playing the cello as he suffered an injury to his right hand where he lost his thumb and his index finger to his knuckle joint. It took him an year to recover full use of his hand and from then on, he had to write out checks and other business related things with the pen cradled between his middle finger and ring finger of his right hand.

My father always wanted me to do well at the things I did. He fostered my love of photography; he also catered to my love of scale modeling, as well as my love of airplanes. In short, anything I wanted to do was fine with him, just so long as it was legal and that I did it well. When he was growing up, if he didn’t do well, his family didn’t eat and he had three brothers that he had to take care of when he was growing up. My father was a hard-working man. He wanted to leave a legacy for his grandchildren and he worked into his early 70s. Because he was such a great worker, the company was reluctant to let him retire.

I remember the times that he used to take me to the air show or to the airport to photograph airplanes with the Polaroid Land 100. That was a gift, a gift of his time and his love for me, to see me happy and I enjoyed the time that I spent with him.

I know during my 20s, during my years in real estate, I think he despaired if I would ever get married and that he would ever see grandchildren. I finally met the woman that I would marry in 1999. In 2000, I brought her up from Louisiana. My parents were not at the wedding as we had a falling out over differences of opinion over the friends I kept. And the first few years of my marriage, our relationship was tenuous at best. The first years of my marriage were times that I wish that if I could do over, I would do it differently with us keeping better relations with my parents.

When my first son was born, that was when he was overjoyed. And when Heather provided him a second grandson to go with the first, two years later, he was “over-the-moon.” My mother said to me yesterday, at the funeral home where we were making arrangements for my father’s burial, when I was choking up over “not being the son that I wished that I could have been to my father when he was alive”, that I “gave him the best possible gift that I ever could have given him by giving him 7 years to be with his grandchildren”; grandchildren that he thought that he wouldn’t ever see as his father’s early death weighed heavily on him.



My father and two of his beloved grandchildren

My father loved his family, though he was not a demonstrative man. None of his generation was. They were the generation that got through the Second World War, on the battlefields, on the home-front, and trying to live life while a war was going on and taking lives. My mother was going through his personal effects this morning and when she got to his wallet, she sat down and cried when she saw the contents: a picture of me and Heather, and pictures of his grandchildren. Those pictures were absolutely important to him because they represented his family.

We are an interracial family. My wife is Caucasian, my grandchildren are Hapa (half and half). We have extended family roots that span Japan, Canada and the United States. My father was not all that interested in pursuing his roots, but I’m sure he’s going to get one heck of an eye-opener at all the people in our now expanded family who are waiting to meet him at the gates of the place where we all go to when we pass on. Because it isn’t just going to be his father Masumi and his mother Chizuru who will be waiting for him at the gate, it will be my father-in-law, my grandmother and grandfather on my maternal side and all our extended relations.

I just want to extend my thanks to all the people who expressed their well-wishes and their condolences at this time. To my dear step-sister Terry Klos, our step-nieces Tanya Anthonisen, and Denise King and our dear cousins Paris and Eve Saizan who are also keeping my father in their hearts today. Thank you. And to all my friends who grew up with me and went to school with me who expressed their sadness and their condolences, Thank you again. That means so much to me. And I thank you for your love and your kindness in expressing your thoughts to me.

My last memories of my father, which are just as vivid as the first is of my father’s vitals flickering one last time as I walked in the hospital room. My mother says that he tried to convey something to me; that he loved me at the very last. When they turned the machines that were keeping him alive off; his spirit and body lingered just long enough to ask me if it was alright to go. I held his hand throughout the entire process, and leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Go, be at peace…I love you, Dad” in Japanese and his heart stopped immediately. He heard what I said, knew that I had taken on the mantle of the “head of the entire family” and that it was alright for him to depart this earth. Being there with him felt like the right thing to do: My father was there when I came into this world, I wanted to be there with him guiding him as my father went from this world to the next.

When my wife, my children and I were heading home on the SkyTrain; we saw the clouds break as we got to Main-Street Station and it stayed that way all the way to Edmonds when I saw this absolutely beautiful rainbow. I would like to think that it was my dad, saying his final goodbye to me and to my family. It just stayed long enough for me and my family to see it and then it dissipated.

I will always have the memories of my father in my heart. I will always remember what a strong and caring man he was. Despite the pain in my heart, I will always know that he loved me to the very last, that he loved my wife (who he felt was like a daughter to him) and my children. My mother is lost without him and it tears me apart when I see the expression in her eyes that makes it seem like she doesn’t want to live without him. All I can do is to be a bulwark of strength that she can rely on.

I write this with tears in my eyes, but I know that he lived a good life, that his passing was quick and relatively painless. I know that he would not have wanted to continue to live considering the damage that the heart-attack had caused. He was an independent strong man and the last thing he would have wanted was to live the rest of his life as an invalid. He knew that it was time to go and that his entire family was there together to say goodbye.

I ask that my extended relatives who have gone before me: “Take care of my dad, he’s probably lost and lonely because his family that meant all to him is back in this world. Take care of him for me until I get there.”

My last words are to my father: “Dad, you were the one who brought me into this world. You guided me into being the man I am today. You have now given me the responsibility over the Chikamori family as a whole and passed your inner strength on to me. I will do my best to give the same example as you gave me to my own children. You told me always to never give up, to always keep fighting; to not let anything bring me to my knees. I am the stronger, because you were in my life. You were always loved, Dad, and you will never, ever be forgotten. Farewell, dear Dad, but I can’t say good-bye; because I know that we will meet again, when I pass from this world. I love you, Dad…and I will miss you for the rest of my life.”