Let me tell you about my Dad.


My dad was from Cambodia, in or very near the capitol of Phnom Penh. His family was pretty well off; he studied with monks and spoke the language of privilege there (French). He told me stories of his uncle, who supposedly owned an elephant farm (I know, wtf?) and how he spent time there playing with the baby elephants. When he was an older teenager he owned a motorcycle. He thought it made him cool.

Eventually he joined the Khmer navy. His commanding officer sent him to America for education. That was the late 60's, very early 70's ish. After he left Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took over the country. He never went back.

He took a class in San Antonio, where he met my mother. He thought she was pretty; she thought he looked good in his uniform. My father tells me they eloped, my mother claims differently. I am inclined to believe my father because my mother is always very hazy on the details. They moved to Houston, where they lived in a tiny apartment that has since been turned into business offices. My father got a job working in the mail room of a bank (Bank One, if any of you remember it). One day he bought a car, parked it in the lot across from their apartment, and asked my mom what she thought of it. She said it was ugly, he said it was theirs. It was green, a jalopy that was bought for less than $500 if I remember correctly.

My dad moved up in the bank. They moved around Houston, to Greenspoint (which then was apparently the happening hip place to be and not somewhere where you needed a bullet-proof vest just to shop), and finally to Humble. They bought a house in Atascocita South, 19002 Pine Trace Court. They bought it from a couple that was getting divorced. The (ex)husband sat on a mattress in the living room scowling the entire time that my parents were shown the house. A few years later, on August 16, 1989, Megan Chantha was born (that would be me). Just under two years later Chaney Sophorn was born on June 2, 1991 (that would be my brother).

I was always a daddy's girl. I went everywhere with him. I talked like him. I dressed like him. I would wear his shirts and walk around in my sandals pretending to smoke a pretzel-cigarette during the day and at night he would take me to his work, where he had risen to become the head of the check processing division, where I would be fawned over by his co-workers. He could lay tile, build a deck, cook a delicious meal, and knew how many ridges were on a dime. Every day he would quiz me with bits of trivia. He worked nights, and Mother stayed home with us. She was always the disciplinarian and he was the spoiler. Any time I asked him for something, I got it. He would carry me around on his shoulders and he built me a swing set and a play set.

When I was in fifth grade, about ten years-old, he got laid off. We had just moved to a new house. I've always called it the Big House. It was beautiful, with blue carpet and a window in my closet. This was when debit/check cards were beginning to rise in popularity. People weren't writing as many checks as they were in previous years. My dad's whole department was closed and all the workers let go. He tried finding another job, but no one wanted to hire him. He was too old, too experienced. Why pay his salary when a company could hire a younger, less-experienced worker and pay him less?

Long story short, we lost the house. Well, we didn't so much lose it as we did abandon it. We packed up our stuff and moved into a smaller, older house. The house we live in now. Dad still couldn't find a job. He was a proud man, he refused to work an eighteen-hour day at minimum wage just to support his family. Eventually, his life insurance term was set to run out. He had a plan, to ensure that his family would not lose another house.

He purposely drank himself to death. He bought huge bottles of alcohol in the hopes that he would suffer from liver failure and die before his life insurance ran out so that his family would have the money to pay off this tiny house so we wouldn't be stuck out on the streets. It didn't work.

His life insurance term ended and he was still alive, but now he was addicted to the alcohol and couldn't stop drinking.

I had two fathers growing up. The doting one who spoiled me rotten and wanted only for his family to have everything in the world, and the angry alcoholic one who I fought with everyday for two years. He was angry and bitter and defeated. He was not the proud man that I knew and loved. For me, my daddy died the day he picked up that first bottle of alcohol and decided that it was the only way he could be a good provider for his family.

He died about a week after my ninth grade year ended. I was told a lot of things in the wake of his death, but that's another story for another time. I didn't cry when he died. I didn't cry at the funeral. I cried for two years before that though, and I finally did cry for him about two years after everyone else said their goodbyes to him. Sometimes, I feel like I'm still crying for him. For the loss of my proud, funny, smart, honorable father. For the man who let me follow his footsteps and carried me on his shoulders. He taught me to ride a bike and roller skate and do long division. I have his feet and his mouth and his eyes and his mind.

My dad was a good man. He made one dumb decision that destroyed my family, but he is not in my mind defined by that decision. He will always be a good man and he will always be a man that I love. He is defined in my mind's eye by the pumpkins he carved, the Girl Scout cookies he helped me sell, the Christmas lights he put up, the fireworks he set off, the barbecue he made. He is my feet and my mouth and my wit. He is also the responsibility and the grief that he laid on my shoulders when he picked up that bottle of alcohol. And I carry that weight alongside all of the good memories I have of him. But that weight is mine, not his. It has made me stronger.

My family has a lot of trouble with money. We don't have it. We can't afford to buy meat most days, or fresh veggies. We've almost lost our house several times. There have been times when we could not afford to get our air conditioner or washing machine fixed because money was just too tight that month.

I am mad at my dad. I love him so much and it's really hard to say, but I am mad at my dad. I'm glad he hasn't had to watch us struggle because that would have done more damage to him than his alcohol-induced anger did to us. But struggling like we have, I have learned the strength of having family to support you. And he took that from us. You cannot be whole after losing your whole world. And that's what he was to me. My world.

I have a friend who has had trouble in her life. She calls it trauma. I call it misfortune. She says that's one thing we have in common, one thing uniting us. That we have both weathered these bad things in our lives and have come out to live another day, somehow stronger for it. She says she has never thought of me as broken, that to her I am always whole. And I am. Whole. But just because something is whole, doesn't mean it doesn't have cracks or imperfections in its surface. And the largest imperfection in my surface is the crack that was left by my dad.

I love him, but I am mad at my dad. Mad for having to lose him, mad because of everything in my life he's missed, mad because he made a stupid decision. And sometimes when people die, you just have to allow yourself to be mad. And that's okay. As long as you don't let it consume you, it's okay if you are mad and you stay mad. Because dead men can't apologize for their mistakes. You can be mad and still find peace. And that's something that you can't learn until someone important to you is gone. Even then, some people never do. They let it consume them and they fail to ever move on. But as long as you're moving, it's okay to be mad.


Sorry if I get a bit rambly there at the end. I wrote this in three different sittings and I'm not really sure what kind of point I was trying to make.