By Nancy Gonzalez, CFLE

Carl Jung had a word for the eeriness when two or more unrelated events occur together in a seemingly meaningful way—Synchronicity. This past week, I came to appreciate this concept that heretofore has seemed like magical thinking. I just returned from a conference in Seattle. The same day, President Obama gave a Father’s Day address about the importance of fathers in the lives of children. So what’s the connection?  For me, it’s about Seattle. It's about the anniversary of my father's death this week. And it’s about two generations of missing fathers.

When my father was 11 years old, his mother died suddenly at age 37. Within just a few hours, she went from perfect health to death by encephalitis. In her final hours, she writhed in pain with a crushing headache. My father was big for his age, and so he was recruited to help hold his mother down on the bed while she was screaming.  This was New Year’s Day, 1940.

That wasn’t the only traumatic event for my dad within a year. The previous September, 1939, the family home burned to the ground. My grandfather had just purchased an insurance policy on the home the month before. The house burned while they were visiting at a relative’s house.  I heard from more than one source that all the circumstantial evidence pointed toward insurance fraud. They rebuilt a house, and the family moved in just before Christmas, 1939.

On New Year’s Day, just days thereafter, my grandmother was gone. I pieced all this together years ago by hunting through newspaper microfiche and questioning elderly relatives. Just a few weeks after my grandmother’s death, my grandfather left for Seattle to work in the shipyards. He abandoned his children right after they lost their mother. The youngest was just five months old. My father and his five siblings, all 16 or younger, were left in a rural farmhouse in northern Minnesota.  An aunt took the baby in. The rest of the kids spent about a year fending for themselves. That same aunt told me that she and the neighbors did the best they could, but they couldn’t cope with all those children plus their own large families. They made sure the kids didn’t starve, but couldn’t manage much beyond that. The relatives and neighbors were disgusted with the house fire incident and furious that my grandfather left. He eventually returned, but the damage was done.

Something must have happened that year to that 11 year old… my father.  He lost his home to fire. He lost his mother. And he learned that his father could pick up and leave him at any time.  I was born when my father was 32, and by then he was a cruel and violent person. Whether his childhood trauma is partially or completely responsible for his downfall, I’ll never know. My father was an unrepentant tyrant until his death in 1990. Ironically, I am sure my life would have been much better if he had abandoned us and left for Seattle—or anywhere.

When I got to Seattle last week, I began to think about my grandfather. He did the unthinkable—he burned down a house for the insurance money. Then he abandoned six motherless, grieving children. His moral principles were appalling. I can’t believe I share any DNA with such a person. There’s no excuse, but this was late in the Great Depression. He needed the money. (Who didn’t?)  Then, after losing his wife, he was probably bereaved to the point of clinical depression. Coping alone with all those children was overwhelming. I think I know why he went to Seattle—or at least why he stayed there so long. From the 15th floor of a downtown hotel, I saw for myself the beauty of the Puget Sound. If I had to get away from it all, this is where I’d go. Which brings me back to father absence.

One of our scholars, a researcher and theorist, Pauline Boss, has studied psychological father absence in depth. Her research, and that of many other NCFR members, finds that dads do matter—by their presence or by their absence.  My dad lost his father physically for a year—psychologically forever.  My father was physically present, but undermined our family psychological health.

Another one of our scholars, William Marsiglio, studies the importance of men in the lives of youth. I blogged about his book, Men on a Mission, about a year ago.  http://community.ncfr.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=105 .

In the latest issue of Altantic magazine, there is an article entitled “Are Fathers Necessary?”  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/are-fathers-necessary/8136  . It’s a provocative question.  Research will keep answering this question, but in my life, my N= 1 anecdotal answer is “yes, they are.”  I have felt father loss profoundly my entire life. Evidently, my father did too. A dear friend of mine lost her father at age five. It was Christmas time. The church at which the funeral was held was decorated with Poinsettias. Forty-five years has elapsed, and she still can’t stand the sight of Poinsettias.

President Obama was abandoned by his father age two. He got a brief visit from him at age 10, then a few letters, and then he never saw him again.  Obama still hurts. He vowed that Malia’s and Sasha’s lives would be different.

I took a similar vow. At age 16, I vividly remember the moment when I made the decision to study human behavior. I was in my bedroom, and I could hear my parents screaming at each other at the other end of the house. I decided not only would I study what makes people tick, if I had any children, I would make sure their lives would be different.  I succeeded.  My husband’s and my only child, son Eric, has had a fabulous dad. Should Eric decide to become I father, I already see the makings of a wonderful father in him.  The most important thing I will have ever done—or will ever do—is being the generation that broke the cycle.

Listen to Obama’s story about father loss that is decidedly more eloquent than mine. The President’s Father’s Day message is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/06/21/president-obama-promotes-responsible-fatherhood-no-excuses .

Epilogue:  My grandfather began to die the day he arrived in Seattle. The job he performed in ship-building involved working heavily with asbestos. He died of the resultant Mesothelioma in 1962.  I have only one wispy memory of him—he died when I was 2½. I can see him sitting on our red sofa holding his arms out to me, smiling and saying, “Nancy, come here.”  I remember feeling joyful as I began toddling over to him. That’s all I have from them; just one happy memory in two generations of fathers.