TW: Happy Birthday, Father. I’m Sorry.

Deets On Deets

Deets On Politics

Dec 26, 2023

Happy Birthday, Father. I’m Sorry.

Ronald Eugene Deets, Sr. at ~ 50 years old in ~ 2001.

December 26.

The day after Christmas.

The day that gave me a complex about Christmas.

It was your birthday. A day designated as a celebration of your life.

Did it feel that way, towards the end?

After your government used you and discarded you?

After your spouse abused you and divorced you?

After your doctor pumped you (full of opioids) and dumped you?

After your body destroyed you and began to kill you?

Was it a celebration? Or was it something else?

Was it a reminder of the life you had? Of the body you had?

Of the family you had? Good or bad? Healthy or toxic?

Did that day of celebration devolve into a triggering rumination?

Did that day once celebrated by intoxication become a basis for disassociation?

A grim reminder of the Christmases gone by?

The tree. The lights. The Eve-Time story and present?

Of children, you once tried to bring smiles become defiled by their birther manipulator?

Those few moments of joy between episodes of pain and madness become pangs of sorrow as the pain of cancer ate your stomach as trauma ate your neurons?

Ronald Eugene Deets, Sr. at ~ 43 years old and Ronald Eugene Deets, Jr. at ~ 6 years old in ~ 1992.

Even though I have now lived life longer with you gone than I have lived with you here, I’m still that same 16-year-old kid who would forever question if your last human communication was an unreturned gesture of parental love.

That same kid who would forever question that night, your death, even who knew what and when around your death.

That same kid who would forever bear the guilt of the byproduct of their own victimization. She married you. Then she birthed me and turned me into you.

You should have been my dad. She made you into my competition.

She was supposed to be my mother. She molded me into her partner.

Before I even had a chance to know you, she poisoned me against you.

Living in the same house, father and son were still worlds apart, separated by a sea of narcissism and abuse.

It should have been her.

That February or March night in 2003. Alone. In pain. Being eaten from the inside out.

It should have been her.

“Ronald Eugene Deets Sr. at ~ 18 years old in ~1966 from his Naval Class Yearbook”.

Not the disabled veteran who gave his health for his country.

Not the girl’s basketball coach who loved his children.

Not the boy’s basketball coach who’s body and mind gave out before he could really coach his youngest.

I know you weren’t perfect. You were an asshole. You held… outdated views.

You also never had a chance to change. High school to Navy to Disability.

Not to mention your likely undiagnosed neurodiverse condition(s).

“Ronald Eugene Deets, Sr.’s” United States Navy discharge notice, attained via FOIA request.

Before your mind had even matured, it had been tainted by trauma and TCDD.

You needed help, and you got dopesick in return.

So, here, almost 21 years after your passing, I offer up an apology.

I apologize for a nation who used your body and destroyed your mind.

I apologize for a spouse who used your money and destroyed your will.

I apologize for a medical community who chased opioid incentives over their Hippocratic Oath.

And I apologize for that 16-year-old kid who couldn’t simply say “I love you, too” as you were likely taking your final breaths.

Ronald Eugene Deets, Jr. at 16 years old on the day of Ronald Eugene Deets, Sr.’s memorial service in March 2003.

There is no amends that can be made for the sins a nation, a spouse, and a doctor committed upon your life, but, hopefully, maybe, we can salvage the lives of Veterans living under similar circumstances.

Psychedelics are close. We’re learning more and more about cancer, neuropathy, and Bipolar disorder. We’re learning more about fibromyalgia and generalized pain.

We have the tools, and we know what happens when we don’t use them.

We know how UBI and housing programs can go a long ways in rehabbing Vets that we have broken.

We’re learning more about abuse and talking about it. Generational curses/Epigenetic trauma can be healed.

I’m sorry that we’re just too late as a society to embrace these changes.

We couldn’t save you. But hopefully, as people learn about you, we can save people like you. People like me. People who have fallen through the cracks.

So, in short, Happy Birthday, dad. Even though those days weren’t really ever happy for either of us.

So, I guess a more apt terminology is simply “Remembrance Day”. Because lives aren’t always happy. But hopefully we can still learn from them nonetheless.

Hell, we may only be able to learn from unhappy lives. Any advances in a society has to come from “the least of these,” after all.

And if you didn’t qualify under that banner, I certainly do not know who would.