The Value of My Father's Life

How should a life be measured?

I have reflected on the question for the last few days as I ponder the passing of my father. It is easy to focus only on the end of his life and the decisions that led to his isolation and estrangement from his family but I do not think that is fair. My father was a mean and angry man who did mean and angry things, but he did not do only mean and angry things. Like all of us, he was much more complicated than that.

He was a violent man who beat my mother while they were married. When she took their three young children (we were all under 5 years old), he could have abandoned us. He could have ignored his responsibilities and refused to pay child support. He could have, but he didn’t. The checks always came.

When my mother divorced her second husband and became a single mom to three teenage boys she found herself in dire financial straits. She asked my father for more child support. He didn’t have to pay her more as there was no court order compelling him to increase the payments, but he did. As seemingly incapable as he was of giving emotional support he never wavered in his financial support.

As a father, he was often impossible to please. I have vivid memories of being a small child and him harshly criticizing me for the way I pulled on my socks, took off my shirts and even my choice of spoon when I ate my morning cereal. I was a pigeon-toed and awkward child and his biting “humor” found in me an easy target.  He called me "spastic" and when someone else was clumsy he said they had "pulled a Bart." His words were incredibly hurtful and damaging. To this day the memories of his words still bring a sense of fear and anxiety.

As mean as he was this angry man found the time to play with us. He taught us card games, played board games with us and organized football and basketball games with the kids in the neighborhood. He took us to San Diego Padres baseball games and Chargers football games and took us to the beach and taught us how to ride the waves on an inflatable raft. These moments were not idyllic, he was often impatient and critical and some initially pleasant times  degenerated into tears, but he gave us attention. He was inconsistent and unpredictable but there were times when he tried to be a dad.

His struggles with being a parent did not end when I reached adulthood. He struggled with my independence and career choices. He wanted more from me than I did for myself. He appropriately questioned my decision to drop out of college and forcefully encouraged me to re-enroll. When I did, he paid my tuition all the way through medical school. In spite of his financial support he did not have much faith in me. I will never forget his response when I told him of my perfect GPA at the end of my first year at the University of California, Irvine. He said, “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.”

He was not a man of encouragement. He seldom gave praise and never gave hugs. Growing up I never thought he was proud of me or that he loved me for who I was. He seemed to see every flaw and catch every mistake while missing or minimizing every success. And yet, when I looked into the audience as I walked off the stage with my Medical Diploma in my hands I saw my father head and shoulders above the crowd, standing on his chair and proudly pumping his fist in the air.

For the three years I was in my Family Practice residency he was incredibly supportive of me and my family. Each month a check for $500 came in the mail, (almost $1000 in today's dollars.) He knew my resident’s salary was not enough to support a family and he did not want Lisa to have to work. It is because of him that she was able to stay home with our son.

His generosity had a profound impact on our lives, which made his decision to disown me shortly after graduation so difficult to process. I knew he was angry and had fits of temper, but I had always hoped there was some measure of good underneath. I had heard the horrible stories told by my step-brother and mother, of physical and verbal abuse, but thought that he had softened with age, and that love, especially for his grandson, would win out. It didn't.  His choice to cut off all contact with me and my family for the remaining 24 years of his life proved that anger ultimately won.

So how do I measure his life?

There is no question that his anger and inability to love left marks on me. My battles with anxiety, insecurity and anger are part of his cursed heritage. I struggle every day to overcome the damage he wrought. It is only by the grace of God that I have learned what it means to be a loving husband and father. Although I had no role model in my own family, God blessed me with a father-in-law who modeled goodness and kindness. 

In spite of the damage my father did it does not seem fair to ignore the support he gave me earlier in life. His gifts were tainted and had strings attached but they made a difference nonetheless. They had value. While the good he did is dwarfed by the harm, his warped generosity did help my family through difficult times. He was not a good man, but he was more than just a bad man.

I think this is the reality for all of us. None of us are totally good or totally evil. We are all broken people who fail and succeed to varying degrees. This truth of universal brokenness begs the question- How do we measure a life? Do we pull out a set of scales and divide up a man’s deeds and see where the balance lies? If so, do we give greater weight to more recent harms or blessings?  Many people have done terrible deeds believing in the moment that they were doing the right thing. How do we decide where to draw the line?

I do not believe that I am in a position to answer this question for others. It is not my place to decide. As I think about my father I realize there are pieces of his puzzle that are hidden from me. I have no knowledge of his childhood or of his relationship with his father. I do not know if he was abused or scorned, loved or hated. I do not know his mental history. As an experienced physician I see in his behavior hints of mental illness that were not visible to me when I was young. I do not know if he battled his demons or embraced them. I do not know if he was even capable of love. 

What I do know is that he paid a price for his sins in this life. I have wonderful children who fill the world with love, joy and laughter. My father never knew them. Theirs is a joy he never shared. In my relationship with my father-in-law I experienced the incredibly rich blessing of shared respect between two grown men. I received the wisdom of his years of life experience and he received the joy of seeing his wisdom shape me into a better person. My father never experienced this blessing, the joy of adult friendship with a son. My father lived the pain of loneliness.

Sadly for my father, the pain of this life pales in comparison to the pain that may await. My father rejected faith many years ago. To my knowledge he never turned to God. For the rest of eternity he will give account to His creator for his choice. It is God who will judge.

As it is God who will ultimately judge there is little to be gained expending energy judging my father. My time is better spent judging my own heart. When I turn my gaze inward I see incredible room for improvement. I have more bad in me than can be expunged in one lifetime. While true goodness eludes me I nevertheless intend to spend the rest of my life striving to be a better man.

The success of my self improvement efforts will be measured after I am gone. I often tell others that I have two goals in life, both to be fulfilled when I die. The first is that when I stand before my God I will hear Him say, “Well done.” The second is that my children will tell others on my passing that I was the greatest man they ever knew. I do not know if I will ever achieve these goals but I am certain that they will not be achieved without continuous intentional effort on my part.

I am also certain that the pursuit of these goals will bring peace and joy in this lifetime, and confident hope for the next.

- Bart

A Little Self-Hate Can Go a Long Way

There are things I absolutely hate about myself, aspects of my personality I despise and long to change, inherited tendencies I wish I could kill and bury. While it is possible that focusing too much on my list of faults could lead to poor self-esteem and a life of guilt and shame I am convinced that failing to address these traits would have a worse result. I would be a very bad man. I need to be better.

Among the things I wish I could change-

-          I am not a good listener. Wait, that is too kind. I am a terrible listener. My racing brain causes me to think of responses before some is halfway through a second sentence.

-          I inherited my father’s temper. I have a tendency to lash out and be unkind. I need to slow down more and think of the feelings of others.

-          I am inpatient and intolerant of the faults of others. It is too easy for me to point fingers and criticize. I need more grace.

-          I am a worrier, my anxiety can cause me to be fearful about things that may never happen and seldom do.

-          I have an unhealthy need for affirmation, I can work too hard trying to please others.

There is not room in a blog post for the complete list, so I will stop here. Needless to say, I have a LOT of things I am working on. But to me, that is the point. I am working on the list. I am not content with the person I am, not satisfied with where I am in my personal life. I need to be better.

This desire to be better is not limited to external actions. I need to think better thoughts as well. In the dark reaches of my brain lurk some pretty terrible things, things which if allowed to take hold and grow would result in terrible deeds. I realize what the Apostle Paul meant when he spoke of “taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” I have thoughts that need to be put in jail, rehabilitated when possible and executed when not!

I am not alone in my struggles against and within myself. The need to struggle against the evil within is a universal one. Those who excuse their bad thoughts and behaviors, those who justify their actions instead of working to be better, will ultimately be exposed to the world as the wretches they are.

We are seeing this now on a daily basis. Each morning we wake to new reports of the terrible behavior of some celebrity or person in power. From Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey to Mark Halperin there appears to be an unending stream of immoral behavior flowing from the hearts of powerful men. The natural question arises, “How could they do such terrible things?” As I hear these stories I find myself replying, “This is what happens when you don’t hate the evil inside.”

This is what happens when you make excuses for your perversity, when you consider yourself more important than others, so special and important that your desires deserve to be met. This is what happens when being a good person, being a better, kinder person, does not matter enough. The process is always the same. First we tolerate the evil desire, then we excuse the evil behavior.

If we want to be better people we need to change our priorities as a society. We need to lessen our emphasis on self-esteem and feeling good about ourselves and encourage more balanced self-assessment. When it comes to the evil in our hearts and minds, the world can use some more hate.

- Bart

Thanks for reading and sharing. To receive future posts you can subscribe to the blog (search for the button, upper right on desktop, scroll down on mobile) or follow me on Twitter @bartbarrettmd. 

Pooping on Camera.

“You need to check your phone, alerts have been going off from your office alarm!”

I had just returned home from walking the dogs and this was not the greeting I expected from my wife, but in response to her words I walked over and picked up my iphone. I knew what she was talking about because I had recently installed the Ring surveillance camera behind my office and it was connected to a app on my phone. (There is a secluded area near the air conditioning unit that homeless people consider a place to camp, and after one too many Monday morning clean ups I had invested in the camera hoping to end the problem.) This was the first time the alert had appeared on a weekend.

I opened the phone app and clicked on the button to view the live feed of the area. No one was there. I clicked on the history tab and selected a video of the movement that had triggered the alert. I saw a recorded image of disheveled man in an orange cap walking back and forth as if he was looking for something. He then walked out of the shot. It seemed nothing had happened. I clicked on the tab of the previously recorded video from a few minutes earlier. It showed the same man conducting similar surveillance. I wondered if he was a homeless person scouting for a campsite but as he seemed to have left I took no action.

A few hours later my wife and I were out shopping when I noticed I had missed another alert from the camera. My wife peeked over my shoulder as I opened the app and called up the video. She wishes she hadn’t. Some things are best left unseen. We watched as the same man in the same cap again walked into the frame. He looked to the left and right, as if checking to make sure no one could see him. He then took his foot and dragged it through the gravel, clearing a bare spot of dirt and making a shallow pit. Then he turned around. And reached for his belt. And lowered his pants. And did the deed. 6 feet from the air conditioning unit at my office, right there in the dirt. It was disgusting.

15 minutes later the alert went off again. This time I caught an intruder live, rummaging in the shrubbery. It was a different man, in a blue tank top. I tapped the phone icon in the Ring app so I could talk to the man in real time. “This is private property,” I said, “You need to leave!”

He stared up blankly in the direction of the speaker, as if he did not understand. I repeated myself, slowly and clearly, yet got the same blank stare in return. I wasn’t sure whether he didn’t understand or just didn’t care. I decided to call the police and ask them to come and shoo the man away. The dispatcher told me they would send an officer to investigate.

In just a few minutes the alert went off again. This time the live feed showed the police officer walking in the area behind the office. I clicked on the speaker button on the app and introduced myself. I told him I did not see the man any longer. He told me there were men trimming the trees at the office and that it must have been one of them. I told him about the previous man’s actions and encouraged him to watch his step as he left.

My wife and I finished shopping 40 minutes later and, still bothered by the previous video, decided to drive by the office. We wondered if we might see the mysterious defecator walking in the neighborhood or sitting in the office parking lot. We turned on the side street where the office is located and pulled up to the curb across from the office. Parked near the office was the tree trimmer’s pick up, a large red truck piled high with branches and trimmings. On the top of the pile, tying things down was a disheveled man in an orange cap. We gasped. The pooper was one of the gardening crew!

I was livid, more than I was when I had seen the act on video. It is one thing to have a wandering vagrant lacking in luck or cognitive abilities make a mess on one’s property. It is an entirely different thing when the mess maker is someone you are paying to clean up that property! I felt violated. I got out of my car and approached the truck, holding up my phone as evidence as I looked up and addressed the orange ballcap wearing pooper-man.

“I have a surveillance camera on this property,” I said, “and I saw you take a dump behind my office.” I don’t know exactly what response I expected but I know I did not get it. The man showed no sign of embarrassment. He simply shrugged his shoulders, said “I’ll clean it up,” and returned to his branch stacking. It was as if he was saying, “No big deal, sh— happens.”

I let him know it was a big deal to me. “You will clean it up now,” I said, “Or I will call the police.” I was not certain of an exact law the man had broken but I was pretty sure that he had to have broken at least one and I knew of no other approach that might motivate him to act. He seemed annoyed at my demands but began to move anyway. He climbed down from the truck, grabbed a shovel and went behind the office, later emerging with a bucket in his hand. I had no desire to look in the bucket, instead I asked him if he had cleaned it up. He nodded and said, “Sorry,” again shrugging his shoulders.

I don’t think he was sorry. Based on his actions and responses I do not believe he thinks he did anything wrong. His “regret” was over being caught, not in what he had done. The only behavior he is likely to change after today is his degree of surveillance. The next time he feels the need to defecate on the job he will probably look for the nearest video camera, not the nearest bathroom. I say this because I believe who a person who does not know that pooping in a person’s yard is inappropriate, a person who had no shame over crapping in public, probably does not spend a lot of time thinking about right and wrong. He does what he feels like doing in the moment.

I can think of a lot of famous people who are a lot like the pooper man, people who decided long ago that right and wrong don’t matter. Men and women to whom what matters is whether or not they can get away with their disgusting behavior, not avoiding behavior that is disgusting.

My message to them is the same as my message to the pooper man. Someone is watching, even when no one is around. Nothing we do is hidden from the eyes of God and someday we will all give account for the messes we have made!

- Bart

PS: The man is not alone in his bathroom habits. There is a "Mad Pooper" on the loose in Colorado . 

Thanks to all who read the blog and share it with others. (although this one is a little less share appropriate!) Those who wish to receive future posts can subscribe to the blog or follow me on Twitter @bartbarrettmd. 

A Sunday School Lesson for Grown Ups

Important lessons can come in unexpected places. I learned a crucial life lesson while in training to be a Sunday School teacher. I expected to learn where my class was, how to get supplies, and what the curriculum was. I learned all of these things, but it was during a discussion of how to interact with children one-on-one that the most profound lesson came.

The Children’s pastor told us, “Never praise a child for their appearance. Praise them for their character.”

She based her instruction on the words God had spoken to the prophet Samuel when he was seeking the man who was to be the next king of Israel. Samuel looked to anoint the tallest and strongest man as king but God corrected his thinking saying, “the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." (1 Samuel 16)

She told us that we lived in a society that valued superficial achievements and attributes but that we should be different, for a person can be externally beautiful and yet ugly inside, intellectually brilliant but selfish and unkind. There is nothing wrong with pretty dresses, cute bows or cool shoes but these were not things to praise in Sunday School.  Our job was to teach children what God values, goodness of the heart. We were to do this by praising such things as kindness, obedience, generosity and love, those things that all children can do regardless of physical attributes or giftedness. 

I have never forgotten her words, for they have applications for grown ups too. I do not have to look far or wait long to see proof that our world praises the wrong things. In my profession I know many physicians who financially successful and clinically talented yet uncaring and rude. I have patients who were beautiful on the outside and respected in their professions who hide secret additions and abusive behaviors. I live in a culture in which it is possible to be famous and popular, to have millions of followers on social media and millions of dollars in the bank and yet be a selfless failure in important relationships. Many “successful” people are moral failures.

I want to be different. I want to be a success in the eyes of God. To do this will require me to work on my insides, the heart that only he can see. I may make less money and be less successful but is fine with me, for I may make a difference in the lives of others, which is of far greater value.

- Bart

Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting. I can be followed on twitter @bartbarrettmd. You can subscribe to the blog by clicking the link on the page

Violent Words in a Parking Lot

“You’re an F-ing idiot,” he screamed at the woman, who was obviously frightened at the explosiveness of his outburst. Concerned with neither the woman nor how he appeared to others he screamed the words at her over and over again, gesturing fiercely and menacing in his posture.

The scene played out in the parking lot of a nearby supermarket in plain view of others. The man did not care. It was clear that he wanted everyone around to know that the object of his anger was an “F-ing idiot.” My wife Lisa was witness to the outburst, the man’s words impacting her as she exited her car. She was stunned to see that the recipient of the man’s wrath was an elderly woman who was fearfully standing next to her parked car. Shocked at the intensity of his rage, Lisa waited before going into the store, fearful that the man might do something rash.

As the man continued his repetitive insults Lisa was unable to remain silent. Hoping that the awareness that others were listening would give him pause, and to let the woman know she was not alone, she said, “Excuse me?”

The man turned to her but his anger did not diminish. My wife became a secondary target. He had F-bombs to spare and was apparently willing to hurl them at anyone who did not agree with him. Lisa found herself plotting escape routes if he approached and pondering whether to dial 911.

In the course of the man’s diatribe he revealed the terrible deed the elderly woman had done, the heinous act that caused him to respond so viciously. The woman had stopped her car and waited in the lane as another woman prepared to back out of a parking spot. Mr. Angry was one of those who had to either wait several seconds for the parked car to exit or drive around her.

That was it. A momentary delay in the parking lot. The loss of a few moments of time were enough for the man to unleash his fury, enough for an elderly woman to be publicly derided as an F-ing idiot.

When Lisa shared this story with me we both marveled at the man’s lack of decency. The elderly woman may have been overly cautious in her driving, she may have made a wrong decision and she may have caused others to waste a minute or two. None of those acts made her deserving of public scorn, none had any bearing on her value as a person. It was clear to us that the man’s problem wasn’t just that he didn’t respect the woman, it was that he didn’t respect people. That absence of baseline respect allowed him to attack others for their mistakes, to condemn them for minor slights.

As we talked I thought of how more and more people are becoming like Mr. Angry, thinking only of themselves without regard for the feelings of others. So many people have forgotten the truth that every person, even those who wrong us, is deserving of kindness and respect.

I don’t want to be like Mr. Angry. I want to be better, speak better and think better. I want to view others with respect, not just in parking lots, but even in the privacy of my mind. I intend to do this by working on avoiding derogatory labels for people, to cease with the name calling that is pervasive in our culture. From now on, if someone cuts me off on the freeway, leaves a bad Yelp review, or in any way offends me I resolve to no longer say, “Look what that idiot did!” or “What a jerk!”

I am going to try and say, “Look what that person did.” No adjective, no defamatory comments. I intend to aim my negative comments at actions, not people, to continually remind myself of the personhood of every man and woman I meet, regardless of the rightness of their actions. I want to remember that everyone is a child of God, that everyone has value. As I do my prayer is that my heart will soften, my anger will fade, and a kinder person will emerge over time.

I can’t change Mr. Angry, or the countless others like him, but I can change me, and I intend to.

- Bart

Thanks for reading and for sharing with others. I can be followed on twitter @bartbarrettmd, and those who wish to receive posts via e-mail can do so by subscribing to the blog. Comments and questions are always welcomed.