Reconstructing My Father Essay -- Personal Narrative, essay about myse

Reconstructing My Father Most of the memories I have of my father are bad. He was a withdrawn binge alcoholic, sometimes given to violent episodes in which he physically assaulted my mother. He never took us anywhere, and he rarely spoke to us, although sometimes, late at night, he would play cards with me or we would watch an old movie together. He loved Barbara Stanwyck. When I was a small child, Eddie (his actual name, though his relatives called him "Lec") did help me with my school projects. A knowledgeable outdoorsman, he taught me the names of all of the trees, took me fishing in a boat he built himself, and showed me how to till the worm bed in the back yard. But as I grew older, my needs changed. If my car broke down, I needed a ride. If there was a special trip or project at school, I needed money. He not only refused to help me with these things, but he refused belligerently, which led to more fights with my mother. My father's past was somewhat of a mystery. I knew he'd grown up in northwest Louisiana, that he had a brother who had died and two sisters, and that he had served in the Army during World War II. His father died before I was old enough to meet him, possibly before I was born, and his mother, who lived with us for a brief period, was a bloodless, stone-faced woman who was frightening in her lack of warmth. I saw one of my aunts only once or twice, and the other one was so grim that I preferred to avoid her. When I was twenty-four, an aneurysm burst in Eddie's brain; he was in a coma for three days, and then he died. He was sixty-two, and at the time of his death, had more physical strength than some men half his age. I have often wanted to fill in ... ...ngineers to have the railroad leading from St. Lo into Le Mans and Laval, ready to receive ammunition trains -- on August 15. The men had to rebuild seven railway bridges, repair and lay new main lines in three marshalling yards, lay miles of track, and provide service and water facilities along the lines. They did it. "The engineers can go under, over or through anything, or get it out of the way," the pamphlet states. That is a phrase that certainly suits my father, a tough, stubborn man who could build and who could destroy. I wish he were alive because there are a lot of things I would like to tell him, and even more that I would like to ask him. But at least now I have a better idea not only of who he was, but who he might have been. The Eddie who has emerged since my mother's death four years ago is still a shadow, but I can at least see his outline.