I found out today that my stepfather died eating dinner in Malaysia. He did not live in a virtual reality sort of way. When I think of the course of his life, I imagine a pool ball that caroms around, bumping into people, knocking them off course, and setting off chains of events that could never have been planned.
My mother married him when I was 6. My brother, sister, and I started calling him "Dad" soon after, though I don't think any of us particularly wanted to. (We continued to call our real father "Daddy.") He was a completely different sort of person than my real father, who was, and is, an amiable man with nothing to prove. I guess my stepfather was full of insecurities, which resulted in a compulsion to dominate everyone around him and to always be the center of attention. There is no point in rehashing the past or speaking ill of the dead, but I never liked him, though in many ways he was good to me, and provided the roof over my head for 12 years.
He died, as I said, in Malaysia, eating dinner in a restaurant with my half-brother, his youngest son, Vincent. Vince had grown up, I'm sure, with many of the same mixed emotions I have for his father. On the one hand, unlike in my case, this was his real and only father. As an upper manager for a manufacturing company, Dad had travelled internationally, and Vince admired that and saw it as a sign of success. On the other hand, he couldn't help but notice Dad's less admirable traits, although Vince inherited some of them himself.
After years of being in trouble and having a difficult relationship with his father, Vince had finally settled down and was becoming comfortable with his competence in a technical job. He was very proud and excited when he was asked to make a trip to Singapore and Malaysia, places Dad had been many times for his company. This seemed to prove to Vince that he was catching up with the old man, that he was finally measuring up. When Vince told Dad about his upcoming trip, Dad arranged a business trip for the same time and place. I think Vince appreciated the gesture to some extent, but he may have resented it a little, too, because this put him back into the role of second banana, the admiring audience in Dad's show, instead of the star of his own.
I can't imagine how it must have been for Vince when Dad keeled over and died of a heart attack in front of him. His father was dead, he was in a strange country with unfamiliar laws and customs, his big foreign adventure was over, and he had to figure out what to do next. I'm writing about this as if it were in the past tense, but I got the news yesterday, and the story hasn't ended yet. It looks as though it will take several days for the officials in Malaysia to release the body, that is to say, when all the interested parties have been paid off.
What strikes me about it is how life is never tidy. There are all these memories of good times and bad, with complicated relationships, but none of it seems to come together to make a story with a hero and a moral. I imagine that I am not the only one who can't figure out how to feel. Dad had three wives, 6 children, 3 step children, and assorted other relatives, and I can't think of one who is likely to feel simple, uncomplicated sorrow. Suffice it to say that, although he was not a bad man, he was a very difficult man to live with.
Maybe that's why everyone is so excited about Virtual Reality. It's neat and clean, a place for everything, and everything in its place. Which makes virtual reality about as far from actual reality as it can be.
Talk to me, babyout in Beyond Cybertown Colony 3, apartment 76.