No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

FATHERS AND SONS

One of the toughest times in life is when (and it will happen) the son or daughter becomes the father or mother to a parent who is still alive. There is no real preparation for this. Partly because none of us really expects death. Often it is sudden, without warning. In a Freudian sense, the son has to exceed the father, to do better, get richer, and become more successful. This is cosmic, in the bone, and I believe it. There are many problems with fathers and sons beyond Freud, no matter how much love exists between them. It's sometimes a tender but, more often, a fractious journey.

I had a tough father who never went to college. He was orphaned at 11 and, instead of spoiling me, he wanted to make sure that I never had an entitled bone in my body, and that if I ever had any creature comforts in life, I would have to earn them myself. “Just assume,” he drummed into me, sometimes with a belt, “that no one else is ever going to give you anything. If they do, it's an accident.”

In all of this it will help if you have a sense of humor, particularly an appreciation of the absurd. This is for your own self-protection because dwelling on the past too much can bring you down.

Guilt is a dangerous emotion and the one that probably causes more distress within families than any other.

When my father died suddenly, I was 37 years old. We worked together, something I would not advise for my readers. When people say, “Boy, how wonderful you could work with ...