Not Killing My Step-Father When I Should Have

I am profoundly saddened that my step-father's death did not sadden me, that it still does not. No, not for myself, but for him. He did what was almost impossible, he forfeited the love I had for him, a son's albeit step-son's love. Almost impossible.
I remember my last conversation with him. It didn't end well for him, though I was just fine with the way we left things. He had been staying at my house for a month or so, and I had grown tired of his selfishness, his view of the world. We sat in the basement, talking about his plans. He was retired and he wasn't. The IRS had taken the entirety of his pension plan, and he was trying to get by on his meager Social Security check. Somehow we got on the subject of partying, his favorite, and the conversation took a bizarre turn. I suppose it was his last attempt to bully me or to humiliate me. I didn't work. It ended up with me looking into his eyes telling him that I would kill him. For the first time in his life, Big Jim backed down, he was gone in the morning.
I have written about my step-father before, and I won't repeat myself here. I will revisit my relationship with him, from loving him, fearing him, fighting him, trying to be like him, and finally, willing to kill him.
My step-father came into our lives when I was five or so, at a time when it would be hard for anyone to imagine our lives ever getting worse. They did, dramatically so. For a few years, his rage was pretty much directed at others - fights at work, brawls in bars, blow ups with friends. I didn't get hit properly until I was nine, and it was typically from behind. By the time I was twelve, he was getting older, and evidently wasn't the terror he once was out in the world. The bully then turned his path homeward, and I never again had even a week without some sort of violent conflict with him. I stayed five more years before I left, not realizing I wasn't leaving him, he came along with me.
I had no other significant role model growing up, and even though I hated him at times, his metaphor of a man was all I had. He had taught me how to work hard (later I would learn that he told me how, I don't think he ever worked hard), to be tough, how to drink, how to steal, how to stand up to the world unapologetically, how to throw away my life. I quickly became the one who could drink the most, work the hardest, and never ever back down from a conflict. Fortunately, his influence only manifested itself when I was drinking - something else guided me when I was sober, something clean and decent. Thank God, perhaps it was God.
I spent many years doing my best impression of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. People who did not live with me in both worlds found it hard to recognize my counterpart. I literally was two people, and I had no idea where the anger, destruction, and ugliness came from when I drank. I developed two peer groups, and kept them from each other. Rarely, a friend would follow me into both worlds, those friends didn't follow for long. So I went to school, developed my intellect, learned my discipline, drank, fought, and made drunken war on the world around me with blind malevolence. I still don't understand it all, probably don't want to.
After college, I continued to drink and had fewer episodes, though their severity did not wane. Unlike my step-father, most of my rage was inwardly directed. When I picked fights, I never really tried to win them. I broke my own bones, ripped my own flesh. I drove a car into a telephone pole at seventy miles and hour, spent two weeks in intensive car, and was back out drinking and raising hell a few weeks later. I was trying to out do that which I loathed, and I punished myself for the privilege. I cannot imagine what people thought as they watched this campaign, perhaps some recognized that part of me that was decent, and I am sure they pitied me.
While I was out fighting the world, my step-father had not ceased his sins. He mellowed and fought far less, but he drank and partied more, and desperately needed friends to join him. When the few friends inevitably left, he turned to family. Wickedly, his gaze fell upon my niece, and he had her drinking and smoking by the time she was a teenager. My sister and her husband did their best, but they were not prepared to kill him. My niece and her parents have paid a heavy price for that baptism, and it remains one of the few tragedies I have witnessed here in the United States that rivals those I saw elsewhere in the world. No they weren't willing to kill him, perhaps they should have.
I quit drinking when my daughters were born, and he died (inside me anyway) instantly. He has never returned, and the physical wreck of his body gave way fourteen years later. It was in the last few years of his life, long after I had killed his spectre, that he came to stay at our house. That evening, as we were discussing his options, he started talking about partying. I, no longer willing to listen to the profane, interrupted him reminding him that he was not to drink or smoke dope in my house or anywhere near it. He continued to argue with me, and my niece came up. I quietly and assuredly let him know how horrible his actions had been and he got upset. I went on to let him know that he would never have done that to one of my daughters. He grew bold and asked me how I would stop him, why it was bad for them to drink a little bit, told me everyone did. He was standing now, and I encroached on that dangerous distance I knew so well. I let my hands fall to my side, got very close to him, and told him I would kill him if he did anything at all untoward to my girls. I think I halfway hoped he would hit me, giving me the excuse I needed to end his miserable life. He didn't and I turned and went upstairs to my girls. He never said goodbye.
I talked to him a few times on the phone after that, but with very little interest and no desire to see him. He died a few years later, and I had no need to go to his funeral. I did, however, have to come up with a thousand dollars or so to help with the funeral. I considered it money well spent.
Now, four years later, I mourn the life that had no mourning. No human should abdicate a life with so little virtue, so little redemption, so little accrued worth. I think of the legacies we leave when we die, and I pray that my niece and others survive his, that they can kill him as I did. I also wrestle with notion that I should have taken his life literally, a long time ago. Perhaps I just didn't have the strength.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urDMG9OiymU