Hell hath no movie nights

The timing for divine retribution is all wrong.

My father spent most of his life on the move. First, it was an odyssey across the ocean. He was just a banjo-eyed boy with lots of hair and all kinds of fears about what lie ahead. But anything must have seemed better than going hungry in post-war Italy.

He never really settled here though. At least not for good. He was a small-time farmer for a bit. A factory worker. Eventually, a landlord. And he always seemed to be getting divorced.

My mother was his first duchess. They divorced ugly. There was so much brutality, it couldn't help but trickle down to the kids.

I remember my mother telling him once that he’d end his days alone and unloved. A living hell.

Honestly, I wished for that too. Divine retribution couldn't come soon enough.

My father just kept moving. New house. Another wife. New house. Condo. Until, just last weekend, he made his final move.

Wracked with disease and pain, he couldn't manage the comfy retirement home any more. No more movie nights. It was time for a real hands-on facility, with round-the-clock care and plenty of frozen carrots. The antechamber to the End.

But having lost much of his mind to illness, he’s mostly confused about it all. Why was this happening to him? Why would he have to leave his love behind?

Yes, right until the end, he needed a woman in his life.

She's been in tears about it too. I wonder what it's like to say goodbye to someone, knowing that you won't meet again.

I held her hand the other day and told her I'd drive her to visit him all the time. My eyes fell on a black-and-white photo on the shelf: a group of gangly boys posing in matching clothes. Fresh off the boat. No matter where my dad lived, that photo was always on a shelf. A reminder, I guess, that we all start off with big bright eyes. Then life happens.

But my mother's words so long ago, turned out to be prophetic.

His final days will be spent alone, confused and, honestly, not terribly well-loved.

He doesn't understand. Why is he being punished?

He may not have always been magnificent to his family — to many who crossed his path — but it hurts our hearts to see him like that. It's like, at the very end, the villain becomes the brown-eyed innocent who boarded a ship 60 years ago. He's finally become that child again. Only too late.

Sorry retribution. You just missed him. The guy you were looking for — the not-so-nice one — left town already. Now, it’s just this poor soul.

"You know what the worst kind of hell is?" I asked my mother in the car. "When you have no idea what you're being punished for."

We all hurt people. A big part of recovery is coming to terms with the harm we've done to others and ourself.

At least that way, even if hell does come for me, I might at least get booked into the second tier — the one where you know what you're being punished for.

It's better to be judged for your sins in this life then the next.

My mother didn't even have to become an addict to figure that out.

“They say that when you die, the first thing that happens is you get a review of your life,” she said.

“The thing is I'm trying to get that done ahead of time.”

My father put it off too long. He's already in the next world, a reckoning at hand.