He Told Me at 80: The Trauma My Dad Carried for 60 Years

It took my Da 22 years to tell me about the worst thing that ever happened in his life. I don’t think he talked about it for a long time before me though, and he was 80 when he finally shared his story. 

Growing up in the 2010’s with parents who were of the “lost” and “boomer” generations was difficult at times, but also provided a unique and valuable perspective for me as I grew up. The generations share vast cultural differences, mental health management, expectations of a child, and family dynamics. 

We never really talked about why Da would get upset “randomly”. He screamed at loud noises- he hated loud unexpected noises. He would be critical of really minute things, and I struggled to understand exactly why these things set him off. Like fish- he hated when my Nana would cook us fish. He’d always have taco’s instead, he’d fuss so much so she would just make two whole separate meals. Nana would mostly roll her eyes lovingly and go about her business when he was being (what seemed to me) dramatic or strict. 

Through the years, starting as a young man in the Air Force

My parents (my Da and Nana) weren’t given a handbook for mental health, taking care of a traumatized child of the system, or life in general. None of us are, we just hope to learn from our parents and our own mistakes. If you’re not learning, are you even living? It was bittersweet to watch my dad learn the importance of speaking up, and recognizing a lesson learned too late. 

In 2022, after a very hard year of coming to terms with death, and that our time was running out- my Da and I went to our favorite breakfast spot. Going to breakfast at Dimitri’s had become part of his daily routine, up to the day he passed. 

We started conversation about my diagnosis with CPTSD and what contributed to that diagnosis- from repeated trauma I experienced while in my bio mom’s care, to the car accident that changed my whole life in 2021, and so on. I described some of the methods I was working to try to manage my emotions and symptoms- especially after recently watching both my Nana (my mom) and Uncle Larry die in front of me. Talking about this with him meant a lot to me, after years of not really feeling heard and talking not being encouraged. But at the time, we were both actively grieving and important conversations happened because of that fact.

Breakfast at our favorite restaurant

Over breakfast that morning he opened up to me, saying “I think we relate to each other more than I ever realized”. We reflected on how we didn’t always get along when I was a teenager- but we were both handling emotions the best we knew how on our own and it often led to tension between us. 

He then went on to tell me about how he witnessed what was once the largest passenger airplane accident in history when he was stationed in Paris with the Air Force. He was 19 in 1962, stationed at Orly Field. All 122 passengers, (mostly American art patrons from the city of Atlanta), and all but two crew members died in this crash. 

My father had witnessed the whole thing, from the failure to take off, to the BANG, to running out with his peers to look for survivors in the wreckage. 

While cutting his sausage and tomatoes and doing what I can only describe as his “egg ritual” (mixing his scrambled eggs with his perfectly cut sausage patty), he started to tear up. I think I only saw him tear up three times in my life, and two had happened in the past 4 months at that point. 

He described the full scene- the smell of burnt fish, and how very early on everyone going through the wreckage realized they were only going to pull out charred, dismembered remains. He had his first wife (my biological grandmother) wash and rewash his uniform. The smell wouldn’t go away, the image of dead passengers was imprinted on the back of his eyelids. By his own description, he was inconsolable, but at that time- a man “just had to get over it”. He reminisced on the stress it put on his young marriage, and early parenthood (my biological mother wasn’t even one yet when the crash happened).

All of a sudden, so much made sense. My dad had been managing PTSD the best he knew how for most of his life. Again, there’s no handbook- so for him “management” had looked like drinking a lot of alcohol in his middle age (and cutting it cold turkey around when I was born) and not talking about the crash and aftermath, or much of anything emotional with anyone. Years of acting on triggers and his trauma being in control. I related to that, even at such a young age. The anger at loud noises that I watched repeatedly as a child was reframed in my mind to fear, anxiety- things I heavily related to. What I used to consider the “weird fish thing” suddenly made sense too. 

He was experiencing triggers his whole life. Describing my own discovery of triggers and navigating my recent CPTSD diagnosis made him reflect on his own experience and made him want to share it with me. Talking about our mental health, unlike we ever had before, connected us and made us both feel seen.

He followed up by saying “I recognize myself in you.” I think he also recognized he may have always had a form of PTSD. I know I realized it. Our experiences and traumas were completely different, but over that discussion we learned that a lot of our emotions and reactions to triggers had overlap.

I felt so much for my Da in that moment, and had never felt closer to him. At that moment, he taught me (and I’d like to hope himself) some things. One, talking about it isn’t a shameful thing, in fact it can help you feel less alone. Two, ignoring mental illness is not the way to live. Healing is better than bandaids- by ignoring the pain, it can control us. Three, that he wanted my approval to potentially get a medical marijuana card, as recommended by his general doctor to help manage pain. We opened up a lot over that breakfast (lol).

Growing up in the 40’s and 50’s- my Da had grown up in the generation of men who did not talk about things. Mental health wasn’t part of the conversation. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that PTSD was even a medical term and diagnosis. “Shell shock” and “war neurosis" were terms that preceded PTSD, but many men from this era, (and the era of WWII vets that raised them), did not regularly get any type of therapy. Having a mental illness was so much more stigmatized in that era- and it still seeps into our families today.

Da never lost his sense of humor in it all, which is a lesson in itself

The stigmatized mental health mentality 100% seeped into my childhood. I’ve found that a lot of people have had this generational trauma mixed into their childhoods- even as mental health becomes less stigmatized. For our family, this manifested with my bio mother having a debilitating, but ignored mental illness. She was raised in the 60’s and 70’s- and mental health care was no where near what it is today.

It was far too late and damage had already been done once anyone started to realize that she was truly more than “lazy” and “unfocused”.

This mentality continued to affect my childhood when my parents got guardianship of me. We never talked about what had really happened living with my bio mom. It took other family members advocating heavily for me to receive much needed therapy once I became a teen and my emotions were getting more unmanageable. I was lucky for those family members advocating for me, it was a critical time in my life.

I’m going to take this moment to say all kids and adults can benefit from therapy- but it is incredibly important for traumatized children and adults to have non-stigmatized access to therapy. 

Anyways- in this moment over eggs and toast, my father showed me that at 80 years old he regretted how he had handled his own trauma. He had felt alone for years. I think he wished he had known another way- but if nothing else, he knew it could be a lesson for me. The discussion from that morning sticks with me three years later, and feels even more relevant during this Men’s Mental Health Month. 

Generations of men have been told to “man up” (essentially meaning to shut it down and deal with the trauma in anyway other than talking about it). “Without access to appropriate mental health services, men can fall victim to two of the most common mental health illnesses that persist: substance abuse and depression” (Griffith et al., 2024). With men four times more likely to commit suicide, the stats prove that telling men to ignore the issue doesn’t work.

My dad learned he could have handled so many years of his life differently at the age of 80. I wish every day that he had more time to live in this new perspective.

I hope by talking about my dad’s story, and encouraging this conversation- more men can learn these lessons young enough to take the steps to heal themselves. More men can learn that they aren’t alone, and that there is support, and a light at the end of the tunnel of the symptoms of mental illness. Healing is hard, but it is worth it- over living a life unhealed. The emotional intelligence he showed that morning to teach me something so powerful will never leave me.

No one should feel weaker for being vulnerable. No one should feel they aren’t worthy of healing. No one should have to carry the weight of trauma alone. 

So during this Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month- I hope you can all learn a little lesson from my dad too. 

Thanks for reading <3

Grace

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