Honor Thy father and Thy Mother

[Solomon Zorn]

My dad died in 1985 when I was 19. I feel I had made some significant peace with him before he died.

My mom, on the other hand...lot of unresolved issues when she died in 1992. I still argue with her ghost (figuratively of course) now and then.

I think the commandment is impossible for some people to follow, for any number of reasons.

[SGOS]

Fortunately, I no longer have strong feelings about my father, and I've accepted who he was.  We had a very antagonistic relationship, and I cut myself off from him emotionally some 10 or 15 years before he died.  We did not communicate once during that time.  

I regret not having a normal father/son relationship with him, but sometimes things like that are not under your control.  I could have maintained contact and even been civil, I suppose, but he had this way of returning civility with a kind of pathetic passive aggression, which always ended up pissing me off.  It eventually became less of an emotional strain to simply avoid and ignore him.

I do regret this, but the fact is that if he were not my father, I would have never been friends with him, anyway.  He was not a person I would normally "honor".  I guess I am expected to "honor" him based on nothing more than our genetic link, but life is too short to waste time trying to nurture unsatisfying relationships.

I haven't come fully to terms on deciding if I should have handled the situation differently, but I still haven't figured out what I might have done that might have made our relationship acceptable.  I envy friends who have strong positive relationships with both parents.  I wish I could have had that experience.  However, I loved my mother, and wish she were still alive.  So at least, I was one for two.

[stromboli]

Hardly knew my father, met him only a few times in my life. My mother was a saint, a woman who was a beautiful young girl who could have been an actress, and ended up raising eight children on nothing. She had a beautiful singing voice and was intelligent and not afraid to tell you so. An independent minded woman living amongst the Patriarchal Mormon misogynists. A big part of the reason I grew up thinking for myself and not falling into the  lockstep mindset of religion. Definitely a saint.

[Solitary]

I had two fathers that lived in the same house. One a hard working man that beat on my mother and never got close to me. (Both were alcoholics) The other an Army Technical Sargent that I always thought was my dad, and wasn't, that basically raised me.  I loved and hated all of them as well as two older sisters that were as cruel as they come.  From day one my Army father trained me to be the perfect soldier, he succeeded in making me a psychopath with the ability to kill with my bare hands which I almost did by getting hit hard enough to fly to the ground by a 6' 5' 140 lb. brute of a man I got in a Chinese strangle hold after.

I  once broke a boys arm in high school, and taking out a boy with one punch and a breaking a man's leg in later life when assaulted. I was also an extremely mean son of a bitch until I met my wife the first time I felt love and someone I trusted. Honor, tell that to all the dead soldiers what it means.    Solitary Yes, that is how I got the nick name after being called Butch as a new born without a name.

[mykcob4]

My dad died in 1985 when I was 19. I feel I had made some significant peace with him before he died.

My mom, on the other hand...lot of unresolved issues when she died in 1992. I still argue with her ghost (figuratively of course) now and then.

I think the commandment is impossible for some people to follow, for any number of reasons.

Wow what a young age to lose your parents. That must have been hard. I lost my real dad when I was 2 due to a divorce. My mom and step dad never saw eye to eye so respect was hard on both sides. I wasn't a rebel, but I was and am an individual. My step dad in in a nursing home and I take care of my mom(she lives with me). I take her everyday (6 days a week) and leave her with my stepdad for most of the day. I visit with him about and hour each of those days. We still clash. Mostly over him losing control. The same goes for my mom. They can't understand that I pay the bills so I make the rules. I try to see things from their point of view but mostly I make the rules. So when they die....if they die, there will be many unresolved issues. Don't know what I'll do when they go, but it won't be freedom as people might think. We are never truly free.
As far as those commandments go, it's the same old issue addressed biblically as every society faces. Teenagers think that they know it all and lash out in rebellion. Parents feel the loss of control and just can't communicate the pitfalls of life. At some point parents and their children have to come to a happy agreement about who is in control and to what extent. Most of the time it comes when the child takes responsibility for themselves and moves out(not always). Parents that try to be friends with their kids make the biggest mistake because they aren't kids anymore and the kids just lose all respect for their authority. You know the parents who allow their kids to call them by their first name, that drinl and party with their underage kids. The parents that try to be "cool" instead of real parents. The problem with most kids is that they are spoiled and selfentitled. They get things that their parents pay for and act as if they earned them. They never take care of those things and when they break(usually by misuse or neglect) they expect their parents to just buy them new ones. This is the predominant problem in America. The pop-culture selfentitledness of American youth. Kids these days just think it is a generation gap and discount and dismiss people older than them as just old farts. They don't understand that you have to earn what you get and have, and must respect those things with care and responsibility. It's the same with people, you must care and be responsible to and for them. A fact that the youth ignore and are completely ignorant of.
Respect however is a two way street and people don't deserve respect if they don't give it, but that being said you have to earn respect also. If you haven't done anything (work etc...) you haven't earned respect. The youth fall in the later catagory. You should respect someone just because they are older, but you should understand that they have earned respect for having done something with their life and have a great deal more experience in the world. Thats hard given the fact that this world is filled with numerous morns, racist, and uneducated idiots. Still the elders have a greater experience and do garner respect on that level.

[Solomon Zorn]

My parents were good parents. I just argued with my mom a lot. My dad was an agnostic science-minded person with a very extensive mineral collection.  He imparted to me his love of the stars and sci-fi (we often watched Star Trek together). Taught me that the speed of light is a constant, and explained it in a way I could understand. He was very gentle and very well thought of pretty universally. He's my biggest hero. But at the time he died, I was a fanatical Christian, and that produced some conflict.

My mom was also a great mom, but in later years she suddenly started letting her devout Christian sisters convince her that I should be more like their kids. We got in some pretty heated arguments. She was the most irrational arguer. She would guilt trip me with anything she could think of. In her opinion I was dishonoring her by talking back. But I shouldn't paint her as one dimensional. She was also very loving throughout my childhood.

I wouldn't trade either one of them for anybody else's parents.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Most people who I introduced to my folks told me how lucky I was and I didn't realize it till my adulthood, but they're both open intelligent people. Mom's been dead 20 years, but Dad's still alive living in SC.. I couldn't miss them anymore if I tried..

[leo]

My patents where fine . I would grade my parents a C.

[Aupmanyav]

I have the fortune of having nice parents. My father was kind, generous, hearty and is remembered lovingly by all who knew him. I remained with him for 35 years (Indians, as my son is with me for his 41 years). Around the time he died, we were in difficult financial situation. He was not well but he still carried on. The situation brought some sourness between us one time. But by the time he died, I had a job, and things were sort of OK. I asked him to leave his job and enjoy his old age. But he passed away so early, he was just 61 (I am 71 now). Later we have got into a much better situation, but he is not here to enjoy it. My mother is alive, and lives either with me or with my brother (we live just 2 kms from each other). What I could not do for my father, I try to do for my mother. She has crossed 90 now.

[rick]

:)