This is just a short story of a grown up childs revenge on his abusive parents. There are a lot of true stories where children forgive their parents because they are brainwashed by the doctrine of "no matter what they are still your parents, they bought you into the world". I suppose alot of it comes from the commandment "honor thy father and mother"

I don't agree with this.

“You’re just like your mother! Self, self, self! You never think of me! You never think of what I’m going through!”
   Father always had that look in his eyes when he raised his voice in this way. It was like watching a man become an animal before your eyes. That look used to scare me beyond words as a child. I knew what the man was capable of even when he wasn’t this fired up. I still carry the physical scares of childhood about my body; self-inflicted wounds of my adolescent years now vie for space with the ones my parents gave me whenever they needed an outlet for their anger.
   I had nothing to fear this time, he could no longer hurt anyone, and it was my turn to do the hurting now.
   “Your mother never visits me! She can’t swallow her stupid pride and come and say goodbye to the father of her kids! You came; you swallowed your pride and came.”
   “I’ve had to swallow a lot more than pride over the years”, I said to him.
   “What do you mean? I thought that you had come to bury the hatchet and pay your respects.” My father looked genuinely confused at my statement.
   “You really don’t think that you did anything wrong do you? Or do you really not remember? Did you have to repress the memories too? I don’t want you to be under the impression I came here for you. I came here for myself.” I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it slowly even though I wanted to gulp it down. My mouth had suddenly become dry and my heart was pumping.
   Father tried to sit up and look me in the eye. I set my glass down and helped him. I could see in his eyes that the anger had subsided and was now replaced by bewilderment. He looked at me the way I looked at him as an infant; not comprehending what was happening, the look of confusion one gives to someone who is supposed to love and care for them but instead is hurting them. I could see that he really had no memory of what I was speaking of. Years of taking different medications for his depressions and breakdowns having eroded anything that could tip him back into the void. Counsellors trained to rid a sick mind of the thoughts that make such prescriptions necessary having done their jobs well. Father lay there now like a newborn with no memory of the cruelty he had dished out in his lifetime. Instead of trying to make amends with the ones he hurt he embarked on the selfish journey of healing his mind and soul. Deep down back then he must have known the cause of his sudden depression and breakdowns; his own father’s death triggering some kind of dark night of the soul that made him look back on his own parenting. When he realised that, in comparison to his own father, he had been a monster his mind snapped and the years of selective amnesia began.
  
I had no such escape. My life had been filled with feelings of self-loathing, self-harm. According to my mind I didn’t deserve love; if I was so bad as a child that I deserved such punishments I must be evil. If those people who are supposed to love me unconditionally have nothing but hatred and feelings of violence towards me then what chance do I have of finding the love of a stranger?
   By the time I reached college my body was a contoured road map of gashes and scars. Even if I could find the strength to hunt for the love of another I would not want to show my horrific body to them. As a result I had lived a life without intimacy, one of seclusion and keeping myself to myself. The stereotypical neighbour that was “quiet and wouldn’t hurt a mouse, was always polite but not overfriendly”. The quotes dished out when they are either found as result of a violent suicide or with a house full of bodies.
   Looking at this man now, who was a monster in my eyes for so many years,  the man who had top billing in so many of my nightmares over the years, now so small and weak, I realised how my life had been wasted as much as his had. It was like looking into the future; my life was going to end this way, in a room like this but the main difference being that I would have no offspring or loved ones to see me shuffle off this mortal coil.
   I really couldn’t see any slither of the man I feared for so long. All I saw was something akin to a small woodland creature disturbed in the night by the cry of some nocturnal predator. This was not a man; this was a symbol of everything I hated about the male of our species; sport-obsessed, bullying, overweight, over-macho, sexist, narrow-minded. He had played this role like a pro all of his life up until now.
   “Can I have some water?” he now asked me.
   I poured him a glass and helped him hold it while he gulped back a couple of mouthfuls. He swallowed and took a few deep breaths and turned to face me.
   “What did I do to make you hate me so much, apart from divorce your mother?” He asked.
   “You really think that is all it could be? Where do you want me to begin?”
I saw tears form in the corner of his eyes as something deep inside him stirred. A small slither of light began to shine into the dark corridors of his psyche. I cleared my throat and recited the long list of memories I had managed to piece together over more than 30 years; little slices of painful snapshots glued together by my persistent search for the childhood memories stolen from me and my siblings.

I ticked off my list of prepared memories for him, to help him remember, to make sure that his last moments on earth were full of pain at the recollection of what he had done in his life. Reinstalled the image in his minds eye of my sister standing in the garden in the middle of a snowy winters night in just her nightdress, of me being thrown into a bath of ice-cold water to bring down a fever they had given me when one of my wounds became infected, of me being made to clean up my own vomit when forced fed food I hated, of the arguments my grandfather had with him over his treatment of us, of grandfather noticing the bruises all over my back and refusing to hold his tongue, the many humiliations he made me endure.

I know that my two sisters had already been to pay their respects. I also knew that their life had not been tainted in the same way as mine. They didn’t inherit the depression that runs through our family, they blossomed into women who were able to bury their memories and reconcile them as being representative of most childhoods of that era. I was cursed with a darkness in my soul that forced me to dwell on the past and an illness that always laid the blame on me.

   As father shook with sobs as this reality sunk further in I continued:
   “Throughout my life I have always felt like a ghost, a phantom lurking in the dark recesses of other people’s lives. I had no past, no identity or memories. The only emotions I could truly feel were pain and fear. I have you two to thank for that. Being young and immature when you had us is no excuse for the violence and abuse you poured onto us. I would have been better off as an abortion or one of mother’s miscarriages but instead you decided to bring a third child into the world even though you couldn’t handle the other two you had. Adolescence is hard enough to endure when you are normal but when your parents ignore your cries for love and empathy and instead use you as an unpaid home help it makes things worse. Your resentment of me cost me my childhood, my resentment of you cost me my life. I was a disturbed child but neither of you noticed. My black moods were invisible to your eyes. I found momentary solace in books but you even spoiled that for me by mocking my bookworm nature in public to all of your friends. You never missed an opportunity to make me feel small. 
   I was never going to be a footballer or cricketer. I was never interested in your life where sport was concerned but I did want to know you. This was the only way I could learn about myself, to give myself the identity I lacked. But you slammed the door on that and so, the search for myself ended.
   I dedicated my life to despising the two of you and getting away from everything you stood for. But even away from you, the pair of you dominated my life.”
   Father struggled to control his breathing. He was now sweating profusely. “You must have some good memories? I remember happy times, we had lots of them. Am I to go to my grave not hearing one good thing come from your mouth?”
   “I have no interest in easing your transition to the next life. I’m no priest and am not here to hear your confession and allow you to repent. I’ll give you the first memory that resurfaced during my adult years, the one that set me on my quest of remembering. When I was seven I became very depressed, more than usual, I started to contemplate killing myself. I had no-one to discuss these feelings with; I would have even settled for a GP back then, anyone who would listen. You two were always out and dumping me at grandmas. The weekends were the same; me staying indoors at grandmas house drawing disturbing pictures that no-one was shocked by whilst grandma watched the horse racing on TV. You would be out playing cricket or some other sport and your evenings spent getting drunk in the clubhouse. When you eventually came to get me I broke down in tears on the floor. For some reason I had been missing you both and suddenly felt very sad at the sight of you. I could hardly speak due to this sadness and just lay on the floor shuddering. Did either of you show any concern? Were you distressed at the evident pain your child was in? No. You were disturbed by the fact I was crying and wanted to know why. I couldn’t speak but this wasn’t good enough for you. You grabbed me by my shoulders and pinned me to the wall all the while bellowing “what’s the matter with you? Stop crying!” All I could do was slide down the wall but you dragged me back up by my throat and held me against the wall. You started to hit me in the stomach to get me to stop crying and tell you what was wrong. What kind of logic was that?
I don’t what memories you were thinking off when you asked me if there were any happy ones in my head, and I don’t care. That is the first thing I think of when I travel back to those days.”

I wanted him to say something but knew that he couldn’t. His condition had worsened as I was speaking. As I finished and put on my mask of concern the nurses rushed in to tend to him but it was too late. My father died in front of me with a mind filled with the images he had spent a lifetime hiding from.  I slept better than I ever did that night knowing that his last moments on earth were painful ones.

A year later and here I sit at the litter strewn hole that bears his remains. The tombstone above his grave all stained and covered in graffiti. I place some dead weeds on in the cracked vase at the base of the stone and pour some of the whisky I had been drinking on ground beneath me. It begins to rain again as I stand on legs numbed by the cold. My mind racing with thoughts and possibilities.  My life has not changed in the past twelve months; the nightmares remain, my body is still scarred and I am still alone. But the prospect of visiting my mother in hospital next week brightens my mood with the thought that soon my quest will be over.