Forgiveness Visited on the Father and The Son

This essay first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, June 20, 1999.

Throughout time, the most significant drama-myths about fathers and sons have been about betrayals-large or small, accidental or intentional.

Icarus ignored his father's advice and flew too close to the sun, burning his waxy wings and falling to his death. Jesus cried to his father while hanging on the cross, "Why hast though forsaken me?"

This father-son story began in 1961, when Joe Loya begat Joe Loya. I, the junior, was the firstborn in an Old Testament sort of way. My parents adored Jesus, so as a gift back to God, they took me to church with them when I was only two weeks old. I drank holy formula in the basement nursery while they sang hymns above.

It could also be argued that the origin of the story lies in my father's brutal childhood, in the rough streets of East Los Angeles where my parents fell in love at the age of 14.

When my mother became pregnant at age 16, my parents dropped out of Garfield High School to marry. I was born 4 1/2 months later to two children playing house; one boy trying to raise another.

My father aspired to the ministry. He went to night school, earned his high school diploma. While studying Greek and Hebrew at East Los Angeles Community College, he discovered that he had a genius for languages.

Then my 26-year-old mother died of kidney disease. We buried her on Feb. 9, 1971, the day of the massive Sylmar earthquake in Southern California.

My dad plugged away at school. He married Brenda a year and a half after my mother's death. He enrolled at UCLA, double majoring in philosophy and Greek classics. His first pulpit was a small Baptist church in East Los Angeles.

The Bible teaches that the sins of the father are visited on the son. Even though our father never drank, took us to church every week, and sent us to Christian schools, he could not protect us from the violence he'd known as a boy in the home of a brutal father.

Soon, he was beating us as he'd been beaten by his father. Within a year, he quit the ministry.

One day when I was 16, my father beat me so badly that X-rays later revealed a fractured wrist and broken rib. He left the house but returned 20 minutes later for round two.

In that moment of extreme fear, in my bedroom, I pulled out the steak knife I'd hidden under the pillow while he was away. I charged, and stabbed him in the neck.

He fell to the floor. "You've killed me," he screamed. Paul, my brother, and I ran to my aunt's house, crying in the open road.

My brother and I were taken to MacClaren Hall, a foster care facility for abused children. The other kids treated me with deference because I avenged myself. I felt no remorse.

The combat had been cathartic. After years of feeling helpless, the knife helped me recover a part of my lost self, or so I thought. For years afterward, I simply attacked people who angered me. Eventually I took my rage into banks, and robbed them.

Even in prison, I couldn't shake the violence. I considered myself an animal, unable to control my rage. But the tedium of prison wore away the thug.

I contemplated changing my life during a long stretch in solitary confinement-under investigation for a prison assault. I grew fatigued of my aggressive acting out. Somehow, I instinctively recognized that all my current rage was a disguise for ancient wounds.

This inference was an illumination. I had believed my violent rage freed me from my father, but in fact I had become just like him.

We were men who didn't know how to grieve the death of the woman we loved when we were 12-my mother. We were both, once, abused little boys.

Seeing my father as a frightened man whose anger disguised his wounds made it easier for me to develop compassion for both him and myself. If my rage originated from grief, or the fear of losing another love, then I wasn't an irredeemable monster. I could become a better man. I could be restored.

When I emerged from prison in 1996, I had in mind a fresh start. " Dad," I said, " I've changed, so I believe anyone can change. Let's be honest here. You and I have done many bad things and hurt each other in horrible ways. We share the same grief, and regrets for past mistakes. I suggest that we let my wrongs cancel out your wrongs."

Two months ago, I got married. My father danced, cried and praised the day as the best of his entire life.

My wedding day was as much a redemption for him as it was for me. An enlarged photo of me as a baby in my mother's arms was placed behind the altar. My aunts wept when they saw their dimpled sister, age17 and happy again.

After dinner, my brother and I sat together and marveled at our dad on the dance floor, spinning to 70's disco music. We had never seen our father so happy.

Meanwhile, my brother recently won the "Volunteer of the Year" award in Los Angeles County. He volunteers at MacClaren Hall, the same facility where we were taken after I stabbed my father. Paul teaches music there, reads to the kids, or makes himself available for casual chats several hours a week. My father clapped proudly as Paul walked up to the stage to receive his award.

Paul would not have his keen and invaluable insight into the mental struggles of the kids at MacClaren Hall if that man seated next to him hadn't beaten us so badly twenty-three years ago.

That day of multiple ironies was our testament to love, and a sign of our family's triumph over the past.

My father called last week from his cell phone to tell me how grateful he is that my brother and I love, encourage, and support him. We make him strong, he says. He told me that I've brought him so much joy these last three years that I've wiped away many times over the pain I'd caused him while I was incarcerated or involved in crime.

I've torn myself up about the pain I caused my family when I went to prison, even as I've been encouraging others to move beyond their self-hate. So my father's words lifted a burden off my conscience. I cried.

His betrayal of me was the beatings. My betrayal of him was the way I cursed him with a mocking wrath and cruelly turned away from his faith and morals.

Father and son couldn't cope with the dark, occultish emotions of turbulent grief. Our insecurities governed us. But today we visit my mother's gravesite together and express our sorrows with words and tears, not fists.

For our wedding ceremony, my father stood at the pulpit and read from the Book of First Corinthians 11: 7-8a: " Love always hopes. It always perseveres. Love never fails." The lesson of redemption is that we all may be something in the future that we do not yet recognize as possible.

I will always be my father's son. But today we are also men, equals, and equally forgiven.

back to writing