For Everything There Is A Season: Mourning My Father

I knew this day would come. I didn’t know how or when. Or what my emotions would be. But as soon as I heard my sister’s voice on the phone yesterday, I knew. My father was gone.

I was taken aback by the emotion I felt upon hearing the news of his death. The tears flowed within seconds and I felt such an ache in my soul. I cried and kept crying. My raw emotion surprised me. Because when I imagined this day, I didn’t think I would feel much of anything.

As I write this, I’m uncomfortable and unsure as to how to express my feelings and my story without tarnishing the memory of a man so many people loved. I feel as if I’m tiptoeing through a minefield of what I should and shouldn’t say. But I need to write this. It is my story. My truth. And truth be told, I haven’t seen my father since I was 12-years-old. It was my choice to leave that chapter of my life behind. For whatever reason, he wasn’t able to be the father I needed. The father I wanted so desperately. But he was still my father. And I grieve for him.

He reached out to me a few years ago through email. He wanted to meet and explain things. But I froze. It caught me off guard. “What could he possibly say to me after all these years?” I thought. What if he said the wrong things? What if it wasn’t good enough and I leave bitter and angry all over again? What if? I can’t go back there, I told myself. I can’t open that door again. I was afraid that my years of progress and healing would be lost. And so I didn’t go. And now that decision haunts me. A decision I regret.

It doesn’t matter why he wasn’t there anymore. Though I shared nothing more than DNA with him, I am crushed by his passing. What I would give for one moment to speak with him again. Not to ask “why,” but to just say “how are you?” To look him in the eye and say “I forgive you.” To see his face after almost 28 years of estrangement. 

I’m not angry anymore. Anger is so fruitless. So time-wasting. I promised my daughter when she was born that she would not get a mother weighed down by her past. I would show her strength and courage. I would show her that even through adversity, it was still possible to be happy and complete. And I was truly able to let go and move on. I will never understand a lot of things and I stopped trying long ago. In my own way, I guess I never stopped loving my father. Or at least the father I dreamed him to be.

Despite our broken relationship, a part of me always wanted him to meet my children. Every once in awhile I would catch myself searching their faces for a resemblance of him. Wondering what life would have been like with a grandpa around to dote on and spoil them.

I remember as a child thinking how handsome he was. He was so tall to me and I always liked his mustache. The times I did see him, he was usually in his police uniform. My dad, the cop. Taking down the bad guys. I was so proud of that.

Every visit was like Christmas. Yet Christmas seemed to come less and less. I wanted nothing more than to be daddy’s little girl. But, truthfully, I wasn’t. Our relationship was not one of fairy tales. And soon, I had to put the father I knew, with all my hopes and dreams in a figurative box. I locked it, threw away the key and stashed it away in the back corners of my mind.

Over the years, that box has gathered a lot of dust as it sat neglected and barely touched. Until yesterday. Yesterday, all the emotions and memories came flooding back out of that box. I woke up at 4:00 o’clock this morning dealing with that box. I hope to put it away again soon. But right now, I have to deal with the things in that box.

Instead of wanting explanations, I just wonder who he was now. What made him laugh? What shows did he like? What books did he read? Who did he admire? Were we alike in any way? The past no longer matters. I just wish I had gotten to know the man that he was. His death has humanized him to me again. He was a person with hopes and dreams of his own. A person with feelings and yes, flaws. But I’m sure the people who knew him best can tell of the many things they loved and admired about him.

But he is gone now. 

As I close this long chapter of my life, I will certainly never forget him. I will choose to focus on the good memories. To see him as the multidimensional man that he was, not the one note character I formed in my mind all those years ago.

So, I say goodbye to my father for the second and final time. That little girl who idolized him and thought he was larger than life never fully went away. She just learned to accept what wasn’t to be. I hope he had a good life. A happy life. I hope that he left this world at peace and surrounded by love.

I will forever miss you, dad. May you rest in peace.

“For everything there is a season, and
a time for every matter under heaven:
     a time to be born, and a time to die;
     a time to plant, and a time to pluck up
          what is planted;
     a time to kill, and a time to heal;
     a time to break down, and a time to
          build up;
     a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
     a time to mourn, and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 3:1-4