How do you manage Father's Day as an adult?
How did everyone do on Father's Day? It's one of those holidays that can be so complicated for many of us. Maybe there's angst, anger or ambivalence? Maybe there's appreciation too.
I wrote about how it has shifted for me since I found that my father died. I didn't expect to feel so much relief.
I love having a dead dad. For the first time in my life I know where he is on Father’s Day.
He is not homeless, alcoholic, absent or violent. He is no longer wandering the streets. He's not cold or hungry. He isn’t drunk and baking in the heat on a sidewalk.
He's not in pain.
He’s not causing pain. He can't break hearts or bones or promises.
He is not a question mark, a threat or a worry.
I have always hated Father’s Day. Having a homeless father is hard. Having a dead one is much easier. Sometimes, death doesn’t only bring loss – it brings relief.
The severing of our bond was not recent. It was not a rope that frayed and got weak over time. It was not milk that soured. He was a carton past the expiration date from my beginning in 1966.
He was always unavailable. It didn’t matter if or how much I thirsted for a father.
I was not a blossom my father could nurture, notice or know.
The rings of his years were always out of my reach. He was not a sturdy piece of wood I could lean on or build with or be near.
This isn’t news. I’ll be 50 soon.
What’s new is the relief I feel on Father’s Day or when I go into Boston. I no longer look for my nose on faces of homeless strangers. I no longer hope and dread I’ll bump into him.
The tiny tea cup in my heart can be put down. I’m no longer waiting for him to fill it, no longer holding out a few drops of me for him.
My hands and heart can be cleared of concern, curiosity or craving.
When I found out he had died I felt profoundly tired. My bones were bathed by an anemia that hollowed out my marrow. It was more surreal than sad.
He was dead for more than a year before I knew. No call or letter came. Those in his life, on the street, or at the periphery didn't know he had kids or how to reach us.
Or both.
We were not central to him.
There was no wake or funeral we shared in, no casket to kneel before or loved ones sharing memories. I’m not even sure where his remains are or who pays for burials for the homeless.
I didn’t miss any work.
I felt robbed of even a mention in his obituary at first, but it was an accurate reflection of the relationship. I was his but he never claimed me.
My friend Jen sent me flowers. My friend Heidi drove an hour to give me a hug and a bag of lollipops. My aunt called. My uncle said his leaving might have been his best act of fathering. My sister shared a song on You Tube. My mother searched for details about his life and death.
“They leave a residue,” my boyfriend said about the dead men who fathered us.
He has one, too. His, also alcoholic, died recently, too. His father drove drunk and killed a woman out on a moped the year before he died. She was a mother and her children will live without her. She was plucked from their lives by unchecked addiction.
The misery spread by his father is inconceivably large.
“If he had only died sooner… that woman might have lived,” my guy said, feeling an empathy for a stranger that his own father was not capable of.
I winced. I nodded. I understood.
It’s true. His death, had it happened earlier, might have saved a life.
Sometimes we can’t celebrate the men our fathers are or were.
Sometimes, we celebrate that we survived them knowing not everyone did. And we grieve for them or what never was.
My father was abusive to my mother, my sister, to me and himself.
This doesn’t mean I don’t know there are reasons: disease, addiction, misery and ignorance. It means none of those reasons protected me from life-threatening dangers while reality remained unchanged.
There are people I love and am related to whom I can't have in my life. Tear drops carved into the family tree of our bark leaving a musty odor we can’t always dry out or clean.
Imprints of people inked under our skin in sizes, colors and designs we didn’t get to pick out but still have to pay for.
We can’t change them or remove them from our DNA.
For years, love and hope were like trapped animals caged in my heart fighting for survival. A part of me remained a crying baby in a crib waiting to be picked up and held. I couldn't stop hoping against all reason. Mercy came when he died and I could surrender my wish for another ending.
I'd longed for and been haunted by my father for decades.
I chose not to procreate. I was afraid addiction, mental illness and violence were traits like blue eyes or brown hair I'd pass down and on.
“Let me prune my family tree as a gift to humanity,” I used to say, “Let me water down the blood line.”
My infertility was birthed by terror. By the time I believed I had a study enough foundation to shelter and create structure I was too old.
I had been so afraid of my own self, past and post-traumatic stress that choosing to parent by adopting seemed wise.
I'm grateful I was not too afraid to parent.
I bear witness to all of us with complicated relationships and feelings who are without traditional fathers or experiences today.
Those with with homeless relatives who can't open hearts, homes or share couches who choose to safe from chaos, violence and drama.
Those who protect our children and ourselves even if we have to shut out our parents.
Those who seem cold or cruel to others who didn't know the people we were dependent on who abandoned, abused, neglected and hurt us as well as themselves.
And other.
My father was abusive to my mother, himself, my sister and me. He provided no safety, joy or child support as father figure. Recently, I learned he threw a radio at me when I was in the crib because my crying enraged him. Is that why it's hard for me to cry, I wondered?
This same man served this country. He went to Vietnam. He had a traumatic childhood and a high ACE score. He was hurting most of his life.
Who was responsible for him? Society? The government? Strangers? Me? You? This is a question I have wrestled with my entire life.
Sometimes there are no happy endings with closure, transformation or redemption.
Sometimes silence is the last word in a difficult sentence.
Sometimes the truth sounds terrible to say - I love my father more dead.
This Father’s Day is less painful than usual.
I’m not jealous looking at father-daughter images on Facebook. I don’t wonder what Hallmark cards are appropriate for my situation.
It’s not that I didn’t want, need or miss my father – or that I don't think of him still. I did and do.
It's just that some people spend entire lives nurturing needles, getting drunk, suffering or spreading misery. Not all fathers host cook-outs or make pancakes for breakfast.
Usually, we make ourselves invisible on days Father's Day, but doesn't that make others feel alone too?
At least now I can stop being the sad child looking for her Daddy. I am no longer an abandoned daughter, with a father alive but not around.
Now, I’m just another middle age person without a father. It’s common. Ordinary even. I don’t have to make up lies, excuses or dodge conversations about fathers.
This Father’s Day my father isn’t hungry or sad or drunk. He's not raging, mean or abusive.
He will never bring love or light but at least he won't bring chaos or confusion either. He'll never say or do inappropriate things. He’ll never meet, hurt or disappoint my daughter or nieces.
And I know where he is. He’s dead. There is a comfort to certainty.
Honestly, I can even romanticize him a little, imagining him in the sky with the friendly, masculine father figures like God and Santa Claus. I can pretend a whole version of my father’s soul is looking out for me and my sister and our children.
No one can say for sure he isn’t.
Now, he’s no longer a vagabond, a wanderer or a deadbeat Dad. He is deceased and that has some dignity.
I contacted the Salvation Army Missing Persons Bureau the January before he died. I wrote a letter saying I was searching, wanted to know medical information, or if we have siblings. Salvation Army forwards letters and leaves it up to those who are missing to decide if they want to respond.
He did not. He was just shy of 70.
I will never know for sure if he saw my words on the paper addressed to him. I know the saliva that sealed my words carried cells from me that I got from him.
Even if my life was a letter he could open, read or receive.
Why do I feel better having sent that letter? I don’t know, but I do.
And his death is a relief. Death gave him an address. Death gave him shelter. Death made his absence less personal and more universal.
My dead father is more loving, stable and predictable.
Death makes it safe to love him.
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