This has been a really weird week. Layla started school and Ben started potty-training and I had a blog that was full of "Oh no, he/she didn't!" anecdotes typed up and ready to go. And then my dad died.
I should back up a bit.
The truth is, I debated about whether or not I should even blog about this, but I thought maybe writing about it might make me feel better, so here goes. I haven't seen my dad in over twenty years. He and my mom split up when I was about Layla's age and I stopped seeing him altogether shortly thereafter. It's a long story, and unfortunately, not an uncommon one. My dad was an educated, charming, personable guy who had a great life, but decided to throw it all away for various stupid reasons, primarily some serious drug and alcohol addictions. So serious that his parental rights were taken away and he wasn't allowed to see or speak to my brother or me for many years. In fact, I didn't hear from him at all until about three years ago, and even then it was through my brother who he had also contacted. My brother chose to see him and try to rebuild some kind of relationship, I chose not to.
Words really can't express how much I struggled with whether or not to establish any kind of relationship with my dad. Partly, it was because of my mom. She never forbid us to contact him or anything ridiculous like that (although now that I'm a mom myself, I can see why someone would) but I feel a loyalty to my mom. She raised us by herself, which I know wasn't the way she envisioned it when she had children. But that's the thing about having kids; it's about sucking it up and doing what's right for your them, not bailing. But like I said, that was only part of the reason.
The main part is that I've spent twenty years of my life wondering where this person was and why his family wasn't important enough to him. He missed everything, birthdays, my high school graduation, my wedding, the birth of my children, everything, every single moment big or small. And the worst part of it all is that I lived so many years of my life thinking that all of that was somehow my fault. I had people around me to tell me that it wasn't, but the only person I would have ever believed it from was the person who left, and he wasn't looking to give me any answers. To top it off, I had really only recently made my final decision not to see him. We were at the wedding of a good friend of ours and at the reception her dad stood up and gave a speech about his daughter before the traditional father/daughter dance. I sat there watching the lovely moment between them and I couldn't help but think that that should have been me too. That should be every daughter. And it turns out that it's not very easy to forgive someone who hurts you in a way that no one or nothing can ever heal. So I chose not to see him and more importantly, I chose not to forgive him.
And then, exactly one month after I made that final decision, my brother called with the news that our dad had died. I didn't know what to do or how to feel. My book club was that night and instead of postponing, I went. And instead of saying something about it to some of the most supportive people I know, I stayed silent. I couldn't talk about it because I didn't know what to say, and I didn't know what to say because I wasn't exactly sure what it was I was feeling.
The thing is, it's hard to lose something that you never really had. The flip side of that is that I could have had whatever it was my dad was willing to give and I chose not to, because it felt like too little too late. It was when this thought kicked in that the full implications of my dad's death kicked in as well. Deciding somewhere down the road that I wanted to talk to my dad was no longer an option. I spent so much of my life thinking he was a terrible person for not wanting to be with us and yet when given the option myself, I turned my back. Some might call it a "taste of his own medicine", but it feels a lot more like "two wrongs don't make a right" to me. No one said I had to forgive him, but I could have heard him out. Does doing the same thing make me just as bad? Because isn't life about forgiving others who have done you wrong or, conversely, are there things that are truly unforgivable?
Either way, I can't fight the overwhelming feeling of guilt. Guilt that I may or may not have made decisions too hastily and guilt that I was able to continue with my day on Saturday at all. Somewhere in a dark corner of the back of my mind, the thought floating around is that if my father-in-law had passed away instead, I would be inconsolable. Forget about the book club being postponed, it would have been cancelled indefinitely. And as much as I love my father-in-law, that thought doesn't make me feel so great.
You only get one dad. And no matter what conclusion I come to with all of this, that thought will always haunt me.
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