Dance with my Father

It is probably fair to say that I miss my father since his death last year. But then, I’ve been missing my father most of my life.

I think back to a day when I was about ten years old, before my parents divorced. My mom told me that Daddy would be coming home soon for supper (as we always called it in the Maritimes) and I decided to walk down Herring Cove Road towards the Armdale Rotary to meet him.

I remember walking along the gravel shoulder of the road, watching for my dad’s car in what was probably considered rush hour traffic in those days, feeling the coolness of the spring ground through the rubber soles of the sneakers that my mom bought me every year from a bin at Lawton's drug store. I imagined that my dad would stop and pick me up; he would be so happy to see me. I would get to sit in the front seat with him, listening to the radio, and we would arrive back home together.

He never came. I walked for what seemed like a very long time before I turned around. He probably took an alternative route home, or maybe, because my parents’ marriage was already in trouble, he didn’t come home at all that night; I’m not sure. What I do know is that it was the start of a lifetime of missing my father.

I left home when I was only seventeen and lived most of my life in Ottawa. When I decided to get married, my dad didn’t attend the wedding. He said he couldn’t afford to travel from Halifax to Ottawa.

I longed to hear him say “I’ll find the money somewhere, don't you worry about it. I’ll take a second job. I’ll drive all night. I’ll do whatever I have to do to be at your wedding, because I’m your father and that’s what fathers do”. The marriage didn’t last and it was a lifetime ago, but it still causes me pain when I remember that my father wasn’t at my wedding to walk me down the aisle.

In the years since I moved away, my dad only came to visit me once. I was in my twenties and my son Adam was only a few years old. During the visit I developed an ear infection and the doctor prescribed drops that had to be put into my ear canal. My dad offered to help me and I still remember how it felt for him to touch me, to take care of me, to cradle my head in his hand while he put the drops in my ear.

I’ve seen pictures of me on my dad’s knee as a baby, but I don’t’ remember him ever touching me or holding me. The only memory I have is of him putting those drops in my ear when I was a young woman and it has stayed with me for thirty years.

Time went by and I usually went home to Nova Scotia every year or two. I always went to visit my dad when I was there, sometimes reluctantly. Usually the visit would be awkward and we wouldn’t have a lot to say to one another. Phone calls were about the weather and neighbors that I didn’t know. We might as well have lived on separate planets, our lives were so different.

After I found out that the breast cancer I had in 1998 was back and had spread to my lungs, I decided I needed to go home to Halifax to be near the ocean, to mentally prepare myself to start chemotherapy again. My son Adam flew from the Netherlands to be with me and we planned to meet my dad for lunch. Adam hadn’t seen his grandfather since he was about 13.

During the visit, my dad didn’t mention the cancer or ask me about my treatments. Instead, he brought up something that happened between him and my mom when I was a child, something that didn’t involve me but painted my mom in a negative light.

I lost it. My emotions were on the edge and all of the hurt I had been feeling about our relationship started spilling out of me, like a time bomb that had been ticking for longer than I can remember. I hadn’t really cried since I found out that the cancer was back, but the floodgates had been opened and there was no turning back.

I stood on the sidewalk outside of his car and yelled at him, tears streaming down my face. “Why haven’t you asked about my treatments, how I’ve been feeling, if there’s anything I need? Why are you talking about things from 40 years ago that no longer matter? Why can’t you ever just be there for me?”

I can still see the look of shock on his face. He didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there. Finally, when I thought I had nothing left to say, he hugged me. As I sobbed on his shoulder, I said something that I hadn’t said to anyone else. “I’m scared. I’m just so scared”. I felt like a child again, a child who needed her daddy to make everything OK.

That was the last time I saw my dad alive. A little over a month later he went into the woods to hunt and never came home. He died the way he lived much of his life, alone. He sat down under a tree, waiting for the ducks to fly over, and he had a heart attack.

To say that my relationship with my dad was complicated is an understatement. I’ve spent my life missing the father-daughter relationship that never was. Part of me feels angry that when I finally found it in me to tell him how I felt, he died. Part of me feels guilty that I hurt him. Part of me feels sad that I didn’t tell him sooner, while we might have had the chance to change some things.

At least that was my fantasy: that we could change things and have the kind of relationship that I longed for my whole life. But the reality was that even if I had told my dad how I felt years ago, I don’t believe that he was capable of being the father that I needed. I know he never wanted to intentionally hurt me; he just didn’t seem to know how to be any other way.

I miss what might have been and never was. I’m not a religious person but I like the idea that if there is something beyond this life, that maybe we’ll have another chance to get it right. Maybe I’ll be small again and my dad will lift me up in the air and twirl me around. Maybe he’ll protect me and keep me safe from harm. Maybe he’ll ask about my dreams and fears, and he’ll listen to my answers. Maybe he’ll hold me and tell me that everything will be OK.

Maybe I’ll get to do something that I never did in this lifetime: dance with my father.