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.
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8 comments:
I read you blog almost every day. This post made me cry.... Very well written and it echoed my feelings towards my own father. Thank you for sharing.
Well Christine if you think that there is a dry eye here you are mistaken. I don't think I have ever cried so hard since I had my heart attack and thank God the telephone rang because I would still be crying. You know when I read your story I could also see us (Charal, Florrie, Janice, Dianne and myself) but it was the Mother we wished we had had and it sure brought back a lot of old memories. Thank you for sharing this story because I know you are not a person to talk about things like that to just anybody and I think that it is good that you got it out in the open.
Much Love Always Aunt Sharyn xoxoxo
Dear Chris
Wonderfully written with so much pain, passion and understanding for your dad. I am so sorry that you and your dad missed out on a close relationship. Who knows why some people just cannot give of themselves so others can love them. I know you are a very loving and caring person Chris and your Dad missed out on a father daughter relationship that would have filled his heart. Thank you for sharing your story and I hope some day you get a chance in another time to "Dance with your Father".
S___ sister
Oh Chris, You are an unbelievably good writer - so sincere, open and heart-felt. My relationship with my father was very similar and so I could relate very well. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving us all something to reflect on - either letting go a similar pain, or appreciating a wonderful relationship with a father.
Chris: I pulled out an old email that I had intended on actioning a while back - I just read Yolande's eulogy. I then took an interest in this piece and started to read. What a moving story - I too, echoe the sentiments of the other commentors. You have a wonderful gift! I too, did not have a great relationship with my father - he was not at my wedding either - your story does give me hope that we too, may get it right when we meet again. Thanks for sharing your most deepest feelings - you are an inspiration!
As a little girl, my dad would sing to me songs from Marty Robbins and Roger Whittaker as we sat under the stars at our home in North Carolina. Even to this day, if I close my eyes and think very hard I can hear the rich, deep baritone “There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor” floating over the spring air. I knew from a early age what the song meant and why he sang it to me. -“The Last Farewell”- My dad was a warrant officer in the Army and often the song came up just before a dangerous mission or a long deployment. He never told me that he might not come home but some how I knew that was a possibility. As I looked out my window on cold day in November I saw my dad dressed in his uniform, his duffel bag at his side, a-pack thrown over his shoulder and my mom close to him. This was the only time I can remember seeing my parent show any affection to each other. He held her hand for what seems like an eternity and turn to the window where I was and said, “I love you Tiny.” I didn’t hear the words, but again I knew. I didn’t see my dad again for 2 years.
When my dad finally came home, I was scared of him. It wasn’t that he had done anything, I just was scared to be in the same room with him. Soon after he returned, my dad left the Army and both my parents started going to school to finish degrees that were put on hold. My dad worked two jobs just to get the same money he made in the Army and my mom work part time jobs to help out. As the oldest daughter I took care of the house, the cleaning, laundry, cooking dinner, basically everything they were too busy to handle themselves. My brother was older than me so he got to take care of the yard work and my little sister was left to me to raise.
The fighting started with little outburst of anger over minor things that were resolved quickly to all out “war.” At first my father just hit my mom, a bruise here and there, over time it got worse. Then my siblings and I were the targets of his anger, along with my mom. My father would hit us with his fists, glass coke bottles, or repeatly bang our heads into the wall. Once he dragged me to the ground and started banging my head into the back door. He was crying and saying, “I love you Tiny.”
The day my father died was the hardest day of my life. He didn’t die of a heart attack, stoke, or cancer, he just died inside my heart. The final “straw” came when my father picked up a coffee table and threw it across the room at me. I don’t remember where it hit me, only that when I regained consciousness, I was in the hospital with two broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a fractured collar bone. My mother told the doctors at the hospital that someone ran into me with their car while I was riding my bike and drove off before they could be stopped. The day I was released from the hospital, my father wasn’t there. The living room was freshly painted and the coffee table, that had pushed me through two panels of drywall into the next room, was gone. So was my father.
Years later, I was told that my mother was having an affair with a man she had met while my father was away. When my father found out about the affair, he tried to forgive her and work toward reuniting our family. However, the affair continued and with school cost, two jobs, and children to support the stress took a heavy toll on him. It was said that if the solid oak coffee table that weighted at least 60lbs hadn’t hit the stub, which took most of the impact, I could have easily died. Two days after my father nearly killed me, my grandfather came to our house to fix the walls and the broken framing. My grandfather told my father to leave or he would call the police and have him arrested.
The amount of hatred, anger, and rage that he subject my siblings and me to damaged us severely. All of us have had to get intense abuse counseling and therapy and I have had to get counseling to deal with anger issues. For no reason that I can explain, sometimes, I am frightened of myself. There seems to be a monster inside of me that is filled with hate, anger, guilt, and loneliness. It feels like a fire that starts from deep inside, an intense heat that blinds your heart, your soul, your reason until the only clear objective you have is to cause pain. The same pain that you feel for the betrayal of unconditional love. Under this adult body is a child looking for those warm spring days when she sat on her dad’s lap listening to him sing her to sleep.
This is a very powerful post.
Thank you for sharing!!
Crying and sobbing..he loves u just didn't know how to show it
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