He isn't an easy guy to love. In fact our relationship isn't the best. It isn't what every little girl thinks her relationship with her father will be when she grows up. We had a falling out. I married a man he didn't agree with. I had children with this man. He wasn't happy about it. He voiced this on numerous occasions. We actually stopped talking for a long time. I went to see him in 2009 to make my peace with him. He heard what I had to say. He didn't really respond to what it was. The one thing I have always wanted from him was simply, "I am sorry my selfishness has hurt you and that I couldn't see how wonderful you are."
Now my dad is dying. Really he has been dying for a long time. He drinks beyond the point of excess and he smokes more than that. His body has slowly been giving out on him. Through talking with my husband and my brothers and sisters and the Lord, I have realized, I don't mourn for this man who's seed brought me into this world. I mourn for all those times I wanted where it was evident that he loved me and my siblings without shame. That my children would know his goofiness. That we would be a close family always there for each other. I mourn that those times with him will never be. It's selfish really. I don't hate my father. I love him in a way that I simply cannot explain.
He lays in a bed in a hospital and he cannot communicate other than smiling or tearing up in his eyes, Yet he cannot give the one thing that would set us free from all that want that each of us five kids have. The apology. Coming to terms with this over the last few days has been a very emotional process.
Just when I think I am good and I am at peace, those emotions rise up. I feel society telling me with out words that I am supposed to rush to my dying father and be with him. But what good will that do? I feel the approval of my siblings and my father himself, pull me to go even when I have not the means to do it. Yet I have been told by all of my siblings that wanting to and not being able to are different than being able and not wanting to.
What can I say to him that I have not said before? Only one thing... I forgive you, Daddy, even though you haven't asked me to do it.
As a little girl I delighted in being a Daddy's girl. Everything I did was to try to please a man that could not be pleased because he was unhappy in his own being for whatever he chose to allow to make him unhappy. He has touched lives in good and bad ways. I want to believe he has lifted up someone and made their life better.
I hope that the amendments that need to be made are made before God makes it his time.
It is not my duty to seek his approval anymore. As my brother said, He gave that gift to me when he disowned me for marrying a black man. He gave me a freedom I never chose to see, freedom from living up to whatever standard he had for me that was not mine. I am grateful that I can now see it.
There is so much more I could say. I just find myself lacking the words.
I don't want to speak negatively or hear anyone else do it. I want to focus on the good things I remember.
He taught me how to bait a hook at 4 years old and to sit super quietly while I waited for the fish to come and gobble the worm on the hook. He used to play hide and seek in the dark with us and our friends and find the best hiding spots.
I remember when I would get out of the shower and all dried off and in fresh pj's, he would sit and brush my hair until it was dry. I felt so treasured during those moments when I was little.
The camping trips, even when it was freezing man i loved those camping trips. The last one we went on I was 13 or 14 and we went up to Vega Reservoir and My brother and I were sitting around the fire roasting marsh mellows and he told us not to put our feet too close to the fire or our shoes would melt. I guess I sat too close. and then Chris' fishing pole fell in the lake. He had to get it and there were leeches in the water. Dad laughed and laughed.
I am up late because I can't sleep knowing the condition he is in. His brain is bleeding him to death. His body is depleted and from what my sister says, his mind is gone. Now he is a scared old man that doesn't know his children and stared blankly at the wall. I wonder what he sees as he stares at things no one else can see. Is God judging him? Showing him all the things in his life that he did for good or bad? I know what I hope.
I wish that they could just give him enough morphine to allow him to slip into a sleep that will take him. That they give him enough that his breathing is slowed and then stopped so he wont be scared and he wont feel the pain from his broken hip. If he were a dog, he would have been euthanized by now. Why is it that that would be "humane", but being a human it is assisted suicide and illegal and unethical?
I never realized how much I would miss him. It broke my heart hearing my sister on the phone today, she is so strong and this makes her helpless. What can we do as children to love our parents? Especially after we have left them and have been joined to our spouses?
May his memory be good and live long.
