I finally celebrate Father's Day!

This is an odd post to write - in fact, I don't even know how to begin this.  I'll start here - today is Father's Day.  It's also a holiday I never celebrated growing up.  Not to say there weren't presents and cards given in our house, but I personally did not enjoy the day.  I felt like an impostor shopping for cards that said things that I wish I felt for my father, things that I knew were probably true for other people, but not for me.  I did not have a good relationship with my dad.  Neither did my sister, or my mom, or most of our family.  The people who like my dad the most were mainly people in the church he pastored who didn't know the real him.  Who only saw our "perfect" family at church, where we all pretended to be happy so we wouldn't sully the message my father was preaching.  Our long faces would have been distracting, I bet.  Although I didn't enjoy the sermon part of the service because I felt like I was in the midst a family of hypocrites, even if not by my own choice, I dreaded the going home after the service part.  I wondered if anyone noticed I was afraid to get in the car with my father.  I wondered how in such a small town, no one noticed him on the road, threatening to run over people on neighborhood streets, refusing to brake for animals in the road (even though my mother and sister & I were huge animal lovers), yelling when he felt cut-off in traffic, or the pounding on the steering wheel while yelling at whichever one of us was unfortunate enough to attract his attention.  It is possible that people did see, or notice, but no one ever said a word.  Even though he was a pastor, my pastor, I never blamed God for this - I believe God was disappointed in him too. (and who of us haven't disappointed God at some time in our life?)  The fact that we as humans have the power of free will, the ability to make choices and decisions for ourselves, absolves God of the blame for how we act.  I know lots of people still blame Him, but that's just an excuse, a crutch, to keep from having to face being responsible for their lives.  I used to pray and ask that I could just make it out of my childhood home alive.  That sounds really melodramatic, but it was true.  My father managed to keep the most violent parts of our relationship away from my mother by doing them when I was with him somewhere or at home alone with him.  While the excessive punishment, whether I deserved some sort of punishment or not, was upsetting, it was not the whole of the degradation of our relationship.  There were other things, scarring and humiliating things, that I don't care to go into here - besides, your own imagination would probably be pretty close to spot on.   The, "If you tell I will hurt  ----" (someone or something you love), worked to keep me silent.  I did decide that if I did make it out of the house and grew up to be a parent myself, I would never treat my children that way.  I would love them unconditionally, I would be mad at them for disobeying without letting my anger rule my mouth and the hand holding the belt.  I vowed that I would tell my children that I loved them all the time - even if I was disappointed in a decision they'd made, or a grade they came home with, or an attitude or statement that was below their potential.  (I also vowed to let my children eat as much whipped cream as they wanted, straight out of the container - now I always keep on in the freezer!)  

Amazingly, (to me anyway), I did make it out, and I did grow-up.  When I was an adult and living on my own after college, I made the decision to have nothing to do with my father ever again.  It was tricky, because he and my mom were still married.  He had hurt and wronged her too - pastors are put in close proximity to hurting women on a regular basis, and sometimes lines get crossed.  A lot of lines in his case.  I walked away, and while I knew I had made the best decision for me, and any future children of mine,  I also grieved.  I grieved for the what-might-have-been's.  I wanted so much to have a father who was my protector, not the one I needed protection from.  A father who loved me unconditionally - when I made mistakes, made bad decisions, misbehaved, disobeyed, and even failed miserably.  He only loved me like that when we were in front of other people - at church, or with visiting ministers, evangelists or missionaries in our home.  I grieved for the handful of good memories from my early childhood.  I grieved for the wasted potential.  I grieved that my future children would never have a grandfather they adored, like I adored my grandfathers.  I made myself sick about it, but still, through all the tears, I knew I had to walk away from that relationship for my own mental health.  Once I made the break, and took time to grieve, I was done.  I learned to answer questions about him with, "He's not around anymore."  

He divorced my mom after 36 years of marriage, remarrying almost as soon as the ink on the divorce decree dried, and was left by his new wife 6 months later because of his affairs.  He remarried again, a girl slightly younger than me, and the one he carried on an affair with through two marriages.  Eventually I got married, (and divorced) had a baby girl, married again, moved to a new state, and married the love of my life.  My father never did take rejection well, and moved to "my" new state as well, and started a campaign to reconnect with me, and to be a part of my little girl's life.  That didn't work out like he wanted, and he got angry and "stalkerish".  He showed up at every job I worked at, and made facebook friends with people I worked with that didn't know him from Adam.  I refused to let my child be photographed for school functions, wouldn't put stickers up from her school, dance or sports teams because I didn't want him to be able to find her.  It became tiring to always be on guard, but necessary.  He's gone after both my sister and I with a gun because we don't want to be around him - I had to protect my child from being placed in an environment like that.  

Fast forward to this month.  I have worked hard to put my past behind me, to learn what forgiveness is when the things you are forgiving haunt you and your dreams, and the person you need to forgive refuses to change or admit there is anything to be forgiven.  Several times I thought I had it conquered, and then he would show up again.  Either at my job, or in my mailbox, or email, or try to call.  I would be reminded of all the reasons I had severed connection with him, and feel those feelings all over again.  I made a concerted effort to have memories without pain, forgiveness without anger, and I strove to remember good things about him and our relationship in my childhood.  I finally got to where I had wanted to be about this situation for years.  I was happy with my family and my life, and wasn't driven by feelings of fear of him, anger towards him, and knew that he could never hurt me again.  Then I got a phone call.  Oh, the inevitable phone call.  It happens when you least expect it, sneaks right up on you, and comes wearing a coat of the feelings you threw out long ago.  

My sister called to tell me that our father had contacted her from the hospital, in very poor health.  He couldn't tell her what was wrong with him or how long he'd been there, but after some calls to the nurses station she found out that it was very bad. So bad in fact, that by the end of the week, they said they had done all they could and there was nothing else they could do and they couldn't say how much longer he'd be here.  During the week I had little emotion about the situation.  I felt like I lost my father a long time ago, and grieved then.  I didn't have any emotion left for him as a father, just as another human being who was sick and suffering.  After five days of sporadic updates from the current wife through my sister, it was clear that he was not getting better, and would soon depart this world.  All of a sudden it hit me.  I would never see him or speak to him again.  I wasn't sure I ever would under normal circumstances, after all it's been about a dozen years, and nothing has happened to change my decision., but I didn't like the thought of not having the option to make a different decision in the future.  I began to feel sad.  I can't tell you exactly why I was sad, and it surprised the heck out of me, and in fact, I called an old friend who knew him and would understand and said over and over, "I didn't know I was going to be sad!  Why am I sad?  I didn't know I was going to feel anything!"  I decided that I should call him and say goodbye.  I didn't want to, in fact, I felt downright nauseated, but I felt like I needed to.  I wanted closure for myself, and I would rather look back and say, "Well, I wish I hadn't even gone through that", than to say, "I wish I would have made that call while I could."  I don't want to live a life of regrets, and if I have any, I want them to be for something I did stepping out of my comfort zone, than over something I never attempted.  

The call was not spectacular.  It wasn't life changing.  It wasn't a reunion or a confessional.  I even had to introduce myself.  I didn't call to argue, demand answers, or ask for apologies.  I made the call, not for him, but for me.  To help me find closure to a situation I thought was handled (in my mind).  I told him I was sorry he was so sick and in pain.  The call lasted two minutes.  I literally said, "I don't know what else to say, so I'm going to get off the phone."  I hung up, and still didn't know how I felt.  I didn't know if I was glad I called or not.  I didn't know if it helped anything.  But finally, my heart rate slowed, and I began to feel calm.  Nothing changed, none of my history with this man was magically erased and replaced with wonderful memories.  There were no apologies, no, "I wish things had been different between us", but it was done.  I was surprised by my emotions, I made the call, did what I felt I had to do, and that was that.

Amazingly, as of today, he is still hanging on.  He's coded, he's been through surgeries, lost one and a half times the volume of blood he started out with in his body, and he's still here.  I've stepped off the roller coaster named emotion that I was on for about an hour that day, and have returned to my life, not a person with a changed past, but a person with a changed present.  I'm done.  It's done, this situation in my life.  He may fully recover against the doctor's every predictions.  Or he may die today - or tomorrow, or ten years from now.  But whatever his life's journey brings him, it doesn't cross paths with mine.  I still truly believe my decisions to sever the relationship between he and I is the best thing I can do for me and my family.  But this time I am certain that I have memories without the sharp thorns of pain.  He can never hurt me again - either in memory, the present or the future.  

Today is Father's Day.  And while I don't celebrate Father's Day with my father, my daughter has an amazing father who she adores, looks up too, and waits impatiently for after work every day.  I wouldn't trade their relationship for anything in the world.  She may never know how lucky she is to have a father like him, but I know.  I am thankful that my husband is a father who can be celebrated, today and every day, no matter who he's in front of, or what role he is in or what position he holds.  He's the kind of daddy she will be able to use as the baseline for how other men treat her.  While I missed that in my life, I'm ever grateful she hasn't.  

Happy Father's Day, honey!