It must be very difficult for you to want something when it’s too late. When I read your words in the message you sent, I could read between the lines and feel your pain, your anger, your frustration. You want memories. I’m sorry…the memories I have don’t include you because you weren’t there. Memories can’t be given. They have to be created. You want stuff? I sent the things he asked me to send. There isn’t anything else. Money? Well, there was debt. You want part of that? I haven’t asked that of anyone but if you’re offering…
There are consequences of behaviors. When you do not participate in someone’s life, when they reach out and are repeatedly turned away, you don’t get to come back three years later and complain you have no memories. I can’t make those for you. All three of you made choices. He’s gone and now it’s you two who have to live with the consequences.
I’m not insensitive to your plight. I tried all my life to have a relationship with my father. Then I got mad and pulled away and wouldn’t have anything to do with him, even when he made modest attempts to reach out. I tried again as an adult but we could never have the fairytale ending. We never had the father-daughter dance. My dad was a mean alcoholic who verbally and emotionally abused us. He once stood in front of me in the kitchen with a loaded rifle and begged my mom to kill him. I was 10. When my parents divorced, he moved away, got sober, found Jesus, and married a childhood friend. The man everyone mourned at his funeral was not the same man I grew up with. I didn’t know the man we buried.
I don’t know what happened between you and your dad. I wasn’t there. I know he was a stubborn man…a proud man. I know he didn’t understand, nor have any patience for, female drama and angst. He didn’t understand being told he was never there for you when he worked such long hours to provide for you financially. He was crushed by your Father’s Day Facebook declaration that the day meant nothing to you since you never really had a father. You know he read that, right? Your point was well taken. He gave up trying but, he never…said…a word.
Grief is a difficult path all on its own. Compound it with estrangement and it’s a messy affair, to be sure. I hope you find closure somehow. I know it took a while for me. You broke off all communication with me a few months after he died and I have no way of reaching you so I’ll just leave this here. You’ll probably never see it, but others will and it might help them. I know you and I aren’t the only people who are/were estranged from a parent. I will pray for you both for every success, every joy, every moment of peace you deserve.
Nothing but love…
❤️
““Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
Exodus 20:12 NIV