I definitely resemble my father.

I’m not sure I ever really knew my dad. I mean…I lived in the same house with him for nineteen years. He spent much of his time either off somewhere “fishing” (aka drinking at local bars) or puttering at his work bench (aka drinking in the basement). He was a broken man by the time I came into the picture, I think. I don’t think he was happy married to my mom. The woman he really loved spurned him and I think he and mom just kind of settled for each other.

I remember him as being a talented artist, although all of the artwork he saved was done before I came along. He dreamed of being a commercial artist but family responsibilities squashed his ambition. He dreamed of being a farmer and living in a small house in the middle of forty acres but, again, he worked a rather menial job and he was a functioning alcoholic. He settled in as a parts manager at the local Mack Truck garage.

I left home as soon as I could, marrying my high school boyfriend. We moved to England and from there, Colorado. Dad and Mom both passed away long before I returned to West Virginia to live. So, our relationship was complicated by distance, by my need to heal the scars of youth and his need to forget he had anything to do with them. I continued to try to gain his love and approval clear up to 2004 when my mother died. We had a parting of the ways when he said something ugly about my brother who is differently abled. That’s when I was done…and I told him so. 

Sometimes you have to walk away from relationships that are hurting you. It took a lot of therapy for me to realize just because we were blood relatives doesn’t mean we had to keep hitting ourselves in the head with a baseball bat. I felt a mixture of extreme sadness and blessed relief when I walked away. I was traveling to West Virginia to say goodbye when I got the call he had already passed. I sat alone with him in the funeral home for a couple of hours. I ranted and raved and spewed out all the things I had wanted to say to him all my life. When his ashes were released to me, I took his wife, the box of ashes, and a shovel and went to his favorite fishing hole. Laura couldn’t walk down to the edge, so she said her goodbyes from the high riverbank. I dug a hole, buried his ashes, and placed a stick cross over him. I prayed he made it safe to heaven and if so, I hoped to see him there one day and maybe then we could really talk.

He would have been 100 years old today. He liked to say he was born in 1919 because he thought it sounded cooler. I’ve long since forgiven my father for not being the dad I needed him to be. And I’ve long since forgiven myself for not understanding him and not being there for him when he lost himself. I’ve stopped beating myself up for not being the daughter he wanted me to be. A lot of change came when I finally accepted Jesus into my heart and I learned a lot more about the act of forgiveness. 

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad. I hope you’re having a big time fishing on the best riverbank in Heaven today. I hope you catch a big one!

❤️

“Parents, don’t be hard on your children. If you are, they might give up.”

Colossians 3:21 CEV