I Used to Hate Father’s Day
I used to hate Father’s Day.
For most of my life, I would look at Father’s day as a big question mark.
“Father’s Day? What does that even mean? A day to celebrate broken homes and absent fathers?”
I was pretty bitter.
You see, most of my life, I lived without knowing my father. I've been fortunate to have had a couple of father figures to fill the void but there was always a lingering emptiness around my father. There was a 2 year period, as a teenager, where my mom put me on a plane to Germany to live with him. I was a teenager spiraling out of control from the abusive environment I has living in, and she couldn’t handle me anymore.
He was a stranger to me; an invisible presence that only served as a reminder that half of myself would remain a mystery, a feeling deep feeling of abandonment. Over the course of those 2 years, I would come to learn the meaning behind the words my mother would always say to me in moments when she grew tired of me, “You’re just like your father.”
I would also come to learn how I was never enough when my father in his exasperation would say, “You’re just like your mother.” Today I’ve learned that I embody of the best parts of them, the good they could never acknowledge in one another.
Our relationship was turbulent. There I was with my father, finally getting to know him, and yet he never quite let me in. I was a broken kid, sent to him without an explanation, and without the confidence or safety to explain why I was so broken. He didn’t know what the last 15 years of my life had been. The word “hell” comes to mind when I think of it. Regardless, we were forced together to make a decent situation out of a seemingly bad hand and we fumbled through life trying to create some type of familial bond. By the time I returned to the US, we had found our way to achieving a deeper connection, but the bond we had was still fragile. It didn’t take long for it to break again, my father fading away and my growing resentment towards him maintaining our distance. It would take almost 20 years before we would see or speak to one another again.
Over the years, I would work on my resentment and anger. It would take me 18 years to grieve the loss of my father, discover forgiveness, and find peace with what was. When my mom passed away, I adjusted to my new parentless status, building family through friends and community.
Two years ago, my father and his family made contact with me. I was extremely guarded and my defenses were high. While I had forgiven his actions, I was unwilling to entertain another attempt at a relationship with him or his family. Their attempts to connect with me would dredge up the pain and turmoil of the past, a past I had compartmentalized and shoved into the very far corners of my mind and heart. There were too many cobwebs and dust on those boxes, the thought of touching them made my skin crawl and my stomach heavy. Then I would think of my sisters. Three young women who I didn’t know that I longed to call my family...
I don’t know when I finally opened to the possibility to try. Perhaps it was the tears that came like a dam bursting, mixed with rage and angry sobs until I was shattered, exhausted and couldn’t find tears to cry anymore. Emotions had to break me open enough to see the sliver of possibility to heal the wound that lay beneath the surface.
I allowed myself to have a conversation with one of my father’s brothers (yes, I now call him my uncle). Our connection was divinely guided because he was a loving and understanding man who spoke directly to my wounds and reassured me things would be okay. He spoke the language my heart needed to hear in that moment and gently coaxed me to consider building a new relationship with my father. I would start by making contact with one of my sisters. We began to build a connection and I started to envision a life where I had a direct bloodline to family. Little did I know that a heartbreaking twist was about to unfold.
In 2019, I received a call from my sister that our father was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer. Just a few months later I would receive another call telling me that doctors were giving him 48 hours to live. If I was going to see him, I needed to get on a plane immediately. Fear settled in, I wanted to run, I wanted to shut down, I wanted to hide under a rock and disappear.
Was I really going to drop everything to fly to Germany and reunite with my father after 20 years of estrangement just to watch him die? What kind of sick, cruel joke was this? After sitting in silence for some time, praying for guidance on what to do, I called my job to inform them that I would be on extended leave and began the search for a plane ticket. The next day I was on a plane headed to Germany to reunite with my dying father.
There is so much more to share of this story and I will share it with you someday. For now, I’ll leave you with this update:
Forgiveness and love have the power to create miracles and healing. My dad is still here with us, he is doing amazingly well. While he still has cancer, it is currently in remission and we are blessed. The love I had never received from him, I receive fully now. We talk often for long periods of time. He makes my laugh, he tells me he loves me, and we are learning the best parts of one another. I now have three sisters who fill up my whole heart. While we have some language barriers with their first language being German and mine being English and we sometimes stumble through our conversations, we are building our connection to one another. My love for them is fierce and strong.
I have discovered a large extension of uncles, aunts, and cousins who I am still getting to know. The majority of them live in Detroit and I am hoping to meet them all at an upcoming family reunion. Over night, I went from having very little family to so much abundance. I still don’t know how to adjust to it all or how to carve out the time to get to know them all. Oftentimes, my heart feels overwhelmed at the thought of suddenly having so much family. I realize this is a good problem to have. It has been a journey filled with heartache, forgiveness, faith, resilience, and love that is still unfolding.
This is the first Father’s Day with my dad and it feels light years different. This Father’s Day I feel very blessed and the time we have left to spend with one another out shines the years of the past.