A Place to share and grieve
My dad died 3 years ago and I still miss him regularly. Our relationship was a rocky one, smoothed out by time and both our efforts. Twice in my lifetime I told him I would never talk to him again and twice he reached out and asked if we could heal it and twice we did.
He beat me regularly when I was young. Never in rage, always controlled, explaining my deserving of the beating as he did it. I never struck him back. At 16, as he struck me, I told him he was no better than the bullies in the school courtyard and he could beat me bloody, but I would listen to him no more. He stopped and never hit me again.
My parents divorced when I was 10, so, for the first few years after that I only saw him on Sundays. I was 12 the first time he hired me to work in his office for the summer. I did that again at 14. Moved in with him after his second divorce and worked for him at 18 for a year.
Spent most of the next 6 years living in California, seeing him only for occassional visits. When I moved back in my mid-20’s we began the ritual of playing tennis on Sundays, which we kept up semi-regularly for the next 20 years. We both evolved alot during this time. By the time grandchildren started showing up, he was not the same man I grew up with. A kinder, gentler man had arrived.
After I moved to North Carolina, we spoke on the phone every Monday for 9 years.
When we knew he had about 6 months to live, I made trips up to visit every few weeks and stayed for a week at a time, giving space for my 5 siblings to do the same. Only one other took advantage of this time.
I watched him die in the hospital bed. I wrote Dad’s Song the next day and performed it at his funeral the day after that.
There are Mondays I still go for the phone.