Father's Heart

Father’s Heart

This is our first Father’s Day since our Dad died, it’s hard.

It took me 60 years to really understand about my Dad and our relationship and loss and pain and regret and forgiveness and finding our way back to each other. I sometimes sway between it happened too late and it happened just in time and mostly, I am so very grateful we found our way back to each other.

How I long for the days to have my Dad place my feet on the top of his feet and we would dance, oh how we would dance. He taught me to Polka and Waltz and a one, two, three, one, two, three, swaying and laughing and he looked into my eyes like I was the most perfect person in all the world.

Father daughter bonds are beautiful and powerful and when they remain intact and healthy will create such a deep sense of knowing who we are as we become women.

There is no one that can compare to our Dad and still we will likely always compare in some way every man we meet to him. Consciously or subconsciously we often form our relationships around how our relationship was with him. Our ideas and how we see ourselves and our place in the world is often cultivated in that soil.

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. Sometimes life takes turns and choices are made and hurts come and create a severing which can seem at times beyond repair. It isn’t though, not usually, it is not beyond repair if we really want to find our way back to each other. Dad and I had been doing that for decades and in the last year, as it is often in the last year of a person’s life when a terminal diagnosis is given, we pulled out all the stops and talked and laughed and cried and healed.

The one thing I learned as I got older is that we all hurt people. We all make choices that we would give most anything to take back. Life doesn’t come with instructions and as the saying goes, hurt people, hurt people and finding a way to move beyond that is really the only place where freedom can begin.

I found a wonderful place of freedom when I came to the realization that our parents are simply fellow humans trying to find a way through life. They are people who had their own hopes and dreams and fears and pain and tragedies and triumphs. They are just people. Not forever cast in the role of parent with some expectation for perfection and all of the, what they should have done. Rather, just another human, another being on this planet; trying to make it through. As my brother Byron said “Being a human is hard”. Once this truth becomes clear, everything else kind of falls in place. No matter what they might have done or not done. No matter how personal it all may have felt, or how much it hurt, or even how deep and endless the wound may be or feel. Their part in it was as another person on the planet trying to get through life. Slipping and falling and sometimes getting up and dusting themselves off. Sometimes, staying down and sometimes, running away. We are all just, trying to figure it out.

It feels like we have lots of time, until we don’t. Then it is like trying to grab dry leaves in a windstorm. It is all going so quickly and it is impossible to capture.

The truth is, I didn’t know he was actually dying. Not right away. I didn’t understand that was what was happening. One day, as we were heading back to the island about to catch our ferry, after taking our dog Sammie over to the mainland for chemo, as she had cancer too. My brother John called me and asked me if I knew how sick Dad was? I said, Dad is doing great, I just left him. John said no, no Alison, he isn’t…he’s dying. He has been given 3-6 months to live and the doctor thinks he will be lucky to get 3 months.

Those words; those words came crashing in and I was thinking, what are you saying? Why are you saying this? I just saw him! He didn’t say anything about that! I have been visiting him every week; I think I would know if he was dying.

But, he was dying, and I didn’t know. Now I did, now I knew my Dad was dying. We are just getting to this place where we are laughing and talking and working out awkward moments, and, my Dad is dying.

The next time I saw him; I looked him in the eye and said… “I didn’t know Dad. I didn’t know you are dying. I didn’t know that the cancer had come back like that. I am so sorry I keep talking about my dog and you are dying.”

There is a beautiful thing that can happen when someone is dying. There is no room for trying to find just the right way to say something. The days of gently sampling ways to hint, they are gone. They are useless and what happens, if we are going to have any honesty at all in whatever moments are left, is we put away words with no meaning…no value.

Beating around the bush? No! This moment, this day, could be the last time we talk and we have run out of pleasantries and meanderings. Shit just got real.

In a world gone mad where things are seldom as they seem. We are in a time when it can be difficult to know what to think, or to feel, or to believe in. One thing that never fails me is love. I love the verse about love in the bible about love never fails and doesn’t hold wrongs against someone. I would like to unpack this one a bit, if that is ok. For me great writings, great truths and wisdom can come from many sources, it is up to me to figure out exactly what is being communicated and how best to fit it into my life, if at all. These words many of us have heard read at weddings over the years, for me, it has become more of a map or a goal. I find it beautiful and inviting.

From 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 (Ali’s version)

4 Love works best when we wait for each other. When we don’t try to squish people into our ideas of how they should look or feel or act. Love is Kind. Love doesn’t try to control or turn things into a competition, rather, it celebrates with us when we succeed and stand right beside us in our challenges and failures. Love is a great cheerleader!

5 Love covers us. Love has our back. Love is proud of us and brags about us and thinks and says wonderful things to us and about us, whether we are there or not. Love calms itself before it speaks to us if we are having a rough time of it and if we screw up, love doesn’t keep throwing that in our face. Love lets go of the resentment and does whatever it can to help going forward.

6 Love isn’t happy to see things go wrong or to see someone mess up. Love doesn’t laugh and say oh I saw that coming, not to or about friends or family or anyone. Love is so compassionate and takes up so much space that pettiness and jealousy and judgements can’t squeeze in beside it. We need to choose which one we give space to, they can’t all fit. Choosing love is always a good choice.

7 Love always protects, it always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, it never gives up on us. No matter how bad things get, love sticks around and helps pick up the pieces.

7 Love covers us and protects us. It stands guard and watches over us. Love doesn’t look for what is wrong for us. Love looks for what is wonderful about us and focuses on those things and nurtures them. Love sees embers barely glowing and fans them back to a flame. Love doesn’t quit on us. Love is loyal and true.

8 Love never fails because it won’t give up. Not because anyone is perfect, rather, because love says no matter what, I am here with you and I’m not going anywhere. We can fix this, together.

So, what is all of this about? Well, I can say, without hesitation, that Dad and I knew that kind of love, before he died. And to say that I am grateful for that seems so small in comparison to how it feels. It is rather a thing that I would want to shout from the mountain tops. I do not take this lightly and I completely recognize how rare a gift this was. Dad made sure each of his children, there were 9 of us, we lost a brother a few years earlier. Dad made sure that all 8 of us who are still living, knew how deeply we are loved. We all spent time together and our one on one time with Dad and it was magnificent! He was brave and vulnerable and kind and honest, so honest.

I finally was able to see and understand, that all that ever really mattered to our Dad was us. Family was so important to him, he himself coming from a family of 13 kids. For Dad, having us all together, his kids and grandkids, well, nothing brought him more joy than that. Oh how I loved our time together, my brothers and sister and sister in laws as we gathered together at hospice. I am so very grateful that this happened before Covid hit. Dad passed on January 16, 2020 and when I think of the families who were not able to gather together in those days with their family members as a result of Covid, my heart breaks for them.

I had studied and spent time learning about the "Father’s Heart" for many years while we were going to church. When the deep healing started to come I knew, I knew without a doubt that what we were experiencing was the fruit of all those days, those tears and prayers. I have a chapter in my upcoming book where I go into depth about our “Beautiful Goodbye”. It was beyond my wildest imagination. For now, I am so grateful to have finally known my Father’s Heart.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad! You are so missed.