Closeness isn’t built in pleasantries and pretense, but on ownership, authenticity, and truth.
“I should have been a better father to you. I’m so sorry.”
I held his eyes across the small coffee shop table and we fingered our respective drinks: mine, chocolatey and foamy; his, smooth and simple. The steam on each slowly dissipating into the air, becoming memory.
He was specific, labeling the hurt he caused me as the biggest regret of his life. The pain etched deeply in the weathered lines of his skin that folded around his watery turquoise eyes, shaded by the brim of his ever-present hat.
I told him I forgave him. I’d told him so decades before, but sometimes guilt lingers long.
I love my dad, and, I think, there’s a closeness there. A closeness that preceded the rupture, and that grows today. I’m so lucky: how many have had idyllic relationships with our parents, despite what all the Father’s Day cards suggest? How many have been hurt? We wound those closest to us the most, due to opportunity and our own brokenness and the potential for pain that love affords. But how many have been able to rebuild on a foundation of authenticity, ownership, and truth?
There’s something profoundly cleansing about truth.
Sometimes the cleansing water’s too cold. Sometimes it burns. But the truth, as the ancient saying goes, sets us free.
Free to love without reservation. Free to examine the hurt, so to let it heal. Free to rebuild something new and precious and beautiful.
I don’t buy those logically questionable “you were the best dad” cards for Father’s Day. We don’t need to pretend in order to love. And he doesn’t ask me to. And that’s a gift.
Nothing grows in darkness. But when we open the boarded up house of the past and take stock of what’s hidden inside, when we clear out the cobwebs and reckon with what is there, deciding what was of value and is worth keeping, and what no longer serves, we can create a cozy space, transforming it into something new.
Sometimes people are afraid that if they talk about the bad times, it is all they’ll be able to see; that it will color everything. That’s not been my experience. Facing the pain and trauma of the past has allowed me to integrate it into the truth of this intricate tapestry of life and see the rich complexity of those threads interwoven with my own. Beauty and pain. Darkness and light.
The truth is, often the people we love the most hurt us the most, and we them.
But a parallel truth is that this narrative doesn’t need to be the final chapter.
I was a throwaway kid, but I don’t believe in throwing people away. I cherish those in my life and believe we can always grow and foster something new, if both parties are honest and willing to change.
Perhaps some have fathers who really were as perfect as Hallmark describes. Others had fathers who were cruel, sadistic, and unrepentant, with whom no reconciliation is safe, possible, or wise. For those of us with muddied stories, I hope there is space for honesty. Today doesn’t need to be a day of pretense, but may courage and truth find you and leave you new, full of hope and compassionate love.
What is your relationship with your own father like? Have you ever talked about the past together? What might that be like?