“Dad … I forgive you.”
I felt that my heart should be racing, but instead it was beating in time to the new plastic white living room clock that hung on the opposite wall from the faux western printed couch that my father and I sat on. I looked into my father’s eyes desperately wanting see some sort of sign indicating he really understood what I had just said. My mind was thrown into a state of shock by the weight of those four words. I had finally uttered the four single words that three psychiatrists and several ex-boyfriends had tried to get me to say so I could move on with my life. I felt like a Phoenix rising from its ashes. With those four words I had just been reborn at the age of twenty-one.
“Emily, you don’t have to forgive me. I’ve been a horrible father. I haven’t been there for you or your brothers and sisters.”
And just like that he had clipped my new pair of wings. I was starting to fall back towards the ashes. But this time I cut him off as a way to save myself.
“I know that I don’t have to forgive you, but I do. I am so sick of being mad at you and feeling hurt because of you. My uncle killed himself last year. He’s who I considered to be my father. I hate him for abandoning me. It hurts that you left me and now he left me. It makes me question what am I doing wrong to make men in my life, who are supposed to love me, leave me.
“I know. I know.”
He slowly lifted his left hand out of his lap and awkwardly put it on my knee. This fathering manifestation was too little too late. What I was about to say to him I had been screaming inside of my head for years. It is too late; my wings are covered in my old ashes.
“No you don’t know, don’t try and pretend like you understand because you don’t. You don’t know. He was more of a father to me and my brothers and sisters than you ever were. But his death made me realize something. It made me realize that if you were to die tomorrow I wouldn’t cry for you. I wouldn’t shed one tear. You are like a stranger in the streets to me. I’m not saying this to hurt you and I’m sorry if it is. I’m saying this because it’s true and its how I feel. This knowledge of how are relationship really is truly makes me sad because this isn’t how I should feel. You are my father. You are blood. Knowing that I wouldn’t cry for you makes me feel horrible. I should cry at my own father’s funeral. I shouldn’t be looking up at him from the pews wondering, ‘who is this man?’ We need to do something about our relationship, because I need to cry.”
My father’s eyes were filled with tears when I had finished my ranting. I wasn’t sure if this was another one of his sales techniques to make me believe that he had truly heard what I had just said, but as an understood rule within myself, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him speak.
“I never thought or hoped that you’d forgive me. I want to make our relationship better. I want to be the father to you that I was supposed to be. I remember when you used to be my little girl. When I would come over to your mom’s house to take you to the park and you were so excited to see me. I want that again. I want you to be as close to me as you were to your uncle.”
“I’m not sure that we can ever have that back, but I would settle for a close friendship where we call one another and keep up with what is going on in each other’s lives. And I’m not saying that I was innocent in all of this. I didn’t call you either. The phone works both ways. I’m just saying I want to be able to say that I love you and mean it, not just say it back to you like a parrot.”
“I would love that.”
My mind has wandered back to that conversation many times over the past twenty-two years. It always made me proud of myself for saying things that needed to be said, but that pride was quickly followed by the pain of failure. We completely stopped talking after that conversation. The only good thing that came out of that conversation was that I wasn’t angry at him anymore. I just felt bad for him. I was watching the reruns of that conversation while driving through my own suburbia, when my daughter’s voice brought me back to our conversation.
“Mom are you there?”
“I’m here. I’m sorry. What did you say sweetie?”
“Mom, Grandpa’s dead.”
“What? Where’s your father?”
“He’s in Grandpa’s room. Mom, I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you sweetie. I’m sorry to you too. How are you holding up?”
“I’m good. It’s weird, and maybe I’m just in shock, but I don’t feel as if he’s really gone. I’m not really sad either. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No sweetie of course not. Whatever you feel is exactly how you’re suppose to feel. Will you tell your father that I’m headed home right now and that I will be there as soon as I can?”
“Yes.”
“Sara?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I kept my cell phone up to my ear. I realized that I was talking to my 17-year-old daughter as if she were five. I hadn’t talked to her like she was five since she was three. She’d always been much wiser than her age. I finally put down my cell phone.
She didn’t seem to mind my condescending tone. She was just trying to be there for me. ‘How did I raise such a loving daughter?’ I said out loud trying to escape the noise that was going on inside my head.
When I got home my husband was waiting for me at the front door. He held the screen door open for me as I wearily walked up the sidewalk that was lined with newly bloomed yellow and pink tulips on either side. I walked by my husband without breathing a word. I was searching his eyes for any sort of clue as to how I should be acting at this moment. All I saw was a pair of blue with brown speckled eyes that I had been in love with these past 23 years. I put my keys on the side table and turned towards my husband as I watched him shut the door. I waited for him to come to me, and when he reached me I wrapped my arms around him as tight as my small, 5’1” frame would allow. I burrowed my head inside his chest. I needed to feel his living heart beating. I needed to feel safe. He held me in the dry silence. I was waiting for the tears to come. I was waiting for the pain of a lost father to rush over me. I was waiting to feel a love for my father. I thought of my uncle Will and I felt ashamed. I loosened my arms enough that I could put a small crevice of light between my husband and me. I couldn’t look him in the eyes right away so I started my journey at his chest. I slowly moved from his chest to his neck and then to his eyes. I am afraid to look at him. I am afraid that he will see that I am a fraud. That he will see what a horrible person I am because instead of pain I feel guilt; because I feel nothing. I believe this guilt to be worse than any pain.
“How ya doin’ kid?”
“Oh, pretty good considering the fact that we’re all going to die from global warming. Good thing my father died or else he would have to endure one hell of a summer.”
The tightness of his forehead softened along with his eyebrows, which somehow seemed to frame his gentle eyes. He knows my sarcasm. It has been his friend and enemy throughout our marriage. I use it as a defense mechanism, or so I’ve been told. I use it so that I won’t feel the emotions that I am “supposed” to be feeling. Well if this theory is true then why was I being sarcastic now? I am trying to feel something. I am failing.
“How’s Sara doing?” I said as I moved to sit on the worn, beige couch.
“She’s fine. Up in her room.”
“I need to call my family to let them know that Dad is gone.”
“I already did. Most of your brothers and sisters will be here tomorrow. Clay won’t be able to get here until Wednesday. He has a meeting or something.”
“Figures.”
“Do you want some tea?”
“No I’m fine. Paul … did my father say anything to you before he died?”
“Sweetie I wasn’t in the room with your father when he passed.”
“Yes you were. When Sara called me, she told me that you were in Grandpa’s room.”
“I was in there when she called you. But I wasn’t in there when he died. I was in the kitchen making dinner. I went to his room to check on him and realized that he was not with us anymore.”
“You mean no one was with him! That was the whole point Paul of my father moving in with us remember? I didn’t want him to be alone, to die alone! No matter what I didn’t want him to be alone! There is always supposed to be someone with him!”
“I know and I’m sorry, but everyone needed a break. I told Sara she could go be normal teenager for a while and tie up the phone lines. I decided to make dinner so that you wouldn’t have to worry about it when you got home.”
“I could’ve been here if you guys needed a break. But you told me to get out of the house. You told me to get some fresh air. You told me nothing would happen to him, and I believed you. I never would have left if I would’ve thought that my father would’ve been left alone. I shouldn’t have left anyway. This is my fault.”
“You needed a break more than any of us. It’s not as if he died alone in a sterile hospital room or even an old folks home. He died in a home with family around him. He could’ve died as a ward of the state if it was up to your siblings, but he didn’t because of you. This stranger you call Dad died in our home, which is more than he ever deserved, and yet you provided it for him. When will it be enough?”
“I know having my father here for the past two years has been more than a minor strain on our family. But he’s my dad. I couldn’t let him die alone.”
“I’m sorry, but he wasn’t your father. It takes more than providing sperm to be a father. When he moved in with us that was the first time that he had even met Sara. He hadn’t even talked to you since before we got married. He wasn’t a father, but you…you were a great daughter. You still loved him even when you shouldn’t have. I love you for that. That should be enough for you.”
I was about to respond when our doorbell rang. Ringing us both back into the present. I stood up from the couch.
“Who could be coming over this late?”
“It’s probably the mortuary.”
“You mean that Dad is still in his room. That he’s been here this whole time and you’ve been keeping me in here with this pitiful debate of what a father is and isn’t! How about you get the door and tell them that I need to be alone with my father that I need to say good-bye. If they have problems with waiting then explain to them that my good-byes would have been said had you not wanted to have the same fight that we always have.”
“You could’ve went to his room right away Em, no one was stopping you!”
“You were! Plus it took me over two hours to get home, I thought that they had already come and gone,” I yelled over my shoulder as I turned towards my fathers room.
I didn’t want my husband to see in my eyes that I was blaming him, yet again, for something I knew was my fault. I didn’t want to explain that I purposely took over two hours to drive five miles because I didn’t know how to face my dead father. I wanted to escape all of this and now it was confronting me as I stood in front of my father’s bedroom door. I stopped in from of his door to gather my breath and then I slowly opened the door. I apathetically scanned the room. This used to be the den, but there were no traces of that anymore. When I decided that my dad was going to be living with us I bought anything and every thing to morph this room into a living space that would ultimately be a dying space. I bought a brand new hospital bed so that he could raise the bed or lower it to suit his comfort needs. I bought a new 37” T.V. I bought a DVD/VHS player so that he could play his new movies along with his favorite classics. I painted the room navy blue because that was his favorite color. I bought all blue bedding to match the walls. As I scanned the room looking from item to item I failed to see any meaning in these items. I failed to see my father lying in his bed. I failed to recognize my daughter’s light cries. My eyes focused on my daughter sitting in one of the dining room chairs next to his bed. She was petting his hand so softly. She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and wet. I wanted to walk over to her and hug her, but my legs felt as if they were being held down by cement blocks. My daughter was showing my dad the love and emotion that I had yet to find myself.
“Sweetie what are you doing in here? Your dad said that you were upstairs.”
“I’m sorry, but I needed to say my goodbyes too.” Just then she burst into tears. This time my legs found their strength and moved me to my daughter. I held her and just let her cry. Hoping that somehow her tears would bring out my own. They didn’t. Another failure.
“I’m a horrible person, Mom.”
“No you’re not. You are the sweetest, most loving girl I know. I am so lucky to have such a compassionate daughter.”
“No Mom, I’m not any of those things.” She broke away from my hold.
“I’m horrible because I hated Grandpa. Everything in our house was fine until he showed up. We were a happy family. No one fought. I didn’t even know him, and then all of the sudden he’s living with us. I hated him for being so selfish and I hated him for hurting our family, but more than that I hated him for hurting you and making you doubt yourself. You were always good enough for everyone else except for him in your eyes. I hated him for the power that he held over you. When I used to sit in here with him I wouldn’t talk to him. I would just put on his favorite movie and ignore him. He died with me hating him. I’m going to go to hell.”
“You’re not going to hell. He might be, but you won’t be joining him, I promise.”
“Mom don’t say that. It’s not funny.”
I released Sara from our hug.
“Ok I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to feel bad. You were perfect to him. You did the best you could with a complete stranger living in your house. I’m sorry that you have lived this pain by yourself for the past two years. I wish that you would’ve told me how you felt, but I understand why you didn’t,” I said staring her directly in the eyes so she would hopefully feel the genuine truth of my words.
“I’ll leave you alone with Grandpa,” Sara said as she stood up and hugged me one more time.
“Yeah you need to go blow your nose anyway… with all those bats in the cave it’s amazing that you can breathe through your nose.”
Sara laughed a little to help me ease the tension in the room.
“I love you Mom,” Sara said as she closed the door.
I sat down in the chair next to my dead father’s bed. I stared at his body for what seemed like an hour before I opened my mouth.
“I don’t know what to say. Good-bye is in order. I wish that things could have been different between us. I foolishly thought things would magically change when you came to live here. I was obviously wrong, what’s new? Actually I guess things did change. My loving husband and I are finding it hard to love one another. And my poor daughter has been caught in the middle. I had to fight though because I had to believe that there was something worth fighting for. Turns out, there wasn’t.
I folded my arms and laid my head in between them on his bed. What had I done? I had ruined my loving family life for a miserable stranger. All for some sense of forgiveness, a sense of love from someone who couldn’t give it to me when I was young, and was unwilling to give it to me on his death bed. I started to cry for the loss of my family, not for my father. They weren’t the tears that I wanted to come, but they were the tears that I needed.
