The healing of my father wound

Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash

Father’s Day is not easy.

It never was - even when my dad was alive.

Because he was emotionally distant and verbally abusive, volatile, enshrouded in a sea of alcoholism from as long as I could remember.

Of course, the wound became much, much deeper after he took his own life.

But - it is better than it used to be.

I am better than I used to be.

I have a faith and love in a Heavenly father that is much, much greater than my own father.

And I believe that though I still keenly feel the loss, the absence of my own father, and his emotional availability -

I also have tended to the inner wounded child - recognizing that though she still dwells within me, and has pangs, crying out in pain - I am able to love and care for and tend to her -

I have grown into an adult who can reparent myself in the ways that I lacked.

It sharpens the sting, the acute pain.

The dull ache remains - because it’s a part of grief -

Grief for what never was, and even worse-

Perhaps for what could have been.

I got to see my father sober in the final two years of his life, before his death, when he started drinking again.

It is an understatement to say that he was a completely different person.

He was humbled, at points deeply regretful, and at others, he seemed downright tormented by what he put my mother through through with his disease.

He was humble, he was kind, he was considerate of others.

He was a much different person than the man I had always known and called dad.

I spent many years very angry, even bitter and resentful with his selfish choices, especially as a teenager.

But, his reawakening and regret at the end of his life was sobering - in every shape of the word.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to wake up after spending decades of your life drinking away -

Coming to from the haze you have known, and existed in, for the majority of your life.

And I know that because I too have emerged from my own inner pain and turmoil of alcoholism -

Finally sobered and made aware of the harm that I did onto others.

Even when I was unwilling to believe that I had done anything to anyone.

Even when I chose to defiantly believe that I was ‘just’ self-destructive.

We never are, only damaging ourselves.

We also always hurt those around us, those who care about us.

We don’t dwell in a vacuum - even when we want to -

And even when we try to lie to ourselves that we’re isolated and protected, by some insular bubble - we aren’t.

The effects ripple outward.

I am thankful that I was protected from hurting myself and others more than I did.

That my Father was watching out for me.

And I am thankful that my alcohol abuse only followed a period of 10 years, off and on, rather than over 4 decades. I am thankful I didn’t end up hospitalized with a failing liver like he did.

Today, I remember - how

My father was a troubled man—

I know he missed his brother and was traumatized by his untimely death, with an up close view of the carnage.

I know he had his own father wounds. Because though I believe my grandfather a very good man, that was also of a time and generation where men were very hands off from the parenting roles that are expected now. And that boys and young men so desperately need. My father spoke to these wounds a few times.

Like my brother, I believe both of he and dad kept their pain and deep hurt locked in a box inside of them - that they always tried to repress -

But it was a pressure gage -

And eventually, it would erupt, and spouts of unbridled emotion would spring forth -

Usually anger because it’s most culturally acceptable for men to express that.

But with Jeremie, at the end of his life, he also showed a lot of tears.

Well, so did Dad at the end of his life, when sober.

When I think about Father’s day today, I also think about Jeremie’s daughter who doesn’t have him around, feeling his absence as she grows up and lives her life.

I think about how - like Mother’s Day - many of us brace for this day and mourn throughout it.

Because we aren’t able to happily and simply post pictures on facebook or other social media sites, praising what great dads we had.

Instead, many of us, recognize how wounded men often become fathers and have and hurt their little boys, in generational cycles for countless years.

Still - there’s hope-

I see it when I watch my cousin, reparent himself from his own father wounds, and show a very different fatherly role to his children than he ever received himself.

That work, of a cycle breaker, is hard fucking work.

It’s hard enough to tend to your own wounds, harder still when you have to do it while simultaneously raising small children and managing a family and marriage.

I hold space for that today - the breaking of cycles -

I alsop reflect on the comfort that I get - believing that though my own father failed his family in so many ways- I also consider and empathize with his pain - generations of trauma and untreated mental illnesses -

And, like my father, I pray that both he and my brother are finally in peace-in the realm and comfort of an agape-loving Creator - to heal the wounds that they never were able to tend to in this life.

I pray both can finally rest in a Father’s loving arms, where it is enough and that they are enough.

And I pray that their children will heal from the holes their absences have imprinted upon them, and left upon their hearts.

That is my prayer today.

Amen.