The Death of Hope

On March 24 2020 my daddy died. This day was way more life changing than I ever imagined it would be. I had so many different emotions running together all at once I didn’t know where to begin with processing. My relationship with my dad was always murky. It came with ups and downs (mostly downs) so years ago when I found out he had Congestive heart failure I thought it was time to make peace with him and our “not so” relationship. There were moments of hope; moments that seemed like things were going to get better but then they would fizzle out. Due to my feelings of rejection from my own father I struggled with relationships. I got too attached to the wrong men, didn’t trust the good ones, struggled with male authority figures in my life. But now he’s gone. No more hoping and wishing things were different, no more yearning to be Daddy’s little girl; It's over. He’s gone. And to make matters so much worse he dies during the worst possible time in American history. He dies during a pandemic. So there was no funeral, no real comfort from family and friends. We are forced to view him in shifts. It was painful. My daddy, the man I wanted to be my hero was gone. As I walk into the funeral home and see him lying there I am flooded with memories, and wishes, and sorrow then I begin to panic. I feel my chest tightening. I feel my breath shortening, it's right there, then boom panic attack right in the middle of the funeral home. I hoped I would have been able to keep it together but I couldn’t. All the 41 years of sadness, disappointment, anger, rage all came out of me in that moment in the form of a panic attack. I cried, I hyperventilated, I yelled, and then it was over. I regained my composure and realized I was free. I was finally free from something I never knew I needed to be free from. I was free from wanting him to be different from who he was. I was free from the hurt and the anger of years of missed birthdays and Christmases. I was free. He’s dead. The hope was dead, the ideal was dead. It is what it is. I can’t change anything anymore. I came to terms with this reality in the same moment I was raging.

Days after he died I spoke to a close friend of mine and she was offering me some very sound advice on how to process. She said “focus on the good. Even if you have to dig deep to find it, focus on the good.” I spent the rest of that night thinking through my life searching for moments of good with my daddy. Then I found them. These rare moments in my life when my daddy was my hero. Moments when he made me feel like I was the most important person in his world. I had found my joy. Now my tears weren’t from anger or rage just because my hero was gone. I realized as I was drifting off to sleep after saying goodbye to him He can be whoever I want him to be now. There is no more pressure to see him and accept him for who he was. As my mom sat with us and showed us pictures and memories (they were divorced) I realized that there was a point when he loved my mom deeply and the more memories we viewed the more I saw the love my mom had for him begin to display on her face. My daddy was no longer the monster who abandoned me, he was a man who loved me the best way he could and quite possibly a man who didn’t have the skills to undo a wrong of this magnitude. I love my daddy. Always have and always will. I have nine other siblings who have had their own way of processing this loss. As for me I am ok now. I have effectively gone through all the stages of grief. I have reached the point of acceptance.

The bible teaches that love hides a multitude of faults (I Peter 4:8) so while I regret realizing this point of love for my daddy after he has left this world I, in the last 10 days have embraced my unconditional love for him. I have come to love him the way Jesus loves me. I have a boat load of faults and make tons of mistakes and Jesus loves me anyway. I want to go forward in my life seeing people beyond their mistakes. I haven’t always done that. I want to be better. So when my time comes to leave the Earth, people can say I loved them the way Christ commanded……

Love you daddy

Busters baby girl