My Father Said These Two Words to Me Right Before He Died

They were ironic coming from a man who caused so many tears

I snatch the car keys and make my way to the front door. It’s the beginning of my senior year and I’m anxious to get to an all-important high school party. Life is good.

I grab the door handle to exit our living room.

I’m startled by my Mother who’s arriving home.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she says.

I’m in disbelief as my eyes catch sight of the person she’s with. My heart and every part of me rejects the news my Mother is delivering. I’m too upset to say anything.

This can’t be real.

My Father is not moving back home.

I don’t remember what words we exchange next.

I feel only fight or flight. Get me out of here. I rapidly flee the comfort of my now uncomfortable childhood home. Absolutely everything about my parents standing together on our front porch feels unnatural.

I drive a few miles to my friend’s house.

She jumps into the passenger seat. I anxiously attempt to spit out what has just transpired. But my anxiety level is through the roof. We leave her neighborhood and a few minutes later she instructs me to pull over.

Even at seventeen, she’s wise enough to know I shouldn’t be driving.

I’m that upset.

My Father walked out that same front door when I was five years old. He broke every non-existent bone in my heart. He crushed the soul of this once devoted daddy’s girl.

The first five years when he existed stored my best memories.

A man who held my hand while I skipped beside him, who sang to me and with me, and who made me believe I was the most wonderful girl in the world.

And then one day he was gone.

He half-heartedly graced my life after that.

I would struggle with my five-year-old body just to climb onto the big living room couch. I would rest my small elbows on the windowsill and wait for him to pull into our driveway.

Some days he would show up for that visit.

Others he would not.

My mom would coax me off my perch with some enticing delectable she had made. It was an Irish Catholic momma’s way of feeding her child’s tummy to distract her broken heart.

Eventually, my Father didn’t show up at all.

There were a few short stints when they tried to patch things up. But it would only last a few months and then my Dad would be gone again. There was no doubt they loved each other but his love of alcohol would supersede that.

Over and over again.

But time went on.

I settle comfortably into life without a man I can count on. I never feel sorry for myself. On the contrary, I feel incredibly blessed. I am surrounded by love. I have four siblings who make certain of this.

And a mother who loves us all madly.

I’m the happy child of a resilient single mother.

I do not dwell on my Father’s absence. My strong mom doesn’t appear to miss him either. Despite continually loving the man who stole her heart. She reinforces our foundation of faith and family. She builds a great life for herself.

Why is this man now standing outside of our home?

I am confused that she’s inviting this stranger back into it.

There’s no other word for my Father now.

He is a stranger. The familiarity a five-year-old once relished feels forced. There isn’t anything left between us. There are only a few shared physical features, a biological bond, and a few remotely better memories.

The way he relished decorating the Christmas tree. The excursions to the local ice cream store. The songs he used to sing to me. The piggy banks he purchased for me on the days he did show up.

And the childhood nickname he’d given me that had stuck.

‘Colleenie the Beanie’ that my siblings had shortened to just Beanie.

The next morning, I walk into our kitchen. It’s an uneasy moment for my seventeen-year-old self. I’m forced to accept the vision I was unwilling to view the night before.

My two parents are in the same room together.

Worse, in our home.

“Can I get you some coffee?” asks my mother.

It’s odd to hear my Mom casually asking her long-estranged husband if he would like a cup of joe. Make it stop. This can’t be happening. But it is. For the next year, my Dad will resume a place in my life.

I should have known it wouldn’t last.

My Father’s love affair with my Mom was interrupted again.

I would again, see him only once in a blue moon.

I was fine with this. I had made peace with my Father in no small part because of the strength of my Mother. She had a few momentary lapses in judgment while she tried to glue her family back together. But she was a woman way ahead of her time.

She raised five children in an era with nearly zero divorces.

She worked two jobs and spent eight years going to night school to earn her college degree. She became an accountant for the government. We wanted for nothing and lived as most two-parent households. We each worked from a young age and paid our way for many things but our Mom was incredible.

My sister and I visited our Father a few weeks before he passed away. He was in a nursing home dying of cancer. I didn’t want to go. Not because I didn’t love my Father because I did.

Even in his overwhelming absence and underwhelming parenting, I loved him.

He was my Dad.

And he had a gentle heart.

My Father was not a stereotypical alcoholic. He was what I call a lampshade alcoholic. He was the life of the party. He was not a mean or abusive man. He knew his limitations and he tried to atone for some of them.

He signed the house over to our Mom when he first left so we would have a home.

A nursing home isn’t a pleasant place.

A nursing home when you are essentially a man dying alone is even worse. My Father’s life had been so self-destructive it boiled down to just a few people left in his world.

His room felt cold and sterile.

But the life of the party man still had a smile on his face.

“Be happy,” he said to us.

Even now, I fight tears at the image of those words springing from his lips. True happiness had evaded my Dad so he sought an escape that had imprisoned us all. The drink he could never put down.

He had failed us but he had loved us nonetheless.

I thought my Father was going to define my senior year.

I did not think he would define my entire life.

If you asked me about my Dad I would say he wasn’t an influence on me. I would tell you he left when I was a very small child. I would follow up by relaying that I only saw him sporadically.

But that would be naive.

I would find out just how naive when my marriage ended.

When I was again…

Forced to settle comfortably into a life without a man I could count on.