Things We Lost But Never Had
A daughter reflects on the death of her father
Our father has passed away!
I awoke to my phone’s blue flashing light in the dark of the early morning. My sister had sent a message. It contained no preamble and was straight to the point.
The words seemed alive and had movement and power. The power to send my emotions in a tailspin.
The power to forever change the course of my hopes.
W H A T happened, I wondered!
I read the message again. “Our father has passed away”!
I walked into the bathroom and stood there trying to digest the information.
My father is dead, I corrected myself, my sire is dead. I searched the spaces of my mind trying to grasp the fleeting emotions taking flight. Regret, anger, disappointment, sadness, grief, and even … love?
It seems that we are somehow genetically programmed to love the people that created and birthed us.
As co-author of my dawn, he is at least ‘owed’ love? No matter the why’s or the how’s of our life experiences at his hands, love is a top contender in the vying emotions of my grief.
I peered at my face in the early morning light and there I found vestiges of the man he once was. My face, my height, my hair, my mind, my personality, and my strength of spirit were all genetically gifted to me from this man … now he was gone.
All my life I had always been told I looked and behaved like him. I am in some ways the female version of him.
Dead — such finality to such a small word…
I stood staring in the mirror while my mind desperately sought glimpses/memories of him … and I saw him in myself.
For the past two nights I could not sleep, I tossed and turned and this past night especially I had awakened sometime around 3 am.
Suddenly startled in wakefulness I am persuaded that it was around that time that he crossed over. I have always been sensitive like that, a little “knowing”.
I find that I am sad and have resigned myself to the fact that our chapter is now complete, there will be no words added, no epilogue left in our book. This relationship has reached its natural conclusion.
Our story has been written.
There will be nothing more for us, our fractured relationship will never mend. I had hoped against hope that he would have a long life ahead and that there would be time…though I am well aware that tomorrow is not promised.
I had harbored a hope he would mature and become a granddaddy where he never was a dad.
It will never be.
COVID continues to steal, kill, and destroy!
Yesterday I had inquired of my sister as to his state of affairs, there was no real change, he remained in the ICU suffering from COVID-19 and having difficulty breathing.
We decided we would pray for him and did.
I confess I was ill-prepared for the message of this morning … our dad has passed away.
I will not be traveling for his funeral due to COVID restrictions. I had pondered several times throughout my life what I would feel when he died and I always told myself that I did not care.
Now caught in the reality of his death, I do care!
I have prayed that he had the wherewithal to acknowledge his transgressions and have asked forgiveness and I know that our God is a merciful God.
So in this, I have hope, to one day meet the daddy in heaven he never was able to be on the earth.
Farewell father.
To read more on my relationship/or lack thereof with my dad, you may read here.