My father died last month, as you may already know. We didn't have a good relationship. We barely had any relationship, considering that I lived under the same roof as he did for all but 2 of my juvenile years. My whole eulogy was about how we weren't very close and how I was comforted that he managed to build such a big extended family in the big wide world, even if the one at home was just as distant.
I spent a good deal of my adolescent years hating him and the city in which we lived. It was during this time I turned to the internet for solace and company. This was how I came to type over 100 words per minute as a middle schooler and had my first boyfriend online in eighth grade. Eventually, things settled a bit more. My mom, who had left us for part of middle school, came back and I became better adjusted. I was still embarrassed by him, angry at him, but my emotions cooled if only because we basically just didn't speak beyond immediate school concerns, food, and plans for using the car.
Things marginally got better, but by that I really mean that we stopped having one-on-one confrontations after my mom was squarely in charge of raising me again. This continued...more or less permanently. After I moved away for college, we lived a thousand miles apart and spoke on the phone approximately once or twice a year. When I would invariably come back for the holidays, he would invite himself along to a few shared meals, usually in the company of a bunch of other family friends. We wouldn't talk to each other during the meals or at the Christmas parties. We'd just be two people there, among 10 or 15 or 30 others.
What that means is that I feel awkward when people offer their condolences to me. I feel regret and sadness, but I saw this coming for years prior. I knew it would be sad and awkward; I just didn't know when it would happen. I didn't guess it would be this soon. And I know I sound awful, but my honest reasoning was that I didn't think much could be changed. He wasn't that kind of guy. Maybe I'm not that kind of daughter.
Father's Day came and went this year, and I had some minor pent up dread about it. But then the day came, and I forgot about it until I was reminded late in the evening, just past 11. This is when I reminded Marc that he should probably call his own father. In that brief moment, I felt only guilt that I hadn't called my own dad. It's a feeling I'm familiar with from years past, until I called and had a stilted 2-minute conversation and we both went on with our days. Funny enough, I'd thought of this moment beforehand, and wondered if I'd really forget that he had died. I did have that moment, just briefly, and then it passed, and then came the moment I didn't contemplate. I didn't know what I'd feel after forgetting. I would have guessed that what comes next is regret. But I only felt guilt.
My dad was supposed to come up for my graduation earlier this month. He didn't get to, and I feel more terrible about that than maybe anything else. It was beyond rare that I felt that I was being a good daughter, and it just seems he and I were both robbed of a moment, a day, that he could really be proud of me one last time. I feel like he would've been happy to see me in my robes. He'd be awkward and hug me, kiss me on my cheek as he always did, and he'd probably cry. For all his fatherly stoicism, he was quite the bawler when it came down to certain things, from housewarmings to birthdays. I wondered if he only grew that way in his fifties and sixties, if it was the divorce, or if he'd always been that way.
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