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Today marks my first Father's Day as a dad. Father's Day has been a day I've struggled with in the past, but I'm thankful that it's now a day I celebrate.
A little warning, this isn't my most uplifting post, my apologies for that. But it's something that's overdue for me to get onto "paper".
The relationship with my own father was one that got worse with each year since high school. My dad choose to leave the family and move to North Dakota for work. This led to my parents growing further and further apart. I started to dread the weeks he would come home and visit. Inevitably the distance led to my parents getting divorced when I had just started college.
It was a messy divorce, not a mutual one. My father turned to alcohol to get through it. I had to sit through a number of angry conversations from him, listening to him air his frustration towards my mother.
The last time I talked to him was a call in my sophomore year. I had first gotten a call from my grandmother that my father was in a bad place, and that I should try to help. I called my father, he was very obviously drunk. I honestly don't remember the details of the call, but it left me incredibly upset. I didn't talk to him again for many years. Until one day I got a call from one of my cousins.
My father was had late stage cancer, he had been dealing with it for a year or so, but the treatment was ineffective. He had gone back to live with my grandmother, and the family was talking about hospice care. The anger I had kept inside for years evaporated.
I didn't even make it through the entire call, I hung up and absolutely fell apart. The memories of the good times, when my family was together and I was younger, flooded my mind. I felt guilt for severing the connection with him for so long, and now it was too late.
My then fiancé and I made the trip out to visit a few days later. It was hard seeing him in such a bad state. He was often incoherent, just like my grandfather was when he went through the same thing years previous. But it didn't matter. I sat with him and reconnected, told him about my life and introduced the woman I loved.
Our time together was short, I had a trip to Japan and Taiwan leaving in a few days that I had booked months before finding out about his cancer. As I said my goodbyes, he lay in bed, unable to get out unassisted. He offered me some of his Haribo gummy bears, a favorite of his. He showed me the bell he would ring if he needed something from my grandmother. It was the opposite of a recovery bell.
A week later, I had just woken up in my AirBnb in Asaka, Japan. I was getting ready to head out to a coworking spot for the day. I decided to call my grandmother and check in on my dad. When she answered, she was surprised that nobody had told me. My father had passed the day after I had left the country.
It didn't hit me at that moment, I knew this was coming. I did have a moment in Ueno park that I broke down, but it wasn't until a few weeks later that I really fell apart. I had moved on to Taiwan, and was in Kaohsuing at the Love River. Standing on a bridge overlooking the ferries carrying tourists down the river, my phone started playing Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin, and I absolutely fell apart. I was alone, on the other side of the world, and had lost any chance of rebuilding a relationship with my father.
It's been 6 years since his passing, and now I have a son of my own. He's nearly 10 months old, and I love him more than anything. And I will do everything I can to make sure he never dreads a Father's Day.