Losing

I'm so sorry for your loss.  This is what we often say to people when they've lost someone through death or divorce.  Losing someone is a universal experience; but as I've observed, sometimes the loss is instantaneous and sometimes it comes by degrees.  Losses by degrees happen for a lot of reasons....dementia, growing apart, illness.

My father died last night.  He was 81 and had been through open heart surgery, brain surgery, double amputation, and suffered from diabetes and hypertension.  It was probably time that his body gave out.

My sister posted on Facebook that her heart will never be the same again.  My other sister posted that Heaven needed another hero. They are at at a different place than I am.  I can't find comfort in the fantasy figure they've concocted.

When I was 15 I came home from school one day to have my mother explain to me that my father had left her, was moving in with someone else and they were getting a divorce.  They had a rocky, tumultuous relationship and he had cheated on her multiple times, so it wasn't exactly unexpected; but the fact that he didn't say goodbye was a surprise.  First loss.

I didn't see him for weeks afterward.  I remember an awkward visit to the zoo, not too cool at 15 to do with a parent, and a pair of what were then called hot pants (probably purchased by his mistress) for a present for my 16th birthday a couple of months later.  Then he took me to take my driving test in June.  The day my mom took me to actually get the license was the day their divorce was final. We went to the courthouse first and the DMV next.  My father got married the next day.  We were told by my mom.  I hadn't met my new stepmom, or at least not that I knew.  Actually, he had introduced me to her after a lunch of complaining how unhappy he was with my mom.  I just didn't know to whom he was introducing me.  Another loss.

I didn't see him for months and months.  He didn't remember us after that on Christmas or birthdays, perhaps a present for the first bit.  I really can't recall.  But we didn't see him. I think he would take my youngest sister to lunch once in a while and I don't know the contact he had with my other sisters. Another loss.

Both of my older sisters had dropped out of high school before graduating.  They later got their GED's but my father always made a big deal that I would be the first of his children to graduate from high school.  In the weeks before my graduation, I sent him an announcement.  I probably made the mistake of addressing it to him and not to them; but if I did, it wasn't intentional, but naive.  I was too unsophisticated to really resent her.  I was a little blind to all that had happened behind the scenes. Graduation night came and dad did not show up.  I called him the next day and he said he had never received the announcement.  Still, he knew I was graduating and had never taken the time to find out when the ceremony would be.  Another loss.

When I got engaged, I took my fiance up to meet my father.  Sunday afternoon.  Awkward.  Painful. He asked no questions about our plans, but trustingly, I told him I would send him an invitation and the date.  I came home and cried and cried.  The wedding date came and my dad did not.  Another loss.

As a young mother, I determined again to build a relationship.  For one or two Christmases, I took my toddlers and we visited him in the weeks before Christmas.  It was always a stilted visit.  I would bring them a gift and they would have something small for the children, but that was the only time I saw them and it became a duty, an uncomfortable have to.  Another loss.

For years after that, I lived my life.  Every year my father would give me an perfunctory call on my birthday, maybe 10 minutes of exchange of up to dates.  Years of loss.

I divorced, struggled as a single mother, realized in my dating that my dad's desertion had left me with wounds that made it difficult to move on.  On one of those birthday calls, I came clean with him.  I told him how much it had hurt me to be cut out of his life.  I told him that I had felt as a child loved and understood by him.  How valuable could I be if someone who loved me, could so easily discard me?  He told me that he had loved me and thought of me every day of my life and that he would do better.

He did for a while.  He would call more often.  Once, we had a security issue at our house and he told me that if I purchased motion sensor lights, he could come and install them.  I spent hard earned money to buy some and they sat in my laundry room for years before I gave them away when I had to move.  He never did come to do what he said he would do.  Another loss.

In the years after, I would invite him to family functions, highlights really.  Children's mission farewells, college recitals, art shows, weddings.  With the exception of one time, he never came. In the years since his divorce from my mom, he has never been to one of my homes.  Another loss.

When I was engaged to get remarried, I again visited my dad to introduce him to my husband to be. He was determined to attend my wedding.  My sister, Theresa, was picking up the costs and I stressed that I would rather save her the money if he wasn't going to come.  He promised he would.  Wedding day, no show.  Another loss.

So it was a loss by degrees.  The father that made me feel love and affection has been gone for a long, long time.  What my sister said was true for me.  My heart was never the same, but it was changed at 15 years of age, not yesterday.

My father has long since ceased being a hero to me.  He has a new family that numbers over 100 that love and revere him.  He gave his energy and time and love to them.  I can admire that he made such a difference in so many lives for the last forty years.  But I'm not okay with the reality that he left one family behind to do it.  It does not mesh with my own life philosophy.

I don't know what will happen in the eternities when he has had a chance to learn and to regret and I've had a chance to fully forgive.  I can't judge him as a man, only as the father he was to me.

All I know is that I didn't lose him yesterday.  I lost him by degrees.  I've experienced both kinds of loss and I think the degrees is the harder one from which to recover.  I'm not recovered yet.

A funeral to go and then I can shut the door.  Farewell, Father.