Somedays I just miss him more than others: Happy 70th Birthday Dad (this is what it's been like without you)

Can we talk about losing a parent for a minute? Today is my Dad’s 70th birthday or would have been. He’s been gone longer than he was here for, and I am now older, by a lot, than my Dad was. I am at the age now where a lot of my friends are starting to lose their parents if they hadn’t when they were young, like I was. I can’t speak for everyone that’s lost a parent. I can only speak about my experience and how it has shaped who I am and what I think about things as an adult.

I have to go back to almost a year before to make things make a little more sense later. This could be off, but this is how I remember it. September 8, 1987, was my first day of grade 7. That night my mom called me into her bedroom where she told me that my cousin Gayle had called and let her know that my Dad had gotten married to his long time girlfriend Sandi. I was devastated. Not that he had gotten married but that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t know it was happening and that I wasn’t invited, but I was 12 so got over the hurt pretty quickly and mostly just stayed angry for many years. Flash forward to February 1988 I remember coming home and my cousin Gayle was sitting in the living room. We had just moved so I thought she was just there to visit. Unfortunately, she was there to tell us that my Dad had been diagnosed with cancer. My family advised us not to come to Ontario to see him and instead wait until he was better and recovering. My mom thought otherwise and booked us a flight to Ontario. We flew into Toronto and stayed with my aunt and uncle and then drove to Woodstock to see my grandmother and to London to see my Dad. It was a weird visit. By this time, I was 13 and Shannon was 10. He still lived in the same townhouse as when I visited him when I was 9. He was so thin; he barely ate, and he slept a lot. I don’t really remember seeing him that much. I remember him telling me to turn off Dirty Dancing because it wasn’t an appropriate movie for me to watch, even though I had already seen it 5 times. He let us watch Outrageous People, which was probably more inappropriate, but he had a friend over, so he was paying less attention. I remember him telling his friend that he went to the doctors with the flu and came home with cancer. I realize now he was kidding but at the time I was confused because I thought he can’t be that stupid he must be in denial. Other than that, I remember all my parents sitting around the kitchen table talking, that was weird, and my sister talking to him about having Jesus in his heart. We got Easter baskets, mine had a pink lamb, that I still have, and the visit was over. 2 weeks in Ontario and I think we stayed there 2 or 3 nights. I never got the feeling that Sandi liked us very much and I think my Dad was just too sick to have two kids there. I’m glad my mom didn’t listen and that we saw him.

On Friday, June 10, 1988, Shannon, and I went swimming at Bonsor Pool in Bby with some friends of ours that are also sisters. On the ride home we asked if they could spend the night and oddly the answer was no because we were going to be having a family meeting in the morning. After we got home Shannon came into my bedroom and asked me what I thought the meeting was going to be about. I remember, very matter of factly, saying “Dad died.” I knew, I don’t know how I knew but I did. The next morning, they sat us down and told us in fact our Dad had died the day before. I tried to cry because I knew I should, but I couldn’t. I went to my room and tried to cry again but thinking back to it now I didn’t feel anything. I knew I was supposed to be sad but, in that moment, I wasn’t anything. A few months went by, and I did start to feel sad and angry, but I still didn’t cry, until one night when I couldn’t sleep, I remembered how hard I had cried when I was told that he got married, and that made me cry. I cried because I felt like a horrible person. My Dad was gone, and I couldn’t cry about that, but I did because he got married and didn’t invite me? What was wrong with me? I recently looked back at my old diaries and noticed I didn’t write about the trip to Ontario or my Dad dying for a long time. I think maybe I was the one in denial. Shannon and I did not go to the funeral. That’s one of my biggest regrets because it wasn’t real if I didn’t see the grave in person, which I didn’t until I was 39, but I’ll get to that.

I didn’t really know my Dad. My parents split up when I was almost 3 and after that I didn’t see him much, even though we lived close to each other. The few times I got to spend with him I do remember. I have spoken before about always feeling like Daddy’s girl when I was with him. I did feel like he loved me when I was around but that wasn’t a lot. We moved to B.C. when I was 7 and like I mentioned I saw him when I was 9 and then the trip when I was 13. He didn’t call much, and he never came to see us. I have no memory of what his voice or laugh sounded like or how he walked or any mannerism he had, and still it sucks that he’s gone, and I didn’t get to know those things. I remember arguing with my mom when I was about 11 and saying I wanted to live with Dad, and she said I could when I was 16. He was already gone so I didn’t get to do that obviously. I wasn’t going to get the chance to get to know him and that is still one of the hardest parts.

Over the years I have cycled through anger and sadness many times that he is not here. I’ve had 6 beautiful children that he will never meet, I’ve been married and graduated from university, and he didn’t come, I’ve had my heart broken countless times, and he wasn’t there to hug me. He missed everything and sometimes it makes me so mad and other times the grief is so big it’s hard to breathe. I don’t know if it would have been easier or harder to have lost him later or known him better, I have nothing to compare it to. All I know is that this sucks and I wish I had more time, more memories and more first hand knowledge about the kind of man that he was.

11 years ago, my grandmother passed. I love that woman! She was a force, and I miss her dearly. I used all my airmiles to try to make to Ontario before she died but I missed her by 2 days, but I was there for the funeral this time. I was thankful to be there, and I thought that I was going to get a real jump on processing the loss of my grandma but that is not what happened. Being in Ontario for the first time in almost 30 years there were a lot of people that wanted to see me or meet me, I guess. Everywhere I went people wanted to tell me stories about my Dad and give me things that belonged to him or pictures of him. At the funeral so many people came up to me because they wanted to meet Steve’s daughter and tell me about some funny or kind thing, he had done for them or their children. During that trip, for the first time, I went to his grave. I’d seen it in pictures, but its not the same as being there. Again, I found myself in a position where I knew I should be crying and wasn’t. I would have liked to be there alone, I think. Even though it was raining I think I would have just sat there and talked for a while. But I wasn’t alone, and it was raining, and it was awkward, so I was ready to leave pretty quickly. That whole trip all the feels would hit me at night when I was alone. He was really gone; it was real now. He wasn’t just far away, he was gone. He had a life, and friends, and played with other people’s kids, and had his nephew spend weekends at his house in the room with the spiderman poster. There were all these little bits of him that people were telling me about a man I didn’t know and was never going to get to know and the reality and the pain of that was drowning me. You’d think after 37 years I’d be ok. Truth is most of the time I am but sometimes like on June 10th or March 30th or any other time I wish he was here I’m still not ok.

The whole experience of barely knowing him and losing him young has affected the way I view parenting after separation. I find myself often trying to nurture and encourage a relationship between the kids and their Dad. Honestly, its hard when neither side wants there to be a relationship as much as I do. I don’t want them to go through what I have. Their Dad is here, they are all here, they have this opportunity to know each other, to make the memories and to have the things that I missed out on. None of them see what a gift it is, and they might not ever see it. As long as the possibility of doing it in the future remains, they won’t understand how important the present is. Anyone that is going through family court stuff and keeping their child from the other parent, think about that for a second. What happens if suddenly the other parent is gone? Did you give your child very opportunity to know the other parent? Did they get to make enough memories to carry them through their life? Will they be angry with you for keeping the other parent away or will they thank you for making sure there was a relationship? Just something to think about from a 50 year old kid that still misses her Daddy. Happy 70th birthday in heaven Dad! I love you.