He kissed my hand a million times and called me princess just as many. He celebrated even the most minor accomplishments of mine. He loved me with an abandon that his father had never shown him.
And he's gone.
It has been 12 years and some months since the horrific day of finding out that my dad had dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the same day when were going to have my birthday dinner at his house with all of us kids and our babies.
For 12 years, on Father's Day, my heart has ached, and it has been so confusing for me. I haven't known how to even sort it out - until today.
My dad was a really great dad. He was human, and he and I have parented differently, but he was an amazing dad. I have felt so conflicted about expressing sadness on Father's Day because I had a good dad. There are many that feel sadness on Father's Day because their dad was never there or because he is still alive but is too toxic to have a relationship with. Then there are those that I know have terrible fathers that, most perplexing to me, find the need to heap accolades upon their dad's name that i know is not the actual identity of the man whose blood runs through their veins.
I didn't have that, so I haven't known or felt comfortable with how to talk about why Father's Day is so hard beyond just saying that I miss him. It's always been more than that, but I haven't been able to let myself dare say publicly what my dad did to me. He did something that I haven't spoken about negatively because I didn't want to stain his name or all the ways that he was amazing, but it's time. I'm ready.
He died. And he left us. He left us all so permanently that there is no finding him again as long as we breath air from this world. There is no tracking him down and seeing if things can be mended or if there is hope that we could once again hear his voice and booming laugh or feel his huge hug.
He left, and he's gone, and as soon as most of the cars had pulled away from the graveside to put him in the hole on the hill where I collapsed in tears, my world broke in a way that there has never been a way to put it back together.
Not so far anyway. Because I tried to hide how bad it hurt that he left. And what exactly about it has hurt so bad? What were the things that actually broke?
This morning, I felt it flood every nook and cranny of my consciousness, and it happened when our pastor was talking about father's praying blessings over their children. It just hit me - I will never have that. Because my dad is dead. All those things that a dad is supposed to do, my dad is not going to do. He will never be there for anything, and he stopped being here for anything 12 years and some months ago and it has left a big, wide, gaping hole that, though my step dad is so loving, no human can fill
The hole is there, and my dad put it there because he left. Did he choose it? No. That doesn't matter. What matters is that the hole is there and he is not and that's not natural and it isn't right, and there's no going back on it. Ever again.
So what is my hole, exactly?
Well,
My dad could fix anything, and he did. He was a mechanic, so he fixed all of our cars. He worked on plumbing in our houses sometimes. He worked to built or repair small projects. If it was in the confines of anything technology based, there was nothing you could break that he couldn't fix. He spent many, many hours helping people over the phone to recover lost data or salvage a machine they couldn't afford to replace. He went over to people's houses and never grumbled, that I could hear, about how many times they needed his help. He fixed relationships. He found a way to have a relationship with and show love to his dad who had beaten him so savagely on so many occasions. About a week before my grandfather died, my dad knew his time was getting close so he called his dad. He wanted to speak words of comfort and love, and when his dad just became nasty with him, my dad returned it with love and kindness. He preached his own dad's funeral, and there were no words of malice. There also weren't words of praise - that would have been disingenuous. Instead, he just preached a message of the gospel of the God who had gladly stepped in to be the Daddy my dad so desperately needed. On the day my grandfather died, my dad cried like a little boy, and I just couldn't understand it. Now I do. Now I understand what had happened to my dad.
My dad was also my protector. He wanted me to be treated with respect and love, and he would not tolerate anyone attacking any of the 5 of us. After his own childhood, he took our advocacy very seriously. He marched his way in front of plenty of people who thought they'd flex and abuse a muscle of power at us and put them in their place. He did this for me numerous times. I now can piece together that my dad heavily suspected that I had been raped by a summer romance turned nightmare. He knew he had to wait for me to tell him, but that didn't stop from calling my attacker - a pathetic, puny, gangly punk, into his office and saying, "The state of Tennessee isn't big enough for the both of us, and I'm not leaving. I better not ever see your face on this earth ever again, and if you ever see me, I'm gonna need for you to walk across to the other side of the road so I dont have to look at you. Do you understand me? Now get out of here." All still sitting in the chair behind his giant desk covered in projects and paperwork for the business he had worked so tirelessly to build. There were other threats that I had unknowingly walked into. My dad made a concerted effort to maintain a presence where he felt there was a threat to me. Always offering help and love to one who was going for my throat but also letting that person know that, if they wanted to try to come for me, they were going to have to go through him first. That's just not something people did. My dad was a lover who everyone knew for being loving and a funny jokester, but there was a line, and if you were close, he wouldnt let there be any mistake about where the line was. When my dad died, my throat was the first place this person went. They knew I had no one to protect me and that I really didn't know how to protect myself at all. They knew I was an easy target, and they capitalized on that. Their viciousness almost did me in, but they had forgotten one thing: in all of the being protected, I also learned how to protect. It took a while, but I took what I learned and have built a shield that cannot be penetrated. It has all hurt so badly, though.
Why?
My dad was also my best friend. I was born when he was 23, and we were both cut from the same cloth down to the nose on our faces. As I got older, my dad began to treat me like a peer in the business we shared. Sometimes he would call me to ask me what my thoughts were on a matter, and I knew it was because he actually respected my opinion. We just understood each other. It felt so amazing to have someone in my life who just always seemed to understand me without me always needing to explain.
The thing that has left the biggest hole is that I miss so much mattering to him as much as I did. I know I matter like that to my mom, and I still have her. It's not that he was the only one - it's that I had that from him and it was so significant and then there was just this abrupt ripping away of a love I knew was so deep that it's almost all he thought about. We have unearthed some scribbled down thoughts of my dad's from when my older brother and I were still small and my younger brother and sister weren't yet born, and being a good dad and making us feel love was something he pursued obsessively. Being a good husband and dad was all that mattered to him. Us. Me. All that mattered, and now it is gone for the rest of the days I walk this big green ball.
And you know, it doesn't matter that I was a grown up when my dad died and that I'm now 37 years old. Because, just like my dad was a 39 year old little boy sobbing at being made orphaned of a father, I am too. I have been orphaned of a father - my father. And I haven't wanted to admit that because I felt like it implied abandonment, and I knew that wasn't the pain I had to tell. Mine was different, but it's time that I stop pretending that it isn't there.
It's time.
I don't have a biological dad here anymore, and I won't. And it hurts today, but here is the beauty I was reminded of this morning from caring words spoken over us. I couldn't be adopted until I admitted that I was orphaned of a father. Whilst I am eternally God's kid, He has been waiting to fill that gaping hole that was left by my dad dying and leaving me. I have held that part in closed fists thinking that my childish wisdom of gripping it tight was going to make it different than what it was. Now, I can finally see that I have failed, but I never needed to have succeeded, because my Abba has been waiting for me to give Him this part. So I do that today.
I know it will be a process, and I don't even know how it will go, but how is it that a Daddy loves? He spends time. He protects. He defends. He is a constant best friend. He loves obsessively. Those are the things that made Danny Baker great, right? Those are the things that made him my hero, and the opportunity was afforded to him by my being nearby.
So I don't really know what this is going to look like, but I'm willing now to really give God the chance I'd been refusing Him. In the past year or two, He has really taught me about how to be nearby to Him. He knew this day was going to come and that it wouldn't all register until I had spent the time learning to be nearby. Now will come the next part of being nearby and actually opening my heart to be loved. Oh, it's really going to hurt. Opening your heart hurts, but I know that He will have a way to make me into someone far beyond anyone I ever imagined that I could be and to show the magnitude of who He is beyond what I have ever known.
Now I will let Him show me. Now I will not refuse to say that I'm half orphaned. Now I get it. Now I will let Him show me the great and wondrous things that He has planned.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you forever.
Love,
Sasha
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