This year my Christmas was spent in a hospital room with my father. He came there with what he thought was temporary blindness, caused by a fall, but it actually ended up being something much more serious. Colon cancer.
I remember standing in his room and watching him while he slept. He had yet to learn I was there. My husband, children, and I stood around his bedside quietly so as not to disturb him. Fear crept into my bones, because to me, he looked to be knocking on death's door. When he stirred I felt a temporary surge of relief, until he opened his eyes and I could see nothing but blankness behind his lids. It was as if he'd already passed from this life to the next, yet with mobility still allowed in his body. I prayed to myself that he would be alright. In truth, I needed him to be alright because no child is ever prepared to lose their parents.
To some in my family this may sound weird. One would have to know the back story behind me and my father's journey in order to understand this. You see, my father didn't raise me; nor was he apart of my life while I was growing up. My mother constantly reminded me that he contributed all of $50 to the financial requirements it takes to support a child. He and my mother divorced when I was only 4, and from what I knew of my father, he was nothing more than a monster who lived to control others.
This knowledge not only came from what my mother told me, it was also witnessed through personal experiences. In my young life I had seen my father raise a hand to my mother countless times. I spent many nights living in fear of what he may someday do to her. His habit of ruthlessness not only extended to my mother, but even lent itself, on many occasions, to his own mother. She walked in consistent fear of her own son, yet she treated him as if he were a prince.
With all the knowledge I had of what my father was capable of, I was still his little girl, and up until the point where my mother and I were able to sneak out and escape, I was the only one he didn't hurt...
After my mother was finally able to break free from my father, he punished her by staying out of my life (at least from her perspective). But what my father failed to realize, until I became an adult, was that he was punishing me as well. So many things happened to me as a result of his absence, and over time I grew bitter. Gone was the little girl who wanted nothing more than to curl up inside her daddy's arms; she was replaced with an attention seeking woman who looked desperately for male approval.
I began to slander my father's very name. Every thing about him embarrassed me, and when any one told me I looked like him, I vehemently denied it. I did not want to be apart of anything associated with him outside of his family, who I dearly love. My mother saw how this root of bitterness was taking hold of me, and in order to try and rectify it, she took to telling me stories about his time spent in war. She described how he would wake up in night sweats, and move in bed as if he were in battle. This was all due to his PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Yet he sought no professional help for it. She explained that he was a fierce soldier who saw the death of many comrades, but was brave enough to continue to fight on the front line of the battle. With these explanations her hope was to turn me from my sour feelings, and help me see the other side of his story, so I would have a better understanding of the person he chose to be. None of this worked. It was only when I was able to write a book about growing up fatherless, (Paper Walls on Amazon.com, or any online book seller) and vent all of my frustrations out with pen and paper, that I was able to be set free from the unforgiveness I harbored for him.
Fast forward to my twenties and thirties, where my father and I actually spent time building our relationship regardless of the past. After the book purge, I was able to allow room in my heart for the man I didn't want to know. I was open to listening to him, and hearing his reasons. He told me many stories which helped to shape my view of why he was who he was.
One story in particular affected him so gravely, when he spoke of it, its as if he were reliving the memory every time. I sat and listened, as if for the first time, to my father tell me of the nun who told him when he was only a nine year old Catholic school boy, that he would die old and alone, under a tree. In response to this nun's words, my nine year old father pushed that nun down a flight of stairs. My father will never know that I have heard this story told before, from his sisters on several occasions. When they tell it, they speak as if my father was designed to be mean from the beginning of his life. And though I hesitate to admit it, I have to agree, but he is still MY daddy. There was a reason God called me to be his daughter, so I feel he can't be all bad. My hope is that his current season of incapacity will help him review his life and make a change for the better. Yes, its true he's hurt a lot of people, and he would still prefer to "shoot" someone rather than make friends, but God has given him the blessing of more time, and I pray he uses it well.
My heart hopes that while he is down, but not out, he remembers who holds his future, and that it can still be a bright one. I long for the day when Daddy doesn't need my husband to stand by while he takes fifteen minutes to struggle into a pair of pants and I wait discreetly outside of his hospital room. I most definitely want not to be a helpless witness to his weak cries of, "why me," because he no longer has the strength to continue dressing after a taxing attempt at brushing his teeth. I hope that my husband and I will never have to carry his feeble body back to his bed because he is too dizzy to walk.
I wonder sometimes if God is calling him to wake up. Is he showing my father that He is the one who hold's his whole life in His hands, but yet still waiting for daddy to rectify his choices? Instead of spewing hateful words with his tongue, God has given him more time to share love with members of the family that he fights so hard to keep to himself. Eight out of the eleven children my grandmother had are still alive, and my father only allows two of them inside his inner circle. I wonder how much time The Father will give Daddy to forgive his brothers and sisters the way he expects God to forgive him?
I wonder these things because I want to meet my father in heaven one day. Hate is a powerful emotion, but love can conquer it all. I pray my Daddy, with the rest of his time on earth, will choose to love, because there is a great freedom in it; one like he's never known.
The doctors were able to perform the surgery on Daddy's colon, and successfully carve out all the cancer, but the road to recovery is still a long one ahead. Though the guilt of not being there for me when I needed him eats away at my father, I'm still going to be there for him as much as he needs me to be. I just hope he will conquer all of his demons and be the hero in this life that I always dreamed him to be. I am my daddy's daughter, and that will never change.
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