I’m having a tough day today. I slept most of it away, because I could feel the guilt and sadness building last night. For the last few years, it had been a sad day, one filled with feelings of loss and now feelings of guilt. 

For much of my life, I didn’t have a very close relationship with my father. It was often one of conflict and avoidance. I remember as a child I would avoid him, tip toeing by his sleeping frame and slipping by the couch to sit by the TV, sneaking the converter and changing the channel hoping the disruption wouldn’t wake his snores. In my teenage years I was far more rebellious. Alcoholism is a poison and its venom affects every member of a family for a very long time.

By the end of high school, our relationship was almost toxic. If it hadn’t been for my boyfriend at the time, I likely wouldn’t have had any empathy for my father at all. In my last year of high school and just before graduating an incident happened. It was the straw that broke my mother’s back. She gave him an ultimatum. You stop drinking and get help or you get out! He stopped. Cold turkey.

For a very short while, I got to see the man behind the booze. He was the kind, funny, gregarious man my mother described, the man she married so long ago, the man I barely knew. Later that year I went off to University in London and moved out. When I’d call, my mother would say your father misses you. When they’d visit, he would kiss my cheek and slip me some money and whisper “don’t tell your mother” while wiping his eyes.

On my first day home of spring break, I entered an empty house. At that time, we had no cell phones, so I called a neighbour who told me that my parents went to the hospital. I immediately called my brother and we went to see what was going on. My father had been suffering from a “cold” for a while and finally had broken down and gone to see the GP. The doctor ordered x-rays, one look told him something was very wrong. He told my parents to go emergency immediately, they did. A week later we were told he has terminal mesothelioma. The months that followed were fraught with joy, sadness and every emotion in between. I decided it would be best to come home and be with my family, a decision that I am so glad I made. We often wonder what could have been instead of what is, I have too. I regret nothing,

His last days were excruciating, he was in so much pain despite the pain pump and morphine, every breath was agony. It was during this time he told me he loved me. It was the first time I heard it from his lips. Shortly after that he was sedated so he could be comfortable. No human should suffer like that. In the end he died peacefully with all of us by his side.

Since that time, I have seen my brother become a father. A man who is devoted to his family. A man would bleed and stand in front of a bullet for his daughters. I know so much of how he is was shaped by and sometimes inspire of how we grew up. He is a great father, one who I think if our dad would have been proud of if given the chance.

And now the guilt.

I can’t help thinking that Patrick would have made the best dad. When I see him interacting with his nieces and nephews I feel like I have robbed him of the gift of being someone’s father. I have told him this and he always reassures me that he is happy and fulfilled with mentoring the kids he works with and that he has his nieces and nephews. Maybe I’m stubborn and can’t let go myself, but I think he would have been so great, and part of me just feels terrible that I can’t give him that one thing. So today is a tough one.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I want to wish all the father’s who are, were, and who want to be out there a day where you are appreciated and loved.

To my new father, the dad I married into, I want to say thank you and I love you. Thank you for your love and acceptance, and I love you, for the dad that you are, and for the man you shaped with your love and patience.

AM