Farewell, My Father
The last time I saw my father was over thirty years ago. I was just a boy when my mum left him. She had grown tired of his volatile behaviour after being beaten black and blue one too many times. She found her way into the arms of another man who rescued her from her hell and we moved away to begin a new life as a family. He visited us once in our new home, a short while after we made our 200 mile escape from Horsham, West Sussex. I have learnt in recent years that my new stepfather (not the ‘saviour’ my mum had once thought, it turned out) had threatened him and made sure he maintained his distance from the family. That was the last that I saw of my father.
He has been on my mind recently. My own relationship has been deepening, and I have been introduced to new sides of myself that have helped me to make further peace with my past, and my father in particular. I have been seriously considering reaching out to him in the hope that he might be open to meeting me - a thought that would have utterly terrified me once upon a time. I guess it shows how much I have grown.
Love has taught me a lot over the past eighteen months. I spent so many years with this idea of my father in my mind that he was an evil demon who wanted to cause nothing but harm to my mum. My mum, to my immature mind, was an angel - all light and good and would have done no harm to anyone. For many years, I had failed to understand that relationships are co-created - sometimes consciously but often unconsciously. I never learnt to accept that my mum had as much darkness as light, and vice versa with my father.
I hated my father for a long time. I resented him for many of the issues that I had with myself - notably the fact that I hated that I was deeply sensitive and emotional, and possessed more well-developed feminine qualities than masculine ones. In addition to that, my mother never spoke too kindly about my father, or men in general, for that matter. I guess it’s no wonder given her experiences and lack of education around such topics. In hindsight, I think that I had learnt to reject many parts of my own masculinity as I grew up, with my mum’s projection of my father in my mind as a foundational education about what a man was.
In truth, I never had an accurate portrait of my father painted out for me. Yes, he was immature and volatile, and laid his hands on my mum on multiple occasions - something that no man should ever do, and no woman either, for that matter. He had his own issues and addictions and coping mechanisms for life, as we all do, although some are, perhaps, more extreme than others and sometimes come at the detriment of other people, too.
My father and mother, were both unaware and unconscious of their own behaviours, patterns, and trauma cycles, and I think that this is the case for many young couples who embark upon the most challenging adventure possible for a human being - the one into the soul of another.
My father passed away earlier this week - peacefully in his sleep, I’m told. My sister broke the news to me as I was driving north for an exciting new business venture on Monday. I’ve spent the past few days fighting back tears and putting on a brave face as I interacted with clients and fellow photography tutors. The walls of the dam finally burst open today as I arrived back home to Wales and walked amongst trees. The realisation hit me that I’ll never get to look my father in the eyes and tell him that I forgive him, and that I understand why he made the choices that he did. I’m now left without answers to many of the questions that I have had for over thirty years.
In many ways, I have been grieving the relationship that I didn’t have with my father since birth, but no amount of pre-grieving could have ever prepared me for the immensity of pain that I feel knowing that I’ll never know what my father’s story was in his own words - what his childhood dreams were, where he liked to go when he was feeling sad, and what pain he felt that led him along the path of alcoholism.
My father was a troubled man, there is no doubt in my mind, but behind the masks that he wore to cope with the inevitable pain that comes with living life, there was a soul inside, just like mine. It breaks my heart to know that I will never get to meet that soul and thank him directly for his part in giving me the most beautiful gift that is life.