My father died last week and I’m still not sure how I need to mourn him. Being busy with the business of death has been quite distracting, but that can’t last that much longer, can it? Suddenly I feel like I’m 10 again, or 16, or 35, wishing that our family wasn’t broken, that he was always there, that he was a good father, so I would know what to do and this loss could be sudden, excruciating, heartbreakingly normal. Fact is, we lost our father 40 years ago and I’ve already been mourning that void year after year.
Even though he did not raise me, did not provide for me or my siblings and neglected his most basic co-parenting responsibilities, I was in contact with him my entire life—we saw him sporadically when we were children and then were in touch mostly by phone as I got older, and mostly because I was always hopeful he might one day just explain why, why, why or (even better) acknowledge and atone. He was omnipresent in his absence, my father, my deadbeat daddy, my apuka, and such a prominent brushstroke across my emotional landscape. No matter what, he was my father, and my relationship with him will be forever complicated and confusing.
So right now, I’m not going to dwell too much on the complicated and confusing, I honestly can’t imagine there have been any new developments in the last 10 years. Right now, I want to remember that he helped make some beautiful things and that I once loved him just for being my father.
I have a wonderful memory of him singing Sunrise, Sunset to me in a car or on a bus, coming back from a picnic, and I remember feeling so sad for him that he would have to watch us all grow up, get married and move away. I cried tragic child tears when he sang “Is this the little girl I carried?…Is this the little boy at play?” And although I was truly distressed for him, I was comforted by the thought that it would devastate him to lose us and it made me feel safe and valued and loved. I think I’ll dwell on that for awhile.
There won’t be a formal service, but I’ll be posting pictures and writing in this section, some good and some uncomfortable, not-so-good stuff, because I like babbling and writing and I hope it might be cathartic, I might password protect some of these but will share with anyone who is interested in reading. Comments and pictures and stories and more babbling and hugs are welcome and encouraged!!
I am so sorry to hear of your loss.
Thank you so much Pattie! xxoo
This is so beautiful ! I love this idea ! I’m so sorry about your Apuka! I’m the first one to know that no matter what they do to you (or don’t do) we love them just as much as if they were right there with us our whole lives. Daddy’s girls forever. I share a lot of the same feelings as you ! I dread this day everyday I wake up! There’s such a void burnt inside of me that I always wished he would wake up one day and feel the same pain and run over here and try to fill it for us both. But of course that will probably never happen and I’ll be stuck feeling the same mixed happy and sad, good and bad feelings that you have! I love you and you’re such a strong woman! I hope I will be able to cope as well and maybe I can start something like this for him to help me express myself ! Xoxo Big Trish, my twin 💜
Okay, I might have to actually write a post just for you, because I have so many things I want to write in response but they are all over the place and I can’t organize them in my head right now. Or maybe we can write one together, Q&A style. You can interview me and then if you want I can interview you, maybe a little podcast or a “Tricia and Tricia” so no one knows which Tricia is baring her soul on the interwebs (we can password protect that one if you want). And let me know if you want any help setting up your own blog.
I was thinking about you and your sisters a lot all week. And that is part of the reason I started this, if even one little thing I share helps you work something out or put something in perspective at this young age, then, well, that’s pain well spent. You wrote something that makes my heart break for you:
Ugggggh, I know this feeling well. I wish I could do or say or write something right now that would make this part easier for you but I know from experience I can say all the right things and you’ll agree and you probably know all those right things already, but this one is going to have to come from him.
We can cry about this together, in our Q&A session ( ; Love you my little twin Tricia
Oh titi I’m so sorry to hear 🙁 ……we are sending you tons of hugs and kisses and soooo much love .
Thank you sweetheart, love you and miss you and big big hugs and love to you all xxoo
An honest and lovely tribute to your papa, Tricia. Xoxo -Hope.
Thank you so much Hope! xo
Dear Tricia, I hope that any pain that you are feeling will pass, I love you.
Thank you my darling James, I love you too x
So sorry for your loss sweet Tricia! Sometimes we make our own beautiful memories out of bits and pieces of life to cope. Love you! Xoxo
Thank you Luree, love you too! xoxo
Sorry for your loss, Tricia.
Thanks Dan! x
Un abrazo grande of us! Joost and Geertje
Muchas gracias mis amig@s precios@s, un gran abrazo para los dos! xo
This tribute is just so touching! It is clear that he loved you! I can see/sense in these pictures that he did always have tremendous love you!! These are beautiful memories and they are to be treasured and remembered with love. You can’t forget the rest but, you can’t forget or deny the love!! I love you! I look forward to more of your beautiful writing!! You have a great way of putting into words all you feel and see!! I am sorry for your loss may he be at peace!! xoxo
I love you too, Tammy!! I remember feeling very loved by him and I truly hope everyone in my family does as well. Trying to balance that with feeling forgotten has been really tricky at times, and this is certainly one of those times! And I especially love these photos because I want the part of me that remembers and was hopeful to tell the part of me that begs to know why I care at all to just take a little break, because he’s really gone now. And those feelings aren’t going anywhere. And the part of me that remembers always wins anyway. (;
I’m so deeply sorry to hear of your loss hun.
Sending you the biggest of hugs and as many kisses as there are stars!!
Take care of yourself.
Will. xoxoxox
Awwww, thank you honey, I’ll take ’em! Miss you and hope you’re well xxoo
Aw, Tricia. I’m sorry. He has such a sweet smile in those pictures and obviously loved you. He could have been a great father. Why some men just can’t, or won’t, or don’t, is beyond me. He cheated himself out of so much sweetness. That you grew up strong and beautiful and clear-eyed and honest and joyful is a testament to you and the ones who were there for you, and the essential goodness of things. Of course, we wouldn’t have you in this world if it wasn’t for him, so God bless him, too. May he rest in peace. I wish you comfort in your mourning, however that mourning comes.
Thank you so much Cynthia, and you’re right he could have been a great father. And as I got older I felt more bad for him, because I do think he knew that, and that must have been tormenting. xoxo
Hugs and kisses! So sorry for your loss, today’s and the loss of the past. Your words are a gift. Love ya friend!
Thank you Maureen, hugs and kisses right back at you xx
Lost my mom when she was 55.Not easy losing a parent. Ten years from now, you will feel like it was yesterday when he passed and like it was a hundred years ago.You feel like a little kid again with the death of a parent..I have horrible and good feelings about her.I think you were spared a lot of bad things but there’s that connection.You don’t see the horrible relationship some kids have with their parents and see only the outward good. I am lucky enough to have your mother as a friend for over 30 years. A warm, understanding mother;that’s rare in a friend;you have her as a mom.Those pics of your Dad are keepers.You can see he loved you very much. I just think people have problems and they have a hard time facing themselves AND their problems.Anyway, loved the pics!!!! Joe
Hi Joe!
Thanks so much for reading and sharing and, yes, I am super lucky to have your dear friend as my amazing and selfless mother.
I’m so sorry to hear about your complicated feelings about your mom, but hope you have more good memories than bad ones. Sadly, most of my relationship my father was frustrating and painful…the bad stuff definitely outweighed the good. But I am thankful I have some good early memories because they help me understand this strange ambivalence.
(And let me know if you want to see some really beautiful pics of my mom with me as a baby)
Yes, I’d love to see pics of you when you were a baby with your mom-they are absolutely wonderful-can you believe how happy she is holding you??
Dear Tricia
Through my interactions with you over the years (I’ve known you for some time now and consider you such a real friend – and I don’t have many) I’ve come to recognize, but of course not pretend to understand, the complex relationship you had with your father. And though I won’t presume to have any grasp whatsoever of how the things your father DID do and DIDN’T do throughout your life shaped who you are today, I am keenly aware that these things have of course shaped you and shaped you profoundly. Of course, right? Thanks Captain obvious. But what surprises me, is that my perception is that they have shaped you for the better.
Who can determine the real truths of such matters when the feelings of, what is the word, abandonment, dig down so deeply. You were the oldest, weren’t you? So your perspectives will always be different than those of your siblings. Now you’ll be faced with family and friends who perhaps mean well but start saying things, now that he’s gone, that they think you want to hear. Who knows – even if they mean well, they may feign some personal investment that simply isn’t there, nor could really be there. Only Tricia knows what Tricia knows. And only Tricia feels what Tricia feels.
But all of us I suppose can relate on some level or another with being lied to by someone we love. And many of us can relate to perhaps our own subconscious creation of an alternative reality to somehow explain profound feelings of disappointment – to explain the unexplainable actions of someone who was supposed to do a job but didn’t. But for you – who was this man who was so utterly and profoundly ill-equipped to the task of a responsibility he chose to take on as a young man? For so many decades you might have found yourself becoming angry, then angry at yourself for becoming angry. Becoming strong and stronger – for yourself and for your mother and for so many other mere mortals who have looked to you as the pillar you are – as the enormously special person you are.
Your singular distinction of being a fiercely independent woman has never emerged as it can in some – as a cold or suspicious trait. It’s all part of your incredible and abundant charm. For you independence brings with it warmth and compassion and an eclectic vision of life as an ongoing adventure. And so when it is all said and it is all done, and your father has moved on from his strange and apparently hollow life, at long last perhaps formidable, conflicting and even painful emotions can find some level of resolution. For you I hope and pray they do.
Your strength will carry you through, but if you do need some additional help, you have many friends – and I am just one of them who is there for you. I know so few people as extraordinary as you. So grounded yet so joyously impulsive. So strong yet so embraceable. So wise yet so innocent. So old and young at the same time. It has me thinking – I have one theory about your father which you would humbly deflect no doubt. But it has something to do with how so incredibly opposite you are from whatever your father was, and how so full of gifts you are that seemed to be completely absent from your father – Do you think maybe ….Maybe he had to surrender it all when he fathered you. You are so full and he was so empty. Maybe these two things are related. It’s a far-fetched notion, admittedly, but from where I sit, it explains a lot.
Peace to you. Peace to your father. And on to other mysteries. May they all be happy ones from this point forward. Sunrise, sunset indeed.
Forever, Ben
My dear friend and partner in confliction and confoundment, I read this when you wrote it, and I read it again right now and I’ll read it again and again and again, always with fresh eyes. Your thoughtful insight, your friendship and your wisdom are very important to me. Thank you, Benjalissimo, I hope you know how much I treasure you. And I think you’re onto something, only just not the part about fathering me, but perhaps watching my mother mother us. Maybe he couldn’t relate, couldn’t understand her gifts, her selflessness, her natural, instant, instinctual love, felt he couldn’t measure up and then just couldn’t find a way to find his own way. Or maybe he was just sick. Or maybe he was just an awful man. Or all these things or none of them. On to other mysteries, indeed…well said, my friend, well said. xxoo