My mom’s dad walked out on his family when she was two weeks old. So she never knew the love of a dad until she married my father and gained an amazing father-in-law who fully embraced her as his own. For the first time in her life, she had the father she had always wanted. The bond between the two of them was beautiful and only grew more precious over the years.
After five miscarriages, my parents had me. My mom got to experience firsthand the love a dad has for his child. She began to understand what she had missed in her own life as she watched my dad hold me, play with me, change my diapers, feed me and protect me. The presence of my loving father magnified the absence of hers. No wonder Father’s Day became such an important day in our family.
I would spend days planning what I was going to do for my dad on Father’s Day. Homemade cards, making his coffee, “cooking” toast for his breakfast to be served with scorched scrambled eggs topped off with a gift from the Dollar Store.
As the years passed, Father’s Day grew more precious. I had a much better understanding that not everyone had a father like mine. What I had always taken for granted became a priceless treasure.
Because of the close relationship I had with my dad, my heart goes out to our clients who have experienced the death of their fathers and to dads who have experienced the death of a child. My dad died in 2006, but Alzheimer’s stole him from us long before. I understand what it’s like to lose a precious father. I don’t understand what it’s like to lose a child. However, I’ve been witness to the intense, profound pain that bereaved dads endure after such a devastating loss.
I looked forward to Father’s Day every year until my dad died. Although he’s been gone thirteen years, I still dread the holiday. The pictures of complete family units, the Father’s Day cards, the commercials, social media posts about plans for the day, etc., magnify the gaping hole my dad left in my heart. And please don’t tell me he is with me in spirit. That’s not what I’m grieving. I’m grieving that he’s not physically with me. And this isn’t selfishness. It’s pure, unconditional love for one of the best fathers who ever walked this earth.
Father’s Day is excruciatingly painful for dads who have experienced the death of a child. Even if he has other children, they cannot fill the void left by the child who died. Dads who have lost their only child sometimes question if they are still a father. The silence of the day is deafening. No hug. No card. No phone call. No text. Nothing. If you are one of these dads, please know that you are most definitely still a dad and will always be a dad.
We often think about grief in terms of death, but grief comes in many forms. Perhaps you never had a dad in your life. Or the dad you had was abusive. Maybe your dad struggled with addiction. Maybe you always harbored in your heart the dad you wished he would become, but he never did. Maybe your dad suffered from mental illness. Maybe he had Alzheimer’s and you lost him long before he died.
We can also grieve the loss of our children through estrangement, addiction, mental illness, traumatic brain injury, autism, special needs, chronic, life-threatening or life-ending illness, etc. We often don’t even recognize that we are grieving these losses because we associate grief only with death. Your grief is real and you have the right to grieve every loss.
Our hearts are with you as you make your way through another Father’s Day. We offer you the gift of hope. It won’t always be this difficult. It won’t always hurt this badly. You will get through these difficult holidays. Hold on to hope. If you feel that you don’t have any hope to hold onto, we’ll be your hope keeper for as long as you need us to be. Friend, you are loved. You can do hard things . . . like Father’s Day.