The Journey Inward

“I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” I think to myself at least once a day these days. I’ve finally had the breakthrough I’ve been looking for in trying to reconnect with my dad and access all the feelings and memories we shared. But I keep circling back to middle school me, high school me, too cool for an old dad who didn’t try to fit in or care what others thought of him. I wasn’t that confident.

“I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” I think to myself at three times a day these past few days. I’ve finally had the breakthrough I’ve been looking for in trying to reconnect with my dad and access all the feelings and memories we shared. But I’ve started circling back to the child who knew which parent was her caretaker and which wasn’t, and so aligned with the one she felt could protect her the most in life, and turned away from the one who got her. I needed to survive.

I’ve found my dad again after too many years of losing him. I’m remembering with feeling and with nostalgia the relationship of my early years, the comics read, the shared love of dogs, the worm walks, the living room antics, the learning to read. I’m connecting to him on a deeper level now, 22 years after his death and 14 days after realizing that our relationship hit the patch it did not simply because I was a teenager, but because my mother held disdain for my dad, and as a result, I aligned with her side to make sure my basic needs were met. But what about my heart? My mind? My soul?

There are so many questions I’d like to ask my dad now. I wonder what he’d think of the world today. I wonder how he came to love God as he did. I wonder what he thought of his parents, who did not give him a solid start in life, yet he rose to heights impressive and unlikely. I want to know what he saw in my mom, how he felt when we were each born, why he was so hard on my brothers, what he thought about my birth when he was 55, and what it felt like to lose his hearing, to have his back render him immobile and then to watch his memory slip away.

But most importantly, I want to ask, “Can you forgive me?”

Photo: circa 1976