Father's Day reflections.

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Fathers Day........what does it this mean for you? A day to celebrate your Dad or a day to wish you had had one....a nice one maybe? or anyone at all?  Dad's are important, hard as that maybe to admit for some....good, bad or indifferent, they are a part of us, inseperable from us and our psychi's.  It's worth coming to terms with this reality or you may find you're carrying it around like a heavy box you may never open but have to find room for wherever you live.

For me this has always been a difficult day but it changed shape altogether for me last year when my Father died unexpectedly suddenly of cancer, without a word to my sister or myself.....no time to re-connect, no time to say goodbye, no time at all! No words, no note even, no last days, no new memories....just a hole, a nothingness.....what do I do with that? What do I fill it with? Should I even try?

How do we cope with death, with grief and with loss when there can be no reconciling....it's very hard as I'm sure any of you out there who've experienced similar feelings will know.


I wish I had something clever I could tell myself to take the ache out of this one but there's nothing.
I wish I could believe he meant to reply to my emails, that he wanted to see me at the end but was prevented from doing so by others with a vested interest in keeping me away. But I don't know what was in his mind or his heart and this is the hardest thing I have to wrestle with and ultimately accept.  I can't avoid the pain of this profound disappointment by turning it into something else...if not love and self acceptance, then anger would at least be something I could express...no...there's just nothing.

This I have no words for, it's a void in my psychi, a dead space with only a few scarce echos of a little girls laughter against a backdrop of a toulouse Lautrec painting I can remember hanging on the dining room wall. Sinatra's singing faintly somewhere and my sister and I are chanting Frankie Laine lyrics 'when I became a wanted man' which we still know by heart.

I remember he liked music, and played Don Mclean in his awful embarrassing orange car. He played hoot and wave, ate large bars of cadbury chocolate and gave me a record player when I was 10 with jungle book records.

I know he laughed sometimes, threw great parties, was sociable and enigmatic and had lots of very posh friends. He had another wife, her daughters, and another life which we watched from a distance, through a window. Although my sister and I were occasionally invited to attend, we were spectators, peripheral bit part players in this other big picture. Taken out of our boxes on weekends, paraded and patted and played with, then put away again and 'home' we went.

I didn't really know my father...not REALLY know him! I didn't know him as I am now, with all the faculties I now have to understand him at my disposal, I wish I had! I was unprepared and unaware until it was too late. I wish I could speak to him today! I would have so much to say to him...or maybe I wouldn't, maybe I'd simply invite him to tell his story and I'd listen. I couldn't have done that then....oh why can't we have more time?!

My parents divorced when I was four or five and our contact was sporadic for most of my childhood.
He was a public figure, a politician and a gentleman it was said by the MP at his funeral. A proper old school conservative statesman, the sort rarely seen these days the paper said!  The flags were out on the council offices when he passed and the papers were full of praise for his life and his great good and charitable works......... and yet my sister and I, his only natural children got no mention, no condolences, no invitation to the funeral. It was as though we had never existed for the record.....

What does all this mean? What does it amount to? I say again what do I do with all these feelings?
What do I make of it? What can I learn from it? How can I build on this trauma....and what do I build?

This isn't intended to be a neatly wrapped up post where I have some warm sentimental solution to offer myself and you at the end. I don't have anything to offer with this piece except my feelings. I know some of you may relate to them personally. Some of you may take the only conclusion from this that there is....to ensure things are different for you and your children. What else is there?

To recognise that we are all vulnerable, that we have no control over what happens to us for the most part and we never know if we will even have a tomorrow is hard but important to hold in awareness.
We cannot take for granted that there will be time to repair relationships, and let things go on and on, in the hope of some distant resolution because there may not be time to wait!

Take ahold of this opportunity to mend what is mendable, say what you have to say, reconcile to what is and what isn't while you still can. There may not be a happy ending but at least you may get an ending, unlike me with only a void and a make believe ending which I have to fill in for myself...like I have had to do with my father, for as long as I can remember.

Whatever you are, be it! Whoever they are, get to know them and decide for yourself who you can be together. Don't be absent, don't be a fantasy and don't accept fantasies instead of the real thing. Dreams haunt our subconscious, wounding us from within when we are most vulnerable, filling us with unrealities and hopes that may never become real. Be proactive, take action, reach out....every relationship we have is precious, especially those we're related to.

They are uniquely important links to ourselves, pieces of our puzzles...treasures we need whether they're lumps of coal or gold.....we need them all to know who we really are, to know our potential, to choose and own our own futures consciously and with real purpose and optimism. 

To all the Dads out there who are being the best they can at this tremendously difficult and demanding role, I salute you, I respect you and I honour you. Our children need both their parents, mothers and fathers to protect and love them till death do us part, which will come to all of us, whether we're ready for it or not!What will your legacy be? We all have choices... until death closes the door, there is still time! 
  
Bella