Your Dad Is Here

I see my husband in my son in small ways:  the way he rolls up his long sleeved shirts, the set of his jaw when he is annoyed or determined to do something he really wants to accomplish and the way he plays chicken with his car's gas tank and won't fill it up until it is almost empty.

When I see those traits it is bittersweet: they make me laugh and but they also make me feel a little sad and wistful.    "He is still with us," I think to myself.  My husband had a very strong personality so I am not surprised that I see some of him in our son.  It's just when those quirky things appear, they always have a way of taking me by surprise.

 

 

 

My thoughts today are with fathers and the important role they play in their children's lives.  While my son's father died nine years ago, I appreciate the important role he played in our young son's life and how his influence can still be felt today.

 

Please read the timely story below which I found on the insightful website, Hello Grief (www.hellogrief.org).  The author, Abigail Carter, sweetly reminds us of the importance of Dads everywhere; the ones who are with us today and the ones that we forever hold in our hearts.

 

Happy Father's Day!

 

 

 

Every Day is Father’s Day

By Abigail Carter
June 8, 2010 

Father’s Day never held much importance for our family until the death of my husband, Arron, father of our two young children.

 

The day usually began with a childish command for him to stay in bed so he could be the lucky recipient of a sticky tray of burnt pancakes and watery coffee, and be handed a construction paper card with “I lov you dady,” in bright red crayon, or a popsicle stick picture frame with a blurry Polaroid of a proud pre-schooler.

 

Later in the day, as he jiggled the kids around on the heavy metal lumber cart at Home Depot, I refrained from my usual “step away from the power tools,” and allowed him to run amuck, our list of supplies forgotten in his pocket. For dinner I would make one of his favorites – chicken stew, or if the weather was nice, a steak grilled on the BBQ and a glass of wine after the kids were in bed.

 

Our first Father’s Day after his death was spent in the company of several other widows on a deserted New Jersey Shore beach watching our children romp around in the waves or play in the sand, wishing we had the ability to play so freely, wishing we could have our old lives back. The male volunteers who grilled hot dogs for lunch just seemed to add salt to our wounds.

 

The days and weeks afterward were spent in a heightened state of agitation to which we were oblivious – fighting, frustrated, exhausted – until someone pointed out how difficult Father’s Day must have been. Finally able to connect the dots between the day and the aggression that had settled upon my family, the black moods eventually dissipated, at least until the next event that needed to braced for, like one of the kid’s birthdays, or another wedding anniversary. Year two was a repeat of year one, the bracing, the beach, the fatherless kids, the male volunteers, the loneliness, the anger, the exhaustion.

 

Friends and family, while well-meaning often added to the stress, building the potential heart-break of the day by calling to offer sad Happy Father’s Day wishes, or to offer to take the kids away, thinking that what they needed was to spend time with a man, one that was usually someone else’s father.

 

There was another year, the year I picked my son up from Pre-K after his class had been busy making presents for their fathers, and when we got into the car, he threw the present at me, something square wrapped in emerald green tissue paper. “Who am I going to give this to?” He yelled. “All the other kids have dads and I don’t!” In one day, with the realization that he was not like all the other kids, he had gone from a sad child to an angry one – anger that eight years later is only beginning to dissipate.

 

For many widows with children, Father’s Day creeps up and pounces on us. Sometimes we just anticipate it with dread – more glaring evidence of what we have lost. Everyone (not just widows) tries to celebrate the day in some meaningful way, trying to honor that special Dad. Newspapers and television ads are filled with things we are meant to buy, sentiments we are meant to feel. There is so much pressure to ‘honor” our loved one properly, even when they are alive, but no one seems quite sure how to go about doing so.

 

We have tried a variety of different activities on Father’s Day. Things my husband would have enjoyed: bike rides in the park, planting a shrub in the garden, an IMAX movie downtown, a steak on the BBQ. The day has become less sad, held less meaning as the kids grow and have adapted to their life with only one parent. But with each passing year, Father’s Day becomes less and less volatile.

 

The kids have almost passed the period in elementary school where presents are being made in class. And if they are, the kids have adapted. Presents have been awarded to grandfathers or other men of importance in their lives at the time. I considered last year a kind of breakthrough when my son, still in elementary school decided to participate in his class’s annual Father’s Day craft project. When the day arrived, he presented his gift to me saying, “since you are pretty much like our dad as well as our mom, this is for you.” It was the compliment of a lifetime, and reminded me how far we had all come.

 

This year will be our eighth Father’s Day without a father to honor, and again, it will likely be passed with very little fanfare. In other years I have felt guilt for wanting to ignore these events, making up for it by forcing a celebration with trips to the beach, riding bikes, making Mickey Mouse pancakes – pretending that our family was still whole, pretending that my husband could still appreciate these efforts. It was my son who finally reminded me of the pressures I was putting on all of us when he asked, “Why do we always do all this stuff on Father’s Day when we don’t even have a dad?” I thought we had been doing it to remember him, but I realized that really I was doing it because I felt like I had to. My efforts were stressing me out and doing nothing to help us remember Arron, let alone honor him.

 

Instead of pancakes and bike rides and beach trips one day every June, I realized that all it takes to celebrate Father’s Day is for me to recognize one of my husband’s goofy expressions in our daughter, or his familiar glint of mischief in the eye of our son and laugh saying, “you look just like your father when you do that!”

 

That way every day is Father’s Day.
 

* * * *
By guest writer, Abigail Carter. View more of her essays at www.alchemyofloss.com ^[2] and learn more about her at www.abigailcarter.com ^[3].

Fathers & Sons

Today I'm going to visit my Dad and celebrate Father's Day a day early.

My son won't be joining me because he is out of town visiting his girlfriend.  Even if my son were here in town, I would still be emotionally torn on Father's Day.

My Dad is still alive and our family is lucky and blessed to have him. But my son's father, who was also my husband, died nine years ago and the celebration of Father's Day makes me feel guilty and conflicted. Guilty because my father is alive and his isn't.  Conflicted because I want to make my son and my Dad happy about this day but I can't.  I know, I know, life is never fair but I wish my son could have had more time with his father when his father was in better health.

 

The memories that hold true for my son of his father involves hospitals, doctor's offices, medicine, and constant badgering from me to get his father to do the things he needed to do to stay healthy.  My son was too young at the time of his father's good health to truly remember the Halloween outings, Christmases, beach vacations and other fun times we did have as a family.  There are lots of pictures to remind him, but that's not the same.

 

 

I can't change that for my son but I still wish for it.

I've asked him about his feelings when Father's Day arrives and he just quietly says he doesn't like to watch other people with their fathers. That's probably the understatement of the century. He also says that he forgot that this weekend was Father's Day. Right. When he does see fathers and sons together, I know his mind starts to wander and he thinks about how it might have been different for him if his Dad hadn't gotten sick and died when he was 13-years old.

And that makes me feel bad even though I have no way to change the situation.

So full of guilt, I go visit my Dad and hang out with him for awhile and wish I could make things different for my wonderful son who deserves to have his healthy Dad with him today.
 

Daddy's Office Time

From a child's point of view, the place where their parents work can be a place they dislike because it pulls the parent away from them.  Parents spend a lot of time at work and children may feel that they are competing with what goes on in the office.  "If you didn't have to work, you could be with me," is sometimes what a child thinks.

But what if your memories of your parent and their relationship with their work and their office is positive and you can't imagine your parent doing anything else but being in their office?  Your parent may love their job and their passion for their work may inspire you to try to find something that you can be equally passionate about.

Work world is where your parent and other adults are busy working on computers, talking on phones, doing things you don't quite understand but you want to be part of it because your parent loves being in this world.

In honor of Father's Day, this New York Times story captures a little girl's precious memories of her father and playing office so she could become just like him:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/for-one-more-day-at-the-office/

Daddies Day





Here's a big shout out to all of the wonderful men out there who love and provide for their beautiful children.  If your Dad is no longer alive, I hope you tell funny and sentimental stories about him today or think about the special things you did together.  I'd also like to give some recognition to the fantastic men who continually reach out to the children who need a Dad in their lives.

Father's Day is a celebration of all Dads and all of the important emotional and material contributions they make for the good of their families but it is a day full of contradictions for me.  My wonderful father is still alive but sadly my son's is not.

I think my son handles this incredibly well and I think his father would be very proud of the young man he is today and is still becoming.  It has been a journey of ups and downs but on the whole he deals with his emotions in this area better than I would if I were in his shoes.  I don't know what it feels like to be a guy so it's hard to know exactly what boys need.  Yes, all children need love but I remember reading in a book about boys that at a certain age their fathers need to help them cross that emotional bridge over into the male world because listening to your Mom just doesn't cut it with the guys.  I guess if your Dad isn't there to do that for you then your male friends do it for you.

Talking about what Father's Day means to my son is a mixed bag.  He says he remembers his Dad but sadly a lot of his memories are filled with hospitals and uncertainty.  My son has a photo album filled with pictures from happier times but he was very young and remembers only bits and pieces.  We know that his Dad could have made smarter health decisions but at a certain point you can only do so much.  It is hard to watch other fathers and sons interact because it makes me wonder what it would be like today if my husband was still alive and healthy.  I often wonder what it would be like if my husband were alive, but Father's Day seems to really drive home the point.

My husband subscribed to the idea of working hard and playing hard and eventually the effects of that lifestyle caught up with him.  He had been in and out of the hospital for two and half years before his death and when he died our son was thirteen, a vulnerable age in the best of times.  My son and I talk honestly about this subject because I believe it is better to talk about your thoughts than to keep them to yourself.  Ignoring the anger, frustration or anxiety only makes it worse.

Today also reminds me how much my husband loved being a father, not only to my son but to his four other children who are all so very special.  I think he tried to make sure that all of his children felt his love for them and that they knew how precious each of them was to him.  He did have a silly side that he was not afraid to share with them, playing word games and making up funny nicknames for them.  But there was also another side of him that he showed only if you didn't do something you were supposed to, such as work hard in school.  It was then that you entered the "no bullshit zone" and he used something they all call "The Voice." You can imagine what that sounded like.  My father's version of the "The Voice" was pursing his lips and giving you "The Look." 

Today I see glimpses of their father in all of them and it's a beautiful gift that always makes me smile.  He was definitely a father from the old school and that meant that work got in the way of spending time at home many more times than the children liked.  But that happens to many fathers, including my own, and I understand why.  Men define themselves through their work; it is what keeps a roof over their families' heads and it is what bonds them to other men.  In the case of my father, he held down three jobs to generously provide for his six children and I still can't figure out how he did it.

To my Dad, I say thanks for showing me the value and rewards of hard work and living life passionately.  Also a big thanks for being the kind of Dad who let me and my siblings drink our cereal from a glass, sleep on top of the bedspreads, spend summers at the beach, pay for our parking tickets and make us feel totally loved and cherished.  You're the best!!!!!

Happy Father's Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!