21 Apr Is Anyone to Blame? (Part 2)

In the time you last heard from me, my father died.

We had a difficult relationship. I was blessed to say goodbye to him in the most loving way possible. In his honor, I’d like to share that with you.

First, some background, A few months ago I wrote a post about blame. It generated a big response. If you’d like to read or review it before or after continuing, that post is here: https://cushnir.com/archives/1913.

Now, back to my father and me. We didn’t really bond, emotionally. It wasn’t something he was able to do, coming from his family of origin. He was dutiful, and often generous, but the  core connection between parent and child was missing for us.

For most of my life, to varying degrees, I held this lack of bonding against my father. I also blamed him for the more direct wounds—and there were many—that he inflicted upon my mother, my siblings and me.

When visiting my father on his deathbed, I didn’t want to keep him at a distance, blocked from my heart by what I held against him. I didn’t want to deny or hide from this distance by using easy to say phrases like, “Love you,” conveniently leaving out the first person pronoun that makes the statement unavoidably personal.

But how? Was there a way I could stop holding what I had against him that wasn’t fake or coming from a hollow “should” ?

As I held my father’s hand at the hospital, suddenly it came to me:

Whatever we hold against someone is equal to whatever we aren’t sufficiently holding within ourselves.

If I held it against my father that he couldn’t love me the way I wanted, this matched my own unwillingness to embrace the loss of that love I experienced as a result.

If I held it against my father that he wasn’t able to address any uncomfortable emotions, this matched the untended wounds I bore from that persistent superficiality.

If I held it against my father that he reacted to any of his own inner storms with rage and punishment of those closest to him, this matched the as-yet-unclaimed PTSD that still plagued me, and that I often camouflaged with all my hard-earned reslience.

Once I got this, and turned within to hold whatever I previously hadn’t, it was right there waiting for me:  Loss, hurt, trauma.

In that moment I allowed the loss, hurt and trauma a little more fully and vulnerably than I had before.

It wasn’t some kind of magic. There was no golden light that suffused the room. And yet, I was somehow newly free.

I could look my father in the eyes, and not just hold his hand but also hold him fully in my heart.

Just one day before he died, I could finally, easily add the missing pronoun. I could say it my father directly. And I can still say it now.

“I love you, Dad.”