Keening

For no particular reason, without benefit of a catalystic trigger, and on a random Thursday night while engaged in my otherwise routine life, I am met with deep keening for my Dad.

He is not dead. He's quite alive. At least I think he is.

My dad, you see, left us long ago. My parents divorced when I was 17. I last saw or spoke with my father shortly after turning 18, a few days before he suddenly departed our lives, abandoning his three children entirely for the greener grass that apparently grows somewhere else.

As with most cases of wanderlust, he never did find the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, though it did take another failed marriage, several continents, countless jobs, and all of the money from our stolen college savings accounts to realize the futility of his fantasies.

During that decade, we would hear rumors of his being in Mexico, then Guatemala, Jamaica, then Hawaii. Once we thought we saw his car leaving my high school graduation. Another time, my brother encountered him on the street outside his college apartment. Deeply stunned, my brother invited him inside. Shaky and sweating noticably, my father was evidently nervous and anxious. After only a few minutes of benign chat, he asked my brother if he could please use his phone to make a business call. He dialed and entered into an urgent sounding conversation for several moments. But then the dial tone began sounding loudly from the phone receiver, announcing his lie unmistakenly. My Dad had never dialed anyone - the phone was off the hook. He had been pretending to talk to an empty phone line.

Still gives me chills to think about that.

Obviously startled by the realization that my brother knew Dad was not speaking to anyone, he hung up and without further comment, left my brother's apartment. We heard nothing further from him for a long, long time.

Who knows what is truth and what is not about his exact journey after he left us? The heart of the matter is that he left us. When you abandon your children so coldly and without explanation or remorse, anything you do after that is rather peripheral. At least from the perspectives of the children left in your wake, suffering the consequences of the selfish choices of your hollow soul.

For almost eleven years, I did not know where or who my father was. Then, suddenly, we got word through the grapevine that he had evidently resurfaced in California the year of my precious daughter's birth. Newly remarried for the third time to an old family friend, he was living within easy driving distance from all of his children and family. But he never contacted any of us. Ever.

When my dear grandfather passed away a year later, his funeral was the first time I'd seen my father since I was 18. The first time my dear husband, Copper, had EVER met my father.

I prayed for enormous courage to face this man. I resolved to be strong and never to let him see in my eyes, actions, or speech the degree of pain he has caused all three of hischildren by voluntarily abdicating his role as our father and leaving us behind without a backwards glance, note, card, call, or care. In over ten years. How do you just LEAVE your children forever and not show any evidence of caring at all?

But face to face with my Dad that day, my angry resolve crumbled into sobs. Already emotional over the passing of my grandfather, I hugged him with tears coming so fiercely I could not talk. Disappointed at my own internal betrayal, I pulled away abruptly, still unable to speak. Dad said, "It's good to see you." That was it. It's good to see me. Copper managed a handshake through gritted teeth and a stony smile. He abhors my Dad because of the scars he inflicted on my heart and believes him to be a sociopath. We have agreed that my Dad will never see our children, even if he ever indicated a desire to, which he did not. I admit, I dared to hope that seeing his children after so long, especially in the context of his own father's death would rekindle something - anything - that once bound us together as a family.

It was not to be.

I have never seen him again. It's been over three years.

For some reason, a flash flood of Dad-related emotion hit me tonight. It feels like a betrayal of my heart to even allow it audience within me, on some level. I do not mourn the person of my Dad exactly, but the empty place he should have had in my life. I mourn that my Dad threw away his children. I mourn the person I so longed for him to be. I mourn that my father does not love me or want me, and will not ever again nestle me closely to him the way I lovingly watch Copper embrace our children every day. I mourn the painful reality that I have no father by his deliberate choice.

At least not here on earth. Praise God I can cling to Him as my eternal replacement.

I will NEVER comprehend any possible justification for the volunntary abdication of parenthood and the pain it causes the children left behind. I remain convinced that a person who abandons or harms their children has a vacant soul. And I have learned that life experience, maturity, age, and the passing of time does not necessarily heal the lasting wounds inflicted by a parent who so easily casts their child aisde. The "why's" behind such deplorable actions are, at best, anemic and utterly inconsequential.

My own thriving relationship with and deep dependence upon Christ is largely because He is my only father, for all intents and purposes. Which is not a bad consolation prize, actually. I also believe that a large portion of my empathy for children and righteous anger at selfish, destructive, immature, morally corrupt, or ego-driven parenting comes from being the recipient of such cruel indifference at the hands of a parent. I am grateful my children will never know the reality I have lived with respect to my Daddy. Theirs is a true and fine man of God who loves them to the extent of his capacity and even beyond, borrowing both wisdom and love from God when his own reserves are low. Copper is the father we both longed for our own Dad's to be.

Even with the merciful and glorious surrogate father I have in Copper's step-dad, and the comfort of Christ's loving model of the infallibly divine father, there remains a hole in my being carved by my own Dad. It is no longer a gaping open wound, but more of a sensitive ache. Which cannot be removed from the person I am. Though by faith, prayer, and will I have made it into something useful for my own growth, and it fuels my committment as a mother NEVER to cause my children this kind of pain, the scar will mark me forever.

For some reason tonight, I was jarred into remembering my hurt rather suddenly - flooded with memories, emotions, and longing for what might have been. For a Dad that still doesn't want us - doesn't want me. For the Dad I so wish he was - the amazing Dad I knew when I was a little girl - the unfilfilled promise I still moun deeply. I am nearing 32 years old and still I sometimes long for Daddy.

Some things stay with you, no matter how far a distance you travel in life. There is no time limit to the pain a child can continue to experience at the callous rejection by a parent. Even when you are otherwise whole and thriving,the reality hits you anew at odd times, bringing back waves of emotion you thought you'd long since left in the past. Where they belong..

I pray that my Dad one day realizes what he has done and seeks forgiveness. And that my heart continues to be open, receptive, and forgiving in the unlikely event that moment ever comes. For tonight, there is keening and wistfulness. But there are no expectations upon my Dad. I abandoned any thought of those long ago. I place my only hope in God, by whose sheer grace alone this healing may one day be complete.