When did my father smile? What is one really great thing he did for me? What is one happy memory of him?
I don't know. Is it that I don't want to know, or that none of those things exist?
The last time I saw my dad was at a funeral home in Alabama, late November 2003. (My cousin, after suffering from schizophrenia for about 30 years, gave into the voices and stopped them by shooting himself.) My father had, very obviously, been drinking. I arrived at the funeral home later than I should have, so there'd be no lack of people to talk to or things to say. Somehow I stayed later than I intended, ended up being one of the last few . Dad was still there and still drunk. Mobile phone call: 'Hey sister, did Dad drive himself over here? If he did I'm not sure he should drive home.' 'Oh, I've seen him worse, he'll be OK.'
I drove my non-drunk self home to Tennessee.
It's Christmas. I've promised to go see him.
I don't want to.
Yes, every boy needs a father, as katiek recently wrote. I still need one. I need a father who knows me. I need a father to talk to when I'm in trouble. I need a dad to teach me about girls and life and work and cars and responsibility and love.
I'm not going to get one, and I know it. My father doesn't know how to do 'the stuff.'
Most days I'm just fine knowing that. No, most days I'm just fine with forgetting the need. Most days I'm self-sufficient and capable and OK. I'm even fine with watching my friends be great dads. I'm fine watching them have kids, watching them glorying in the role God has given them, watching them being blessed and changed by their kids. But this day I had to go buy an obligatory Christmas present.
'Mike, he doesn't need clothes, he doesn't need anything for the house.' 'I could always bring beer!'
I walked, destitute again, through Barnes & Noble. There was nothing. Nothing to give. Nothing that makes any sense. Nothing good to give from anywhere, any store, not coffee, or a souvenir, or a water bottle, or a leatherman.
The best I can do is--a picture frame. (Target will do you right in your hour of need.) I'll have to send the picture later. That's the best I can do.
For years I've said, 'If the best I can do is nothing, then I'm fine with that.' I'm not proud of the picture frame--I didn't make it, I don't even have the picture I want to put in it, it's just a picture frame. But it's the best I can do right now. For my father.
But I believe that God gives us the parents we need. For some of us it is severe mercy. For some of us it is a hard road.
And I believe that despite and because of my parents, I will continue to seek God. To try--in the moments that come, in years that are awful as well as joyful, in the tasks that come to my hand--to serve God. Maybe my deficiency, the lack of a decent dad and a 1950's style family, is actually a tool. It can help me connect with and possibly minister to other children who've been abandoned and exposed to the dangers of life. To my friends who flirt with the idea of divorce. To people who have ceased to recognize their need, whose hearts have shut down. To all of us who need a dad.
Posted by mike at December 17, 2004 12:43 AMoh mike, i'm sorry. i'm sorry he couldn't be those things you needed, and that he's still taking and not giving. this time of year makes those wounds all the deeper. holding you in the light and praying for father-like figure to be found.
Posted by: bobbie at December 17, 2004 05:26 PMi love you, mike. i'm mad, but i'm praying.
Posted by: bob at December 18, 2004 10:00 AMDear Mike,
When I spoke to a crowd at my father's funeral in March, I said that God, in His infinite wisdom, had given my sisters and I exactly the right dad that we needed. I believe that, even though it's a recent belief and takes much faith to hold to. My life-long prayers for my dad to know Christ, for him to be an unselfish loving father, and for our relationship to be as it should, were never answered. My father followed his father who followed his father in lives that destroyed their families. And yet through Providential and startling grace, my sisters and I know what a father should be like because we have One. I will be praying that your Father gives you grace to love this man he gave you as your father, to give you the capacity of unselfish love that your father does not possess.